DJI Avata Goggles & Controller, Autel Evo Support, NY Drone Corridor

Welcome to your Weekly UAS News Update, live from Sun and Fun! We are in Lakeland, Florida, this week, showcasing Pilot Institute at our booth. We had a great day yesterday, and we’re going to have a great day today. This is a long day, as we’ll be seeing the air show tonight. Now, let’s talk a little bit about some of the news this week.

New DJI Goggles and Motion Controller

First, DJI released a new set of goggles and a new controller for the DJI Avata. These new goggles have 1080p OLED screens, which are beautiful and a little bit smaller. They also have the battery integrated into the back of the headset, which should be a lot more comfortable. I always hated having that little cable hanging from your pocket and having all that in there. It looks like the quality has improved, and the 100 Hz refresh rate is also going to be pretty nice. I think we need to get our hands on that and see what it’s going to look like.

Also, we have a new controller – the Magic One, as we call it (the Harry Potter one) in the office – that you can use as a motion controller to control the DJI Avata. They came up with a new version that looks like it has a few added features compared to the other one. One is the ability to go backwards, which is something that we never really enjoyed all that much with the first version because, well, you had to turn your head, and you had to do the head tracking. It was a bit cumbersome, so hopefully, this is a lot more intuitive for flying the drone.

The second thing is the ability to change some of the settings directly from the controller, like your ISO and moving a couple of things, so you don’t have to go into the goggles and move the goggles as you’re trying to make some of these changes.

Autel Robotics adds three more years of support

So, let’s move on to the next story in this week’s drone news. In the second story, there is good news if you are an Autel Evo owner of the V1 or V2. As you may know, Autel came up with a V3, and at the same time, they announced the end of life for some of the products on the V1 and V2.

The Evo 2 V1 and Evo 2 V2 were supposed to be end-of-life in May 2021 and October 2022, respectively. Many people thought that this was the end of customer service for these products. Autel has clarified and said that’s not the case; they will be pushing three more years from here. The drones will be supported for three more years from the time they are end-of-life, which is great news if you own one of these.

I know we’ve talked about, and many other people have discussed the lack of support from Autel lately. Hopefully, this is a way for them to boost their support and bring a little more support to all the people who have bought these drones over the years. We actually have a V2 ourselves; it’s a great drone, and we’ll continue using it. Hopefully, it doesn’t break, and we don’t have to call customer service.

New York Drone Corridor

Alright, let’s move on to the next story. The last story this week is about the New York Drone Corridor. We mentioned this several months ago; they received approval to fly in a 15-mile-long corridor in New York State, where those approved can go in and do testing.

Well, they just got approval to fly drones up to 300 pounds. Previously, it was a lot harder for them to do that kind of stuff, and now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has lifted some of the restrictions. For them, this allows the ability to do a ton of additional testing without going through the hoops to get everything approved.

So congratulations to them! It’s great to see all these different sites across the country where the FAA is allowing testing. Hopefully, some of that technology and whatever they find out can trickle down to the civilian world, and we can enjoy having fewer restrictions on some of the routine flights that we’ll do in the future.

Alright, that’s all I have for you. If you are here in town after watching this, or if you are in Lakeland, come and see us. We are at LD4, right across from the runway. We have a beautiful pink tent; you can’t miss it, and we look forward to seeing you here. Let’s talk about drones, talk about airplanes, and just come take pictures with the team. We’ll see you next week!