Hottest tech Product Of The Year needs a Teardown: The DJI Mavic Pro Drone.

[Dread]

I am wondering if the DJI Mavic has been on Dave's Radar.
Guys on the Net are saying that The Mavic uses Alien Technology  that it's stolen Military Tech 
All I know is that it is the iPhone revolution of Drone field.  It makes every other drone in it's price class look like something from the 90's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1d_ptE6yrc


There is a teardown video of it on iFixit and another more detailed one done by someone with limited skills and poor camera quality.  I would love to see Dave tear down the 24 Core mini power house and explain everything that is going on.  One thing is certain, it will be a very popular video and Dave will have himself one hell of a drone.

Things that amaze people.

How did they Cram such a powerful and fast drone into something that can fold up and fit in your Pants pocket.
How does it hover so precisely.
How did they get 27 Minutes of battery Life.
How can it fly 4.3 miles from the pilot, what is the RF power output like.
How does it take such great 4K video and photos.
Why is it just so dam perfect at doing just about everything and yet the price is so reasonable.

Dave please get one and tear it down.

Robert

[cowana]

Guys on the Net are saying that The Mavic uses Alien Technology  that it's stolen Military Tech 

I'm not sure what element they're referring to, but there's nothing in that video which is particularly new - it's just a neat implementation of a bunch of existing technologies.

The video was trying to make things sound significantly more complex than they actually are - 'connects with up to 20 satellites' is just referring to one of the dozen standard GPS/GLONASS receivers that are in every single smartphone.

In addition, ultrasonic ground measurement (for terrain tracking and auto landing) is something that has been done by hobbiests making their own multicopters for years.

How did they Cram such a powerful and fast drone into something that can fold up and fit in your Pants pocket.
How does it hover so precisely.

Flight performance looks to be fairly comparable to existing well designed hobby drones - the secret is having a lightweight design, good sensor fusion from at least 9 axis of sensor data (more with redundancy/averaging), and very well tuned control loops. Modern brushless motors and lithium batteries give pretty amazing power to weight ratios.

How can it fly 4.3 miles from the pilot, what is the RF power output like.

When you're dealing with line of sight signals, range is fairly easy to come by. Likely 100mW of RF or so is easily enough for a 4 mile link LOS.

How does it take such great 4K video and photos.

Cameras and optics developed for mobile phones are very small, lightweight, and 4k video is becoming much more common. Thus it's a fairly simple adaptation to port one of these to a small camera (such as all the 4k action cameras being released at the moment).

[XynxNet]

Looks nice. Unfortunately it still seems to be half vaporware. Availability in germany is near zero. Somebody really fucked up their christmas sale.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Some details here - looks like their own custom motor controllers

[Dread]

Mike there seems to be a lot of custom controllers and also some highly patented design areas in the electronics and mechanics.  Things like the spring loaded rotating shock absorbing rotor struts. 

The Mavic operate in the 5Ghz range with separate bands for the EU and USA in the USA it puts out 1W of power, in the EU less.  It's memory contains a complete list country regs and no fly zones.  You can put in your pocket and fly it in one location and then move a mile closer to a national park and the drone will not fly unless you get a bypass code from DJI online. It will warn you when your flying in to restricted airspace and tell you the restriction level.  Take the Mavic from the USA to UK on a plane and when you get to the UK the power output will drop to UK regulatory levels.

The Mavic can fly autonomously for Km out of the controllers range by programming in way points on the apps map.   It will get to a way point and do whatever you program it to do. Like a slow Pan of Camera or circle a monument while keeping the camera pointed at it and when it's done it will move to the next Way point and continue until it reaches back home.  If anything happens during any mode of flight it will return to home following it's original course or a direct line by first going to a safe altitude that you can set.

The really beauty of this drone is the electronics that keep it so stable.  A few EE have already looked at it and said that the technology involved is a few years beyond anything they expected to see in a consumer drone.

[Dread]

Looks nice. Unfortunately it still seems to be half vaporware. Availability in germany is near zero. Somebody really fucked up their christmas sale.

They just shipped their 1 millionth Mavic drone this week!  That's one million sold in 3 months.

[kaz911]

Looks nice. Unfortunately it still seems to be half vaporware. Availability in germany is near zero. Somebody really fucked up their christmas sale.

They just shipped their 1 millionth Mavic drone this week!  That's one million sold in 3 months.

no - not 1 million shipped but I think they received 1 ml. orders. Many customers have ordered multiple places - and those who ordered through dealers - still have not gotten the ones they ordered at launch.

DJI made the derision to f*ck their dealers and prioritise direct orders. So they are only drip-feeding supply to dealers while they hope customers will order direct - and then cancel the dealer order as they make a lot more money selling direct.

So in a month or two - when all the dealer pre-orders lands - which many of the dealers have PRE-PAID for (and not gotten)  - the price on the Mavic Pro's will PLUMET as the dealers will be forced to sell fast to recoup SOME of their money. I think a LOT of dealers might actually go bankrupt due to the way DJI have treated the dealers. (Some dealers have 500+ units on order and have so far maybe received 10-50 - and prepaid for 500+)

I had an order in with a dealer - when I cancelled with them - around Jan 9th - they had not received a SINGLE Mavic Pro. And they are not a small dealer.

Now if you order online - you might get it within 7-10 business days if you are in Europe and 5-7 if you are in Asia/US. But many who even ordered DIRECT with DJI in Oct/Nov/Dec - still have not received their drones. Word is it is better to cancel the old order and re-order than to wait for their old order to be delivered.

it is a mess of DJI's own doing - and I doubt they will have many happy dealers left after this debacle.