DJI to restrict non-compliant drones at next software update

[heo3480]

My take on this

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[Oingo Boingo]

So don't update.... Delete Go4 and fly Lichi

 

[Oingo Boingo]

Doesn't matter , you will most likely have to very soon .

No u won't... Only if u use GO4 u will be forced to

 

[Logger]

So don't update.... Delete Go4 and fly Lichi

Currently Litchi installs need to be registered with DJI servers when installed. This may present an issue down the track.
Who knows what is in the DJI SDK that Litchi use.

Having said that I am not fussed at all about the impending changes.

 

[Smokey5159]

The only reason I'm slow to embrace DJI's heavy-handed approach is because of all the glitches and issues I've experienced when I tried an update. They want me to accept their latest software, bugs and all, when I can continue to operate my Mavic in the safest state it's ever been in. Will they be quick to replace/repair the Mavic if it reacts to a glitch and nose dives into the ground - because they stuffed up again? Not meaning to play devils advocate - just playing it safe...

 

[budfroggy]

DJI can't even release a decent F/W or S/W update to BENEFIT us customers to fix their own bugs that they have or newly created while making a new F/W or S/W. However, I am sure this one will be the ONE flawless update only due to the fact that its a royal inconvenience to us pilots. Can't wait to see what's broke next.....

 

[Robbyg]

Rob,

Can you help me navigate my way around this statement from DJI? It seems like they are forcing users to update, or be restricted, no matter how many times I read it. I fix alot of Mavics, and always try to install the latest FW before sending it back to the customer. For my future repairs, and in order to give the customer the benefit of the latest firmware, will he need to update his device to make it compatible with the expected new firmware release? I usually use one of my devices to perform the repair, not sure how this will affect using my phone and sim to fix someones drone.

"If this activation process is not performed, the aircraft will not have access to the correct geospatial information and flight functions for that region, and its operations will be restricted if you update the upcoming firmware: Live camera streaming will be disabled, and flight will be limited to a 50-meter (164-foot) radius up to 30 meters (98 feet) high."

Thunder drones my best advice is to get the VMfiles files from Adiru's post and spend a day getting it up and running in VMware. That way all the drones you restore can have .400 on them. Your customers can the decide if they want to update after they receive it. A bonus to this is that you can offer a downgrade service for those unwilling to spend the time to figure the process out.

Rob

 

[Hexagon]

So from the way I see it I have two options
1) Keep my current, older firmware, stop forced GO 4 updates and try not to crash since my replacement will have the new firmware.
2) Update to latest firmware, update GO4, re-register and still keep flying in the same way I was flying before since I am not in China and I always fly safe.

I think DJI has convinced the majority of us that their hardware is very well constructed and with numerous abilities and advantages compared to other companies. However, this is not the case for the firmware. There are cases where fw updates included bugs and caused numerous problems and this is why most of us wait for someone more brave to test and find out. Recent releases of software is the only thing that has not convinced me yet, so if the second option above means that I have to be forced to be a beta tester for DJI then that is a NO GO for me. That is my only fear.

On the other hand I do believe that quad pilots who cause accidents via reckless flying should be found and accept responsibility and possible penalties, just as they accept the risk of performing such flights. If the new updates are helping authorities in such way then I agree.

I hope I am wrong but sometimes feel that our hobby hangs on a thin thread since a major terrorist attack on a well known city via a quad copter will change our 'flying lives' forever. Do they really believe that fortified firmware via companies or anti-drone hardware installed in monuments or major buildings will stop this from happening? I think not, it is just a matter of time.

my $0.02 and sorry for the latter, off topic paragraph..

 

[MavicKhan]

I am all for accountability but...

...what if DJI, a Chinese company, messes up their registry system and wrongly provides my identification as the owner of an offending Mavic in a potential massive civil and criminal case?

How am I going to defend myself from a screw-up by a company that speaks another, completely different language and has HQ in halfway across the earth?

All that my local authorities need to know about me is already there, in the records of the store that sold the particular S/n featured in my drone.

MK

 

[stratos]

Get tablet / phone with no Internet connection
Use previous version of app
Never go online / restrict the app to going online.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

I am all for accountability but...

...what if DJI, a Chinese company, messes up their registry system and wrongly provides my identification as the owner of an offending Mavic in a potential massive civil and criminal case?

How am I going to defend myself from a screw-up by a company that speaks another, completely different language and has HQ in halfway across the earth?

All that my local authorities need to know about me is already there, in the records of the store that sold the particular S/n featured in my drone.

MK

Easy to prove with the countless CCTV, your Phone be it Android or IPhone which tracks your every move, Google and FaceBook know where you are pretty much 24/7, any cash machine you withdraw money from, any place you do business and use a credit card.
Use public transport with a tap and go card your travel is logged.
So it can be used to falsely accuse you but at the same time there are numerous other tracking devices in place to give you an alibi.
We have gone too far down the slippery slope of giving up our privacy over the years to ever hope of going back.

 

[gregw]

I actually fly quite a bit with the controller only.

How do you focus the camera with the controller only? C1 for focus doesn't work unless the controller is connected to the phone..

 

[Owen Manderfield]

Amongst all the doom and gloom - maybe a few positives here to redress the balance.

Our hobby faces serious problems at the moment - not only the bad press and scare mongering, but you only have to look at the drone laws in Canada/France and so on. National Parks in the US are banning drones - and flying over sparsely populated arrears of outstanding beauty is (to my mind) the perfect habitat to be using a drone,. Even here in the UK the Forestry Commission in Scotland has banned frying. This is not conjecture or speculation - this is a hard current truth. Speculation is -its going to get worse with more and more places banning drones in a knee-jerk reaction.

Now, in a nutshell - what DJI are doing now and (possibly) doing in the future is simply making drone flying more controllable and accountable. They, quite rightly, perceive that worldwide legislation could easily wipe-out the market for consumer drones in the very near future.

What they are doing is quite forward thinking. They recognise that the fear of drones (in part driven by the small minority of reckless flyers) is what's driving legislation and localised banning of drones. They don't want this - they lose a vey lucrative world leading business.

What they are saying to the law-makers and scare mongers around the world is - "We Recognise your concerns and we are making ever effort to make our drones safe - even if it upsets our users". They also recently made a very public reward offered to catch an irresponsible flyer near a busy airport. They could not be sending a clearer message.

Now, we all want total freedom - but that is a false hope. I want to drive my car at 100+mph without a licence plate wherever I want - but I can't. Nor can anybody and for very good reasons - which we all accept.

Now for the positives I alluded to earlier:

If my DJI drone can be shown to only fly legally, and has failsafe devices fitted which stop it flying where it shouldn't, and the pilot can be held accountable for its actions - then *maybe* certain areas may relax their restrictions. National parks may allow "licenced" drones operated by "qualified "pilots only. Pass a test, use a controlled drone and they will find it harder to put a blanked ban on all flying. We might yet be able to salvage our hobby.

The way this is being done is actually very good. I was very annoyed when I found that here in the UK my transmitter power is limited and I was limited to the 2.5mile range. But - at least when I travel to the US for example I automatically get the 4 miles! The same applies to any other geographical restrictions - we get the best that out *current* location allows. That's very good.

Now, take this a step further. Want to fly over a public space that sometimes hosts events? With real-time NFZ's the area could be open to "licenced" drones and the event organisers could apply for a temporary NFZ for the duration of the event.

Geofencing is very accurate, popular arrears of national parks and monuments could be NFS's but other areas could be made available us.

If drones are constantly giving out their location - then other drones can avoid them - aircraft can be made aware - maybe I could get warning up on my R/C if my Mavic "sees" and search and rescue helicopter flying low nearby.

The police may knock on your door saying somebody has been reported spying on their daughter sunbathing and you have a drone. "No Officer - look at the logs, it proves it wasn't me."

This technology could be made to work for us - not *just* against us. Its not all bad.

Don't get me wrong. If eventually I'm forced to only fly only true VLOS (about 300m in my case with a Mavic) - then is of little use as a photographic tool and I will sadly be forced to leave the hobby. But I don't think it will go that far.

If I'm forced to accept local restrictions, pass a test, register my drone and be accountable - them I'm willing to pay that price if we can still enjoy this hobby. - up to a point

 

[Urbansailor]

Hey guys. This doesn't answer everyone's concerns I know. It doesn't answer all of my concerns either. But with regards to being connected to the internet, I did raise the question with DJI (Europe) about whether we'd have to be connected every time we flew or whether it was just the initial registration after the update and got this response;

Thank you for reaching us regarding this inquiry, We'll be more than glad to help.

With regards on that, DJI will release new versions of the DJI GO 4 and DJI GO apps next week. All customers will need to log into their DJI GO accounts again to complete the application activation process, or else aircraft performance will be limited. To ensure you can use the new DJI GO 4 and DJI GO apps, make sure you stay connected to the Internet after updating and complete the login process.

With your question, You only need to be connected on the first time that you will log in to the DJI GO or DJI GO 4.

So for fellow seafarers out there like myself and world travelers, hopefully that puts our minds at ease somewhat. So if what they say is true, we shouldn't have any issue with regards to no data connection during foreign flights

 

[Aeomer]

It appears in the UK you can override any restrictions, but it has to be a positive action. I see it as a safety catch for me to be absolutely sure I am not in a no-fly area.

 

[MavicKhan]

Amongst all the doom and gloom - maybe a few positives here to redress the balance.

Our hobby faces serious problems at the moment - not only the bad press and scare mongering, but you only have to look at the drone laws in Canada/France and so on. National Parks in the US are banning drones - and flying over sparsely populated arrears of outstanding beauty is (to my mind) the perfect habitat to be using a drone,. Even here in the UK the Forestry Commission in Scotland has banned frying. This is not conjecture or speculation - this is a hard current truth. Speculation is -its going to get worse with more and more places banning drones in a knee-jerk reaction.

Now, in a nutshell - what DJI are doing now and (possibly) doing in the future is simply making drone flying more controllable and accountable. They, quite rightly, perceive that worldwide legislation could easily wipe-out the market for consumer drones in the very near future.

What they are doing is quite forward thinking. They recognise that the fear of drones (in part driven by the small minority of reckless flyers) is what's driving legislation and localised banning of drones. They don't want this - they lose a vey lucrative world leading business.

What they are saying to the law-makers and scare mongers around the world is - "We Recognise your concerns and we are making ever effort to make our drones safe - even if it upsets our users". They also recently made a very public reward offered to catch an irresponsible flyer near a busy airport. They could not be sending a clearer message.

Now, we all want total freedom - but that is a false hope. I want to drive my car at 100+mph without a licence plate wherever I want - but I can't. Nor can anybody and for very good reasons - which we all accept.

Now for the positives I alluded to earlier:

If my DJI drone can be shown to only fly legally, and has failsafe devices fitted which stop it flying where it shouldn't, and the pilot can be held accountable for its actions - then *maybe* certain areas may relax their restrictions. National parks may allow "licenced" drones operated by "qualified "pilots only. Pass a test, use a controlled drone and they will find it harder to put a blanked ban on all flying. We might yet be able to salvage our hobby.

The way this is being done is actually very good. I was very annoyed when I found that here in the UK my transmitter power is limited and I was limited to the 2.5mile range. But - at least when I travel to the US for example I automatically get the 4 miles! The same applies to any other geographical restrictions - we get the best that out *current* location allows. That's very good.

Now, take this a step further. Want to fly over a public space that sometimes hosts events? With real-time NFZ's the area could be open to "licenced" drones and the event organisers could apply for a temporary NFZ for the duration of the event.

Geofencing is very accurate, popular arrears of national parks and monuments could be NFS's but other areas could be made available us.

If drones are constantly giving out their location - then other drones can avoid them - aircraft can be made aware - maybe I could get warning up on my R/C if my Mavic "sees" and search and rescue helicopter flying low nearby.

The police may knock on your door saying somebody has been reported spying on their daughter sunbathing and you have a drone. "No Officer - look at the logs, it proves it wasn't me."

This technology could be made to work for us - not *just* against us. Its not all bad.

Don't get me wrong. If eventually I'm forced to only fly only true VLOS (about 300m in my case with a Mavic) - then is of little use as a photographic tool and I will sadly be forced to leave the hobby. But I don't think it will go that far.

If I'm forced to accept local restrictions, pass a test, register my drone and be accountable - them I'm willing to pay that price if we can still enjoy this hobby. - up to a point

Brilliant, articulated post. Thank you for this.

There's something which I don't agree but I don't have time to address it right now.

I will try to post about it later on.

MK

 

[Ducatij2012]

So I called dji support last night and asked our question regarding this and they said it will not affect us and to be certain we should not update. I think it's as some have said where if you run the update then you'll have to register but without then you'll be fine. I'm currently running .600 programming and don't plan to upgrade. Now mind you, this information is coming from a dji support specialist so let's take it with a grain of salt. I think I'll keep flying in airplane mode on the phone tho

This is the exact same question I just had. I am going to Italy in the coming days for a week and worried if I update there that it will permanently think my drone is in Italy in terms of the limitations it may impose.

 

[Rnl]

Robbyg. again you make sense to me.

 

[Stuart Wood]

Get tablet / phone with no Internet connection
Use previous version of app
Never go online / restrict the app to going online.

Point is that we shouldn't need to do this. If I knew this upfront maybe I would have made a different purchasing decision.

 

[Spanish Flyer]

The restrictions had to come and it might be better to do it through the manufacturer, who is interested in selling more, than from the government who will just render your Mavic useless and even get into trouble with fines and stronger rules.
It is a pity I didn't realize what kind of "toy" I was buying and never gave it a though, but as things progress and people, me included, are aware of the potential power our Mavics have, I can't say I'm sorry to have purchased the device, but surely would doubt to buy it now seeing the way things are developing. We conquered a new world, but now it is becoming more and more complicated to own and fly one; for a start DJI will surely drop their sales whatever they do and for us, the pioneers, lest just see how far the restrictions go. Flying illegaly without following the countries rules and regulations is not in my priority list, but I guess once they get their act straight, we will know what we are up to. (but that will be constantly be changing against the use of the drone).
And avoiding the update I guess it will just be a question of time till we can only use the MV to fly as a paper plane... if that.
DJI is clearly acting against their will, but what else can they do?

Watch this video and make your own decision.

BR,

Spanish Flyer

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