Key Points
- A new DJI update enables everyday operators to fly their drones over and into airports, military bases, sensitive infrastructure, wildfires, and national no-fly zones in the United States.
- Hundreds of sensitive-site operators may be forced to deploy counter-drone solutions. The update comes just days after a DJI drone crashed into a firefighting waterbomber over California.
- DJI promises to place “control back in the hands of the drone operators, in line with regulatory principles of the operator bearing final responsibility” — and tells Hunterbrook that it has given “authorities the tools they need to enforce existing rules.”
- DJI, by one estimate, controls 90% of the global consumer drone market. The company currently faces the risk of a total ban in the U.S.
The drone has gps and the phone app has map data. So if you were in certain areas the drone wouldn’t fly, unless you applied for an override.
The drones are controlled by a smartphone using wifi.
To add to this, if the drone has a camera (most do,)
Then the app gets to see that and presumably, DJI shares the video with the CCP. Because. Chinese company. All that.
“presumably”
All this shit is the main reason I’ve never bought a drone. One of these days I’m going to figure out what parts to buy to build my own open source one, but I haven’t had the time yet.
Multiply that by every other category of electronic product, and avoiding spyware and other enshittification is a fucking full-time job.
virtually any “bind and fly” or “almost ready to fly” bird will do what you need, if you’re willing to pilot it yourself. if you’re not, check out ardupilot (it’s still around. but stay away fromthe ardupilot module/apm controllers, they’re old and unsupported. it’s based on the arduino family of microcontrollers.)
In the US there are a lot of rules about RC aircraft now. You have to include a transmitter that broadcasts the GPS location if you are flying outside of designated RC clubs fields. Most EU countries have similar rules.
Unless you keep things under 200g.
It’s 250g.
I am not a coder myself, but based on what I know, I assume it would be trivial code the drones so that when they went into the exact same areas where they used to be restricted, the video from the camera gets flagged and sent back to China in real time for analysis.
It’s already baked into the cloud software, actually. when you fly into restricted airspace, it should provide a warning. (and previously would require some kind of permit or something. I dunno. DJI’s suck. but that’s a rant for another time.)