For a long time DJI has sort of forgotten the commercial market, apart from filmmakers.
With the announcement of the DJI A3, however, it is offering a very compelling product.
Here is a list of features I think are important for the commercial market:
- Triple redundancy, both in GPS and IMUs. Pixhawk won't arm if IMUs mismatch, but if one fails in flight how do you know which reading is correct? (I would like to see some CPU fault tolerance since NAZAs have been known to freeze causing crashes)
- Motor fail tolerance. I am guessing this also has a lot to do with ESCs that actually give feedback to the Flight Controller as opposed to only reading a PWM input.
- RTK GPS support (this one is already supported on Pixhawk so I guess Pixhawk wins the battle here, but we'll see how well it works)
- Lightbridge 2. High bandwidth, low latency, digital communication. (I don't know why they are also offering Datalink Pro with <1Ghz frequency when Lightbridge is so advanced already.)
- Ground station support. (This one is a must, but was almost forgotten with the A2 and the outdated DJI Ground Station for windows and iPad.)
Now I am in now way affiliated with DJI and I am actually a supporter of Dronecode and Open Source in general.
However, this announcement makes me rethink whether Dronecode based drones will continue to be the best option for any business operating drones.
I, personally, have been using a Phantom 2 for surveying for 2 years now and have sold mods of it for surveying work and they have worked great (not that I had problems on the Pixhawks either). But I think the refinement and ease of use will be really compelling for anyone except the OS fans like us.
Now, of course the main thing going on for Dronecode and 3DR, and the reason I won't buy another Phantom, is the versatility of Open Source based drones. But if (big IF) DJI gets a decent SDK they might be a very solid option even for people with custom needs.
I am sure we will see some serious competition soon between 3DR and DJI which I think will benefit everyone, 3DR will have to keep up with the relentless upgrade path DJI is taking right now. I would be quite nervous if I were 3DR, since matching the technology used in DJI products will require vasts amount of time and money (the Lightbdridge alone is quite remarkable with OFDM) and they don't have the super profitable consumer products DJI has.
I do wish they'll keep up since they (together with this community) make the drones I've had the best time developing with.
Comments
Are those phantoms or just white quads because all recent phantoms (2+ on) are actually UNABLE to fly within the airfield crt (5-10K) due to having build in no fly zones.
So, especially phantoms cannot be responsible for that, the moment they have a GPS lock and inside the airfield crt they will land and shut down.
never had an A2, but naza v1 lite my cousin has (for a few years now) never sagged neither on 450 quad, nor on 780 hexa nor or 580 quad we've built using totally different motors/escs, frames and props combinations... really.. as much as I like my pixhawks DJI fixed the issue in software, as even naked with a piece of foam on-top of the baro I do not recall it having any issues. After talking to a few people who fly vectors, they do not recall their quads sagging during fast forward flight...
Artem the A2 i had a while ago was sagging as wel.
It is a known problem and there is no easy fix that works for every custom machine/configuration out there.
but they do make great flight controllers.... even the stupidest naza v1 will fly straight level while pixhawk will "sag" about a meter every 30-40 meters depending on how fast you go... that's a great shame that our community still haven't figured out how to fix this issue.... things like that an luck of thought through accessory collection is what got the platform out of the professional AP business.
DJI is drone drone is DJI,
The toy Phantom, brings all comercial drones area in a very bad light.
Drone aircraft nearly collided about 90% of a DJI Phantom
DJI is trying to counter 3DRs move to Commercial
DroneCode will do just fine against them
Hello Thomas, thank you for your interest. I don't know if I understood your comment correctly
I didn't post a link to the Phantom 2 mods since I didn't think they were relevant to the article. You can find some infos here, but it's only in spanish http://zcopters.com/drones-para-topografia/
hi, there has nothing details about your advertising products.
you should post link to track your advocate merchandise.
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