Drones to Plowshares
My husband has been playing ARC Raiders with his friends for a few weeks now. Part of the gameplay involves ground combat against armed drones. It makes sense because it's a "future gone bad" flavored FPS. You have to go search for scrap and components to build weapons and armor and all that. He loves it.
We bought a drone back in 2014 from a company called 3DR. This wasn't a little one either. It was big, heavy and came in a backpack with huge batteries and let you mount a camera to the bottom. It could self stabilize, auto return home, and had a camera gimbal. The thing was also terrifying, at 18 inches wide and 4 pounds it was not the best option for a first time drone. The props didn't have guards and were by no means small so if it crashed or flew into something damage was guaranteed.
At the time, there weren't super strict FAA regulations on personal drones. A drone doesn't need to be registered if its under 250 grams (About half a pound.) which is typical for the hobby market of 5 inch and racing/freestyle models of today. The 3DR company went under a year later after the influx of cheap toy drones and the dominance of DJI in the drone market.
The reason he bought the 3DR drone was because the thing was made in the US. We all know how expensive and impossible that is to do today. Even ten years ago they couldn't possibly compete with DJI on cost. The majority of consumers were using drones for aerial photography like land surveys and event videos. DJI was on the shelves at BestBuy and parts and support were easy to get.
Ten years later his old 3DR drone has batteries that are too old to safely charge or operate, and the software used to run the screen/drone is out of date and won't work since the app is no longer supported on the various app stores. It would take a quite a bit of effort to get it back into the air and even then, without fully supported software for communicating to the device it wouldn't be safe to fly given it's size.
We do have a tiny DJI drone he got a few years ago, he doesn't fly it much, just around the house to look at things. A year ago there was a big fire in a pasture across the road from us so he flew over it to see how far it went after it was put out. Other than just looking around we don't have much use for a drone.
But back to my point. Seeing him play a videogame with drone warfare and all that got me wondering what was going on in the consumer drone market. A quick google led me down a rabbit hole of very tiny drones used to race around obstacles and stuff.
Because the FAA has that rule where drones over 250g need to be registered, almost all of the fun hobby drones are around 249g or less. Anyone can fly one and because they are so small and use such little batteries you would lose connection to it if you tried to fly it too far up or away from you.
There is this thing called FPV drones where the camera on the drone connects to a screen to show you where you are going. Folks use fancy headsets that look like an Oculus to make their drone flying more like a first person game. (You can use an Oculus to do this too with the right hardware.)
But folks use these little bitty drones to fly around obstacle courses and race each other in contained areas for fun. Kind of like pod racing IRL. You can find youtube videos of these little guys and unlike the ultra 4K HD video you see from gopro footage or cinematic drones these have little analog cameras. (Lag = crash and these little ones are fragile) This gives a faster response time to the person operating the drone but also makes the footage look like you are flying around in a 90's skate video.
Now, the majority of these drone parts and components are made in China just like the majority of electronic components in anything. A handful of places fab their own boards and such and if I were a military contractor or law enforcement that's who I would go to for parts and drones. As of October of last year DJI equipment can't be used for those applications due to security risks.
Because hobby race drones only last 3 minutes per full battery charge and are the size of a hamburger they aren't going to be that much of a personal security risk for most users. But it would be nice to be able to create an affordable hobby drone company that could compete for everyday users. It seems like the only option for a US made drone company is to invest so much in production that ultimately only the government can afford to buy their stuff.
I mean, look how cool the goggles look:
When I say tiny I mean tiny (not my pic):
Anyway, I need to start sorting Avatar cards so I can get them in TCG Player by tomorrow at midnight.