The private drone industry is like Apple in 1984

[xchrom]

http://qz.com/46893/the-private-drone-industry-is-like-apple-in-1984/

?w=880
The Phantom UAV in flight. RedRocketHobbies.com

ou never forget your first drone.

When the Phantom first takes off, it sounds like a swarm of bees. But when it rockets 200 feet into the air at 25 miles per hour, you can’t hear it at all. It’s just a small dot with blinking lights, waiting where you tell it to wait, taking pictures with its camera until you ask it to come back home.

When the chief executive of DJI’s American subsidiary, Colin Guinn, came to Los Angeles to sell film studios on his company’s professional-grade unmanned aerial vehicles, he also let Quartz test-drive the company’s newest product: the Phantom, a remote-controlled quadcopter with a camera mount that you can essentially fly right out of the box. It sold some 2,000 units in the first week after its Jan. 7 debut, according to Guinn. Here’s a video that shows what it’s like to fly:

[2on2u]

1. I would hope the programming is such that if the controller fails, runs out of battery

whatever that the unit returns back to where it was launched from. One would think that they have thought this far into it.

[Fumesucker]

3. Here's a thread on quadrotor safety

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144377

Some of the pictures a couple of pages in are fairly graphic.

[2on2u]

5. I can see why these are recommended now....

?d=1263480560

[2on2u]

7. I noticed they are using, hope I spell this right.. quaduino? processors/chips/stamp assemblies

to run the quads.... if you are familiar with them or if you aren't, here is a link to the Arduino stamp that they probably have hacked to get the quaduino.... maybe they are using a pack of four arduinos... haven't read that far into it yet.

www.arduino.cc

[Fumesucker]

8. There's quite a few different boards, all the way down to largish postage stamp size

This is the Quadrino, a custom arduino board designed for quadrotors, in addition you would need a radio receiver and a speed control for however many motors you're going to use (2 through 8).



And this is a board out of a "toy" quadrotor, this is the entire electronics package, three gyros, receiver, four speed controllers and microprocessor.

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Omnipotence is great, whats behind the eyes viewing it...

and can we pinpoint what the goals and intentions of the viewers are ?

[brush]

4. We're all screwed

Privacy is so out of the window.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. I trust the creativity of Americans

in their response to the increasing use of snoopy drones.
Wait and see....