Category Archives: Drones

Feeling frustrated with the drone industry

When I bought my DJI Air 2, DJI publicly said they anticipated offering firmware updates to support the future Remote ID requirements.

UPDATE: On July 1, 2023, DJI said they will update the firmware in the Air 2. What I read said this should be expected by Sep 30, 2023 – although another person told me, he understood the update might come later. Regardless, this is great news – DJI will update the Air 2 at some point.

But they have only updated the drones that are still sold. The Air 2 was replaced by the Air 2S shortly after I bought my Air 2 – DJI updated the 2S firmware but others say DJI support told them they will not be updating the Air 2 firmware to support Remote ID.

A 3rd party Remote ID module currently costs over $200. I doubt we will see large price cuts as there will be initial high demand for Remote ID modules. By 2024, the prices should be coming down.

I also have a Hubsan Zino Mini SE. In April of 2020, Hubsan announced all U.S. sales would transition to EXO Drones, basically a retail startup based in Utah – and Hubsan would discontinue all sales of Hubsan branded products in the U.S.

In August, EXO was itself purchased by another company.

EXO seems to relabel Hubsan drones as EXO drones at higher prices. Exact same product only priced hundreds of dollars more. If you visit the Hubsan web site from the U.S., every product says it is not available. If you want a Hubsan product, you have to purchase the higher priced re-labeled EXO drone.

Meawnhile, support for Hubsan products in the U.S. vanished. I have not seen a drone firmware update since late 2022. Yet from the drone forums, owners of the same drone, but in other countries, have continued to receive software updates – as recently as June of 2023.

From Bing Chat bot: “According to my search results, Hubsan has stopped providing firmware updates for its drones to US customers1. Unfortunately, I could not find more information on why this decision was made or if it is a temporary or permanent change.”

Hubsan had a reputation for fixing things in their updates, while simultaneously breaking something new. Consequently, you needed to check user reports before installing an update – and wait for the next update to fix what they just broke!

But now we have drones that are stuck in time.

Hubsan has had a long reputation of poor customer service, apparently. Hiding it behind an EXO brand veneer does not seem to have solved their problems. Today, their website shows most drones and parts “out of stock”. Amazing.

Hubsan and EXO abandoned their U.S. customers. Online forum comments suggest EXO misrepresents what they do, claiming to be designing drones that are better than DJI – but is actually just a sales rep for Hubsan – at higher prices. They also claim to offer a free Part 107 licensing course if you buy an EXO drone – but many report it’s free, only if you sign up for an annual EXO subscription service. You don’t find that out until the end of the purchase process.

There are not many alternatives to DJI drones – Skydio is very expensive. Perhaps Autel is fine.

For now, I will probably stick with DJI as the only viable option. Will definitely not consider Hubsan/EXO drones in the future – and I’ve had other lesser known brands that had poor quality and short product life.

I also had some older Yuneec drones. The little Yuneec Breeze was fun to fly – but was plagued by software problems. Each time I changed the battery, I had to do a full system reset, and use my computer to re-enter configuration info. Eventually, the Breeze had a “fly away”. It was hovering just fine over my driveway and I slowly commanded it to fly – but instead it shot up and then reversed 180 degrees and flew at full speed into my garage roof. The log file indicated the software had stored an incorrect starting lat/long – and it appeared it had decided to reposition itself, without warning. Anyway, the Breeze died from that impact. There were many online reports from other users who also experienced the “fly away” problem.

I also have a Yuneec Q500, bought used. Unfortunately, even with new batteries, flight time is just 8-10 minutes. It too had a drift off course scenario. I was flying in my yard (I have a large lot) and things were going fine until it began to drift (slowly) towards my house and would not respond to any directional controls – except up and down. I proceeded to drop it down where it drifted slowly into a brick wall, breaking the replaceable props. There is a possibility that it had encountered Wi-Fi interference. The Q500 still flies but I will now only fly it in a remote location.

Drones: 2 Congressional reps introduce bill that would largely ban DJI drone use in the U.S.

This proposed law appears to be a round about way to ban the use of DJI drones in the U.S. – by banning them from connecting to U.S. communications infrastructure.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) introduced the Countering CCP Drones Act, legislation that would add Chinese drone company Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI) to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Covered List, meaning that DJI technologies would be prohibited from operating on U.S. communications infrastructure.

Source: Stefanik, Gallagher Introduce Legislation to Counter Chinese Drones | Press Releases | Congresswoman Elise Stefanik

Prep’ing for more drone regulations: “Senators alarmed over potential Chinese drone spy threat”

Lawmakers who were briefed on hundreds of intrusions over the White House, Capitol and Pentagon worry about possible espionage.

Source: Senators alarmed over potential Chinese drone spy threat – POLITICO

In the past week or so, there have been multiple mass murder incidents (Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Virginia) involving guns or knives. Rather than address that, Congress and DHS would prefer to generate lots of fear over toy RC model aircraft.

This is prep work to have DHS (the power behind the FAA) write more restrictive drone regulations.

Even though they acknowledge there has been no actual threats – they use the monster under the bed approach to explain they are afraid. If we can imagine a threat, then we must be very scared.

They also come as Congress debates extending current federal authorities and adopting new ones to track the aerial vehicles as potential security threats.

….

“There’s YouTube videos that could walk your grandparents through how to update the software on one of these drones to be non-detectable and to do a whole lot of other things — get rid of elevation ceilings, all kinds of stuff,” said a government contractor who has helped to collect the data for federal authorities. “If you were to go buy a DJI drone at the store, it wouldn’t fly over airports or specific cities because of a specific no-fly zone. So, anything that we see in DC that is a DJI-manufactured product has been hacked or manipulated to enable flight in these zones.”

You can see where this is going – they will again propose to ban the sale of RC aircraft that can be modified – and likely resurrect their attempt to ban homemade RC aircraft altogether (which was part of the original proposal from December 2019). It will not stop actual threat actors – they can still build their own aircraft as has been done for 90 years!

Further, am guessing they will eventually propose that anyone flying a drone >250 grams end up with the equivalent of an FAA remote pilot license for all flights outside FAA sanctioned airfields.

All flights outside sanctioned airfields are already required to have remote ID (as of Sep 2023) – and the FAA is working with a third party to develop remote ID monitoring systems that will track everything in the air around all cities.

These news stories about “Congress briefed on intrusions”, or people in Europe arrested for flying drones over the incredibly remote Svalbard Island (must be Russian intelligence) – are groundwork propaganda to prepare for the next round of regulations. There will be more stories like this. You may remember those stories back in 2018-2019 of drones going to cause air disasters? Those disasters did not happen and haven’t happened since the new rules were enacted – but those rules are not yet in effect! – and nearly all scary drone stories vanished from the news.

But now we are back – not with scary air disaster scenarios but now it’s nebulous scary national security threats.

UPDATE: The “Russian flying drones over Svalbard” story has an update – the individual has been acquitted of all charges. There was never anything illegal going on. But there is almost no follow up to the original scary news reports? See how propaganda works? Publish the scary headline accusations but never follow up with the retraction.

We see where this is going:

  • New regulations will be introduced requiring the FAA to track all drone flights using the Remote ID system, and a network of receivers throughout the country. It’ll be ADSB but for model aircraft. This is back to the original proposal – but shifts network tracking from end users to the network itself (where it properly belongs).
  • Homemade model aircraft will be banned – except for use at FAA sanctioned approved model airfields. This is what was proposed by the FAA in their original remote ID rules. In fact, the original proposal said it would gradually fade out approved airfields such that eventually, no homemade model aircraft could be flown anywhere in the U.S. While that was removed from the final rule, this line of thinking has probably returned.
  • Am guessing Congress will eventually require a drone pilot’s license in addition to the remote ID network. This is a guess but it’s the kind of thinking that goes on in Congress.

Update: In a related move FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat | Federal Communications Commission (refers to communications and camera containing gear designed and manufactured by selected companies in China)

Guessing will see a new round of drone regulations: “‘Swarm’ of drones spotted flying above UK nuclear plant”

In 2019, in the lead up to the FAA’s proposed rules on R/C model aircraft, the media ran frequent scary stories about drone sightings (many of which were not even real). The stories were so frequent, and so often wrong or left out critical details – that they seemed to have been a coordinated public relations campaign by those wanting to regulate model aircraft.

The result was Homeland Security wrote the FAA’s proposed rules, largely based on an assumption that anyone flying an R/C model aircraft is a terrorist (the hobby has been around since the 1930s…)

The sighting was one of two in the space of four days.

Source: ‘Swarm’ of drones spotted flying above UK nuclear plant

Now we have recent reports of “Russians” allegedly flying drones on the Svalbard Island, and in northern Norway. Then this – 11 reports over almost 36 months of drones near or over nuclear facilities in the UK.

The US rules on mandatory remote identification of newly sold drones takes effect in December (postponed from September due to technology delays). All new drones must broadcast their position and owner information. By fall of 2023, all drones and most RC model aircraft – must broadcast their position, or no longer be flown except at FAA approved airfields.