[blhack]

Wow, very cool! As others have pointed out, being under the weight limit set by the FAA is basically THE selling point.

Ethical question: are DJI the good guys here working within the rules set out of the FAA, or are they running afoul of the spirit but staying within the letter?

[post_break]

This is how all laws work though. Rifle minimum barrel is 16" so they make 16" barrels. Wifi can only put out X watts max, they put out the maximum by law. There are no ethics in following a laws minimum or maximum.

[cookiecaper]

It's a great reason to exercise caution when setting up rules and definitions. Whatever distinction gets established, however arbitrary, casts a tint on everything else on either side of it, for better or worse.

This is true even in things as routine daily chit-chat and conversation. Think about how often tacitly express your opinion through the way you frame a discussion and how often those environmental cues bias other parties to respond in particular ways. Then, consider how often marketers, salespeople, and other manipulators intentionally frame interactions to provoke a specific biased response.

The light touch and the small nudge are grossly undervalued.

[roywiggins]

I'll just note that laws and regulations can get struck down for vagueness. If there's no hard rule about what kind of drones are regulated how, then it becomes more burdensome- or even impossible- to know whether you're complying with the law.

[Scoundreller]

Or the law is perfectly clear, but the police and prosecutors pick and choose which cases they put forward.

Or the intensity of enforcement varies in the first place.

And chances are you’re doing something else illegal anyway.

Or can be followed until you do.

And if you don’t, there’s always the routine traffic stop.

[roywiggins]

> the police and prosecutors pick and choose which cases they put forward

someone has to decide which cases to bring, unless you fund the police and prosecutors so they can bring every plausible case, which sounds like a strictly worse universe to live in. Is this discretion abused? Yes, all the time. But bringing every case seems more like a police state than a free society.

[throwawaycanada]

"For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law." -Benavides

[pc86]

> It's a great reason to exercise caution when setting up rules and definitions.

This is (part of) the reason people spend hours debating seemingly mundane aspects of rules & regs, legislation, corporate bylaws, etc. Eventually someone will have a [dis]incentive and try to get around something.

[chipsa]

Usually more like 16.1" or 16.25" barrels. Since non-compliance can result in jail time, they give a bit of a compliance buffer.

[mikestew]

See also: "baker's dozen".

[inamberclad]

The FAA is usually better about things like this though. At least in the past, they've had the advantage of making good contact throughout the small group of people they regulate.

[amelius]

Only if companies do it. If a person continuously seeks the boundaries of the law, that person is generally called an asshole.

[michaelt]

Depends on the law - nobody disapproves of people driving at the legal speed limit, or filing your taxes at the last minute.

Testing the boundaries of murder and rape laws is, of course, a different matter.

[atourgates]

I assume the "spirit" of the law is safety. If the FAA has determined that 250g is where the risk of a person, or plane, or something else being hit by a drone is diminished so as to not require the same regulations as drones over that weight, I'd say that keeping drones under that weight limit to avoid those regulations (and their associated safety issues) is well within the "spirit" of the law.

[throwawaycanada]

Agreed. They could have put other limits in place easily. I have to assume they figured battery technology would get better allowing for these advances.

[bsamuels]

Soon the FAA is going to require a knowledge test for recreational flyers to fly UAS heavier than 250g.

The part 107 commercial UAS exam that already exists requires a lot of studying and costs $150 to take, and this falls on the easy end of your typical FAA exam.

DJI is hedging that the recreational flyer test is going to be a massive barrier for recreational pilots, which is why they're pushing a <250g UAS into the market.

[dogma1138]

Just to make a note it seems that this one has two types of batteries one that weights 50g and one that weights 100g.

If you use the heavy battery you go over 249g I’m also not sure if their flight stats were measured with the heavy one or the light one I’ll bet that they are with the 100g battery.

This means that under most conditions you’ll likely have 8-10min of flight time with the light battery since the advertised max flight time is often 30-50% over real world scenarios with these drones.

[bilbo0s]

Also, I imagine flight characteristics will change dramatically with a 100g battery. Heavier payload, same motors, doesn't bode well. May as well get a real drone rather than use the 100g battery.

But for toy drones, the 50g battery is fine. Especially since that pack lets you carry 3 of them. Plus I'm sure the next generation will be lighter still with still greater flight time. And the generation after that. Etc.

Future seems pretty bright for these "family pictures" type drones. But they aren't competitive with the big boys for certain use cases right now.

[dogma1138]

Eh I’m not sure they’ll be lighter look at mobile phones they aren’t getting lighter...

Battery technology is maxed out currently, plastics and composites aren’t going to change much...

Not much weight shedding to be done here my bet is that they’ll add more collision sensors as they become cheaper but not much else they can do.

They shouldn’t add any weight and you’ll offset their weight with the removal of the material from the chassis.

As for the flight characteristics I’m pretty sure they did everything with the heavier battery you go from 18W to 8W in exchange for losing 50g which is only 16% reduction in weight form 299 to 249.

If anything the loophole battery would perform considerably worse given the power output of the cell compared to the full one.

It also looks like the S mode isn’t available for the smaller battery I have a feeling that once reviews will start popping out the FAA approved config will be called gimp mode.

[tibbon]

Is Vespa working outside the rules/spirit of law of state DMVs by selling scooters that are 1cc under the requirement for motorcycle registration/tax/license? It seems like a pretty good analogy to me, with the main difference being a federal/state authority.

I'm really not sure; and I could see arguments either way.

[FireBeyond]

Similarly all the boats with mooring(?) motors that are 9.9HP.

[rtkwe]

DJI is selling a heavier battery that does put it over the 250g limit so it's a bit greyer than the vespa version.

[singingboyo]

Are they?

I see 249g/199g (JP) for takeoff weight in the specs, which suggests to me that with the 100g battery it's 249g grams, and with the 50g battery it's 199g (presumably in Japan, which seems to be a 200g limit where others are 250g).

[throwawaycanada]

Care to share a link?

[gok]

Is it unethical to drive just under the speed limit?

[pc86]

Yes, because you're likely the only one on the road going so slow :)

[greenknight]

unless you live in a country where speeding isnt common place ;) in Aus, atleast where i am, most people stick absolutely on the speedlimit.

[sepbot]

Just to clarify, by Aus are you referring to Austria and not Australia? In Australia the road culture is so bad that they make dramatic TV shows about it and relative Youtube channels sharing dash cam footage of bad drivers are actually source of entertainment to many.

[jakecopp]

But Aussies don't speed as much as those in the US from my experience!

[lucy_gatenby]

That’s only because we regularly get very steep fines and penalties for exceeding the limit. Even by as little as one kph.

[hnick]

Or their idea thereof... when I use my GPS it surprises me how low my car actually reports my speed compared to reality. It probably explains all the slow drivers in the right lane over here.

Go on the M4 though and 10 over is too slow for many!

[nradov]

How are you checking the real speed? Most GPS receivers display more accurate speeds than car speedometers do.

[hnick]

I'm assuming the GPS is accurate. I've driven through speed traps with it just on or over the limit and been fine. My car on the other hand is reporting around 5 kmh higher, depending what angle I'm holding my head at.

[colechristensen]

The FAA is free to change the rules based on what happens in the real world, if the FAA is doing their job well they will have considered the implications of someone creating something just on the other side of the limit as is common with regulations like that. If the limit is set correctly, there will be a margin of safety between where the limit is and the point where risks being mitigated matter.

So no, I don't think DJI are being "bad guys" by kissing up to the limit because the rules were made by people who do think things through very thoroughly.

[dougmwne]

I mean the idea of the weight limit is that at some weight the drone just does not pose as much of a public safety issue. I don't wee why the regulators should change the weight limit unless there's evidence that 249g is still too much of a risk. Incentivizing companies to hit a weight limit is a good thing. If the drone is the size of a songbird and the loudness of a bumblebee, I'm not sure I care if they're unregulated.

[pc86]

Not mention if the legal limit is 250g then it's incredibly likely whatever testing or studies the FAA looked at (I'm being generous here by assuming they didn't pull a number out of thin air) showed the danger spiked well above that.

[deckar01]

They removed the forward facing obstacle avoidance system. It might not hurt as bad when it drops on your head, but it seems a lot more likely to fly into your face with the props still spinning.

[shobith]

Capitalism is amoral

Edit: This wasn't posted as a judgement, it's just an observation of a trend.