the end of dji?

[cypher007]

weve just been looking at this news in the office about a new drone:

Xiaomi Mi Drone poses price challenge to DJI - BBC News

looks like dji have got some serious competition. I think if id not bought my P3P last month I would have considered this instead. it even looks like it has the same motors as the rev 1 P3.

makes you wonder how much profit dji are making on each drone?

 

[peterepeat69]

Nice good to see healthy competition


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[Meta4]

weve just been looking at this news in the office about a new drone:
looks like dji have got some serious competition. I think if id not bought my P3P last month I would have considered this instead.

You really need to see some specs and a review or two before you decide how great the next crowdfunded concept drone might be.
Xiaomi don't have a drone. They aren't planning to beta test it for a few months yet.
There are no details because there is no drone yet.
Look up Lily, GoPro Karma or Prodrone to see how announced new drones have a habit of not turning up for a long time after they are promised.
Google Cyphy, Zano or Plexidrone for some background on crowdfunded drone concepts that never delivered anything.

I have a feeling that DJI have a bit left yet

 

[syotr]

There have been a lot of Phantom look-a-likes that sold a cheaper prices over the years. None have been game changers. By the time this one is released, DJI will have a new model with different features and will have lowered the price on the P4 to kill the competition. Xioami is a successful company in the electronics business and may sell quite a few of these if they perform well, but it is certainly not the death of DJI.

 

[tcope]

Look up Lily, GoPro Karma or Prodrone to see how announced new drones have a habit of not turning up for a long time after they are promised.
Google Cyphy, Zano or Plexidrone for some background on crowdfunded drone concepts that never delivered anything.

The Lilly makes me laugh. They were accepting pre-orders like a year ago. So far they _claim_ it will be out August 2016. By then it's tech will be about 2 years old. But keeping someone's money for over a year before the product is released?

It's _easy_ to claim you have something new and great. It's another thing to actually deliver.

 

[bryan_m]

The Lilly makes me laugh. They were accepting pre-orders like a year ago. So far they _claim_ it will be out August 2016. By then it's tech will be about 2 years old. But keeping someone's money for over a year before the product is released?

It's _easy_ to claim you have something new and great. It's another thing to actually deliver.

I thought the same thing, also it looks like they used a DJI to do the video at the time and pass it off as actual footage from the Lily. The worst part was the 20min flight time (which I would guess would end up being close to 15mins) using a non-removable battery. You get one flight out on your day hike with no option to bring more charged batteries.

I don't doubt that eventually Xiaomi will have something, they manage to produce products which are knock-offs of other people's things but still they will have the Phantom 3 technology, sort of a whole revision behind DJI. There are a few other competitors with 3DR, Yuneec and Autel but none of them really have the price point or market penetration of DJI. It seems that GoPro can't seem to get their **** together to release a drone or else that might have been an issue. Even Parrot is not a competitor even though they are found everywhere because they are marketed as a toy. This is key, Phantom is the lowest end product line of a professional company, not the highest end product of a toy company.

 

[tcope]

I thought the same thing, also it looks like they used a DJI to do the video at the time and pass it off as actual footage from the Lily. The worst part was the 20min flight time (which I would guess would end up being close to 15mins) using a non-removable battery. You get one flight out on your day hike with no option to bring more charged batteries.

Being water proof is a good idea but there is that huge trade off... non-swappable battery. So me that would be a _huge_ deal breaker. Fly for 15 minutes and then sit around next to a charger for a hour? Not practical. On top of that, no collision avoidance as all the drones have now. So any tree limb, change in altitude, etc. is going to be an issue. Lastly, no monitor.

I don't doubt that eventually Xiaomi will have something, they manage to produce products which are knock-offs of other people's things but still they will have the Phantom 3 technology, sort of a whole revision behind DJI.

I think it will come out as well. So far it seems interesting. However, I think it's difficult for anyone to keep up with DJI. It's _great_ to have the competition though.

 

[bryan_m]

Not practical. On top of that, no collision avoidance as all the drones have now. So any tree limb, change in altitude, etc. is going to be an issue. Lastly, no monitor.

Actually the CEO of 3DR just did a Webinar about their new features and he basically said they aren't doing obstacle avoidance yet because it doesn't really work well yet with the things people tend to hit like thin branches and power lines. He said something like it's not often that someone flies directly into a building. They have a Rewind feature, which I think it uses with the RTH to avoid hitting stuff. Though I'm not sure how well that would work if you don't have much battery left and it tries to follow the previous flight path back.

 

[tcope]

Actually the CEO of 3DR just did a Webinar about their new features and he basically said they aren't doing obstacle avoidance yet because it doesn't really work well yet with the things people tend to hit like thin branches and power lines. He said something like it's not often that someone flies directly into a building. They have a Rewind feature, which I think it uses with the RTH to avoid hitting stuff. Though I'm not sure how well that would work if you don't have much battery left and it tries to follow the previous flight path back.

I'm talking about the Lilly, not the Solo. But I agree, collision avoidance is not very useful. On that subject I think it actually gets a lot of P4 owners into trouble as they think the P4 can't crash into things.

 

[adanac]

I'm not aware of a difference between footage and "actual" footage. I've been in the filmt/tv biz a while and all footage I've seen is, well, footage. I've yet to come across non-actual footage.

 

[Yeager74]

I'm not aware of a difference between footage and "actual" footage. I've been in the filmt/tv biz a while and all footage I've seen is, well, footage. I've yet to come across non-actual footage.

Awesome remark! Luv it! [emoji23][emoji23]


P3P W323B GL300C, APP V.2.7.0, AIRCRAFT V.1.6.40, RC V.1.5.70, AUTOPILOT V3.2A.

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[WetDog]

Xiomi isn't even making the drone. Another Chinese company is.

And the devil is in the details. Lots of ways they can cheap out. 4K video - sure, at some gawdawful slow throughput. Lens quality? Well, sort of.

And likely no software for quite some time, if ever. DJI may shoot itself in the foot one of these days but it doesn't look like anybody else is going to take them down. Remember, it's not really the design that's hard (witness the parade of wanna be vapor drones noted above) - it is the ability to actually mass produce them with enough quality control to not drive everybody to send them back. At a reasonable price.

That is hard, very hard.

 

[mrcrane2u]

End of Dji ? I think not company is to big ,However Customer service might change and the way they treat the purchaser's who buy their products will hopefully change

 

[Bigskyflyer]

I thought the same thing, also it looks like they used a DJI to do the video at the time and pass it off as actual footage from the Lily. The worst part was the 20min flight time (which I would guess would end up being close to 15mins) using a non-removable battery. You get one flight out on your day hike with no option to bring more charged batteries.

I don't doubt that eventually Xiaomi will have something, they manage to produce products which are knock-offs of other people's things but still they will have the Phantom 3 technology, sort of a whole revision behind DJI. There are a few other competitors with 3DR, Yuneec and Autel but none of them really have the price point or market penetration of DJI. It seems that GoPro can't seem to get their **** together to release a drone or else that might have been an issue. Even Parrot is not a competitor even though they are found everywhere because they are marketed as a toy. This is key, Phantom is the lowest end product line of a professional company, not the highest end product of a toy company.

Exactly. The Solo was supposed to be the P3 killer and it didn't even make a dent in the sales of the P3. I got sucked into the hype of the Solo and bought one to have with my P3 Pro. To be honest I was pretty disappointed in the Solo after listening to the hype. I purchased it shortly after it came out and was stuck without a gimbal for several months. Then the satellite lock took forever and the wi fi connectivity is far inferior to lightbridge. On top of all of that with the go pro it cost $600.00 more than my P3 at the time. So I sold the Solo and purchased another P3 Pro and haven't looked back. The Solo has actually turned out to be a pretty good bird but the damage that 3DR did to themselves with the poor roll out and the price point proved to be more than they could overcome, that is unfortunate because true competition actually benefits us all. Other than a few really die hard 3dr people the Solo turned out to be somewhat of a failure.

 

[soks]

it will take time but eventually DJI will have some competition...that would be good for us.
Lower prices and maybe better Customer Care (!!).

 

[flyNfrank]

Competitor drone's will need to also include a light bridge to be comparable with the Phantom 3&4 series. Until that ever happens there wont be any competition worth mentioning.

 

[soks]

or make their own technology to compete with lightbridge.
WIFI is not in the same league even.

 

[mrcrane2u]

Autel has lightbridge

 

[N017RW]

Autel has lightbridge

Where do you find this info?
It must be some type of hybrid as Autel's video downlink operates at 900 MHz and is separate from the 5.8GHz uplink.
This is a marked difference in operation where LB does up & downlink on 2.4 GHz.

 

[WetDog]

Where do you find this info?
It must be some type of hybrid as Autel's video downlink operates at 900 MHz and is separate from the 5.8GHz uplink.
This is a marked difference in operation where LB does up & downlink on 2.4 GHz.

That's a weird combo. 900 mHz is a good video downlink frequency with the major disadvantage of larger antennas. 5.8 GHz gets around water absorption a tad but is more susceptible to interference. It is in the ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical band and so there can be other more powerful transmitters roaming about as well (same as 2.4 GHz). Maybe the control signal can handle degradation better than video. It would be easier to put error correction on a control frequency with lower information density than on a video downlink.