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US ban on DJI drones

RamSchulz

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Hallo!

I am just curious - how is this affecting your business in the US?

Are people selling their DJI drones cheap now?

Do you have an honest alternative when looking at price and performance - are the US drone developers blooming now?

Thanks in advance - from DK
 
I am just curious - how is this affecting your business in the US?
It's only a thing for US government departments, not private flyers.
Most are still using their DJI drones.
Do you have an honest alternative when looking at price and performance - are the US drone developers blooming now?
There are some large and expensive machines, but nothing to compete with DJI's performance and price in the smaller drones.
 
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Funny thing is the USAF has a procurement bid for 57 Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual with Fly more kits, found that last week when looking at some .gov contacts. I Imagine they are using the SDK to write their own software. Isn't the "Blue Drones" for the US Department of Interior all all .gov agencies?
 
My 3-year, $1,200/month contract got canceled in year 2 with a contractor that got spooked with the negative DJI news. They recommended an alternative drone (that I refused to buy) that was...... "made in China".

Question: has anyone seen irrefutable evidence that DJI units were sending data back to the motherland? Has this been tested and documented?? Is it available to the public?? How did this rumor get started? Could you not also say the same for any drone whose internal circuitry is made in China???
 
My 3-year, $1,200/month contract got canceled in year 2 with a contractor that got spooked with the negative DJI news. They recommended an alternative drone (that I refused to buy) that was...... "made in China".

Question: has anyone seen irrefutable evidence that DJI units were sending data back to the motherland? Has this been tested and documented?? Is it available to the public?? How did this rumor get started? Could you not also say the same for any drone whose internal circuitry is made in China???
Such a ban only makes any sense if its coupled with the same ban on any phone with a camera that's made in China. I completely fail to understand this bizarre and pervasive US issue with China.
 
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Such a ban only makes any sense if its coupled with the same ban on any phone with a camera that's made in China. I completely fail to understand this bizarre and pervasive US issue with China.
This is a sour subject in my opinion. Totally unfounded in a logical manor, all political and marketing alignment.

If any worth to this concern, we'd have NO cellular operations. The majority of phones, tablets, TV, WiFi, etc all containing or built with Chinese components.

Drones are actively "On" 2-5 batteries worth per day and probably safe to say on avg 2-3 times a week. In comparison, phones are 24x7 and most other electronics higher "on" time than drones. On a density side, the number of drones and the number active "On" barely budge the needle compared to the cellular phones and other electronics.

If you consider the travels of millions of people in daily lives, touring, etc... the buildings and locations filmed & uploaded provide a much higher amount of "data" to a Chinese collection system. The zones drones can even fly is limited, and the majority of consumer drones have wide FOV lenses providing minimal data detail compared to what a country can obtain via coordinated satellite images.

The claims of data mining I don't believe has been proven. Yes, they have shown DJI collects product data... but so does practically every phone cellular device. Ever left a store and have phone pop up a message asking how you rate the store... hmm, data tracking.

This attack is more political and big business aligning their desired outcome. This is similar to the unfounded attack on Kaspersky Anti-virus products and the mandate to remove from all Fed Govt systems... never 1 factual piece of evidence, just political and attempt to use and control a few outcomes.

DJI may have good competition for smaller consumer drones. But Ag drones, large specialty platforms, their competition is massively higher cost and not as functional without higher training. As example, The M300 and recent payloads... L1 - a Lidar / RGB system, P1, H20T. An integrated Lidar RGB on a weather tollerant, RTK platform isn't available and if it was, would be above $80k just for the Lidar, probably $200k for full platform kit.

The focus is big business and BVLS... and that damages the smaller shops and serious hobbyist. I also get a chuckle from a few USA drones, and their "assembled in usa" but still obtain Chinese components. Blind controversy!
DJI has Inventory warehouses and Service Centers in USA... so if they convert a few warehouses to assembly plants... they too become "assembled in usa".
 
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