cosermann, good points. I will start another thread so as not to much up this one.
cosermann, good points. I will start another thread so as not to much up this one.
Advice
Don’t fly it over CraigS’s house
Originally Posted by LittleLebowski
Eldest LittleLebowskiUrbanAchiever needs rewarding. Is there an easy to use, somewhat durable drone for say $500 and below? I was looking at refurbished DJI Mini 3s on eBay.
And the Lebowski family is NOT adept with video game controls (ask me why), we’ve killed two older DJIs and pretty quickly, tooI've been satisfied with my DJI Mini2. I chose it over the Mini 3 for 3rd party software support (Litchi) that gives it the ability to fly pre-planned missions. To the best of my knowledge DJI has not released the SDK that would allow this capability to be extended to the 3 series. The 3 has obstacle avoidance capability, which the 2 lacks. I'm fairly confident that it can be defeated by a determined drone destroyer however. The 3 also has a better camera, but the one on the 2 is no slouch. Whatever you get, you'll want several batteries and a charger. At the sub-$500 price point there are combo MIni 2 packages available from Amazon, Costco, et al. Plan to spend a couple hundo more if you want a dedicated controller rather than one that uses your phone for its brain.
FPV flying is tricky, somewhat less so if you're intentionally trying to break things and hurt people. This is where obstacle avoidance capability would be useful. I would highly reccomend thoroughly familiarizing with control input and response in all orientations before flying near obstacles or by reference to the camera display. Getting the left-right inputs sorted when the drone's orientation shifts 180 degrees takes a little time. A $100 toy-grade unit might not be a bad investment as a trainer. I had a Ryze Tello that was pretty durable before I finally figured out how to kill it. It has a rudimentary camera and uses your phone as its controller.
Last edited by JCL; 05-15-2023 at 01:20 PM.
Just in case he wasn't joking, you might want to let him know he could lose his career and his non-felon status over such shenanigans. "It was spying on me", "it was on my property", "it made me uncomfortable", "I have 'no trespassing' signs", "I'm an LEO", or other such attempted justifications are legally irrelevant. See 18 USC 32.
I cannot seem to find the story, but there was some guy having trouble with a neighbor's drone spying on his wife and daughter at their pool at low levels, like 10-12' above their pool. He was not sure who the operator was. So he made a sort of net using very light monofilament 6# fishing line, when I say net it was like 18" squares, not a tight net. Then he more or less put it up about 25-30' in the air using party store helium balloons, having the base anchored to his palisades fence around the pool. It fouled his unknown neighbor's drone big time.
If I recall correctly, nobody came to claim the drone.
Doubt that is all legal and such but I thought it was very clever for the problem at hand.
Resurrecting this thread because I'm looking for a drone.
Curious what LL got and if he has been happy with it?
Anyway, I'm interested in getting one. I'm looking at 'DJI Mini 2 SE' or 'DJI Mini 3 Pro' or similar (Autel??).
No particular application, just curious. Kinda have the sense buying a cheap one is tuition before getting something fancier. We have rural property with nearest neighbor a mile away. The closest I'd have to an actual use is that we have a bunch of cliffs, and it would be fun to look at some of the inaccessible parts of those (which sounds dangerous for a drone?).
The Mini 2 is halfish the price of the Mini 3, with a slightly worse camera and no obstacle avoidance. One argument is 'get the cheap one since you'll do something beginner dumb and break it', and breaking cheap(er) things is better than breaking expensive things. OTOH if obstacle avoidance makes it less than half as likely you break it, that would be a win. Advice?
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The Litchi planned route stuff is interesting. How does that fit with the (IIUC) 'must have visual contact' rule?
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Dunno if the noise varies between models, but e.g. peeking at the waterholes that critters frequent would be fun, but sure don't want to be scaring the wildlife.
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My first inclination is to go with the controller with built in screen, but those don't support maps et al. What are the other attached phone (or android tablet??) vs built in screen tradeoffs? The tablet would give you a bigger screen, the phone smaller. Any other things to consider?
Oh, thought of another question: when googling, I found one page that seems to say that DJI tries to keep you out of trouble by enforcing an altitude restriction of ??500?? ft, but that it isn't 500 ft AGL, it's 500 ft above the takeoff point. This would mean you couldn't fly a path that's 100 ft AGL up a 1000 ft mountain. Which happens to describe where I'd be flying it :-). Is this right? I saw references to jailbreaking that restriction as well, which I presume is legal as long as you don't violate the FAA regs, which I presume are height AGL?
(should also ask, is there a better place? A P-F for drones?)
The Mini 2 SE is more than sufficient for general recreation/flying around/learning. You identified a most of the Mini 3’s advantages (obstacle avoidance and camera) but unless you’re a photo quality snob, you’re probably not going to notice much difference in the 2. The main advantage of the Mini 3’s obstacle avoidance is if you plan to use of the “follow me” modes (like following a bike or an ATV), and even then, I’m leery of trusting it.
From what I understand, you will gain a little bit of wind resistance moving from the 2 to 3, but once again, it’s not a dramatic improvement. I really only notice the difference between my original Mini and my larger drones if the wind speed exceeds 15ish kts.
Either drone would be fine flying around cliffs, in a pinch I’ve used my Mini to inspect landslides, etc, you just need to be able to keep LOS. Finally, while neither drone really suited for it, the 2’s ability to use Litchi can’t be overstated, if you want to play around and practice mapping or stuff like that.
One thing to keep in mind, there is currently some potential federal legislation to ban DJI/Autel from all domestic use (instead of the current ban on use by most Fed agencies). I don’t think it’s a done deal, but it’s a possibility in the current legislative climate
Thanks for the other info!
About a ban, yikes! It seems like there would be a lot of pushback there.
Are there any non-Chinese consumer drones?
Well… The short answer is “no”.
The long answer is that the majority of non-Chinese UAS companies have exited the consumer market to focus on enterprise/public sector companies, as DJI out-competed them in both price and, honestly, quality (at least in the consumer level drones).
Currently the ban legislation (HR 2864) is still in committee, and like I said, it’s probably got a 50% or less chance of passage.
Off-topic: There are definitely some valid concerns about DJI’s ties to the Chinese government, and I would never recommend their use for anything even remotely “sensitive” or national security related. That said, the technical threat is probably a little exaggerated. It is also interesting to note that the legislative director for DJI’s main U.S. competitor (Skydio) is a former staffer for the bill’s sponsor (Rep. Stefanik). Take that for what you will…
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