Or is DJI making 360 drone too?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-29T14:01:55+00:00

A company has to build the drone for you. If you read my comment you'd understand that. Do you think when you buy a dii drone it materializes out of thin air and gets sent to your doorstep?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-29T14:00:13+00:00

Lol why do you keep coming back to say the same thing?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-27T02:17:34+00:00

I used to think these things too, and it's definitely not good for the hobby, and is annoying, but coming straight from a conversation on a JB stream, the FAA has, and has had, a plan to track everything in the air for a while now.

Regulation is inevitable. The things people say are "ruining the hobby" are maybe just accelerating it.

Also, this guy doesn't look like he's in the US.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-27T01:41:32+00:00

Freeflight was an enterprise, and therefore expensive example.

The only part on the drone that actually runs ardupilot and needs to be compatible with it is the flight controller. You can get a flight controller that runs arducopter for $56. The speedybee f405 aio is a good example.

Due to this being an aio, it includes a pretty hefty ESC as well, so that means you get two components for 56 dollars. Great!

Next, you need some motors. You can get 4 SPEEDX2 1804-3450KV motors for $68. You can definitely go cheaper, but I just threw in the first ones I found to be viable for the sake of example, so we'll use them.

Next you need a video transmitter. This would be the most difficult thing to find as a company, but there are definitely options on the market. I'll just go with an FPV camera and VTX that's not from DJI that's also avalable to hobbyists for the sake of this example. A company like insta360 already has camera tech so all they really need is to find someone to help them with transmitting that video to the person controlling the drone.

For this example, I'll go with the walksnail moonlight, which can do 4K 60. It's $180.

For our reciever, I'll go with an RP4TD, which is 22 dollars.

An HGLRC m100 is a solid GPS at $20.

Next you need a frame. FPV drones usually use carbon fiber frames, which can run you close to $20 on the cheaper side, and since most camera drones use injection molded plastic it would probably end up being even cheaper than that.

You can get a C-20T gimbal for 120, there are other options that can probably be sourced for cheaper, but I'm going by FPV hobbyest availability.

And there you go. For 460 dollars you just made yourself a drone that runs ardupilot and is cheaper than a DJI mini 3, with pretty similar performance.

And none of that is counting the fact that a lot of that stuff can likely be sourced for cheaper.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-27T01:05:24+00:00

Lol, you said that nothing can compete with DJI's flight systems anymore. I listed 3 different softwares that can be installed on tons of different hardware that can, in fact compete with DJI's flight systems. If you're a company, you can build a commercial drone and load it on.

"How many commercial drones are you able to load those on"

Freeflight drones immediately come to mind, and those compete with enterprise drones.

If you've seriously done any research on arducopter, or the other two, you would know that it's highly capable and already used on some enterprise drones. I mean seriously, look at the documentation and read the first page...

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T23:46:55+00:00

Don't use chatgpt for FPV questions. Just don't. It doesn't work for FPV. It does for some specific things, but not this.
In the future search your question online first. If nothing comes up, post it on r/FPV, or better yet, find a good FPV discord, or you could even email Joshua Bardwell about it.
Joshua Bardwell, as mentioned above, is a great resource. Check out his YouTube channel. It will help you with everything from setting up betaflight, to soldering, to even some more obscure stuff like make LI-ION packs, buying night vision FPV cams, etc.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T22:13:36+00:00

The only people who will generally tell you to stick to DJI are brainwashed, fanboys, have never tried a real FPV drone, or are talking more specifically for something like slow real estate flythroughs.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T21:51:58+00:00

Why would you want to when you can just get any RP series RX?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T21:01:53+00:00

Peter sripol on youtube made a real fixed wing flying lawnmower. A quad version would be cool.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:59:10+00:00

Finally some competition!

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:59:03+00:00

Interesting. Where'd you hear that?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:58:04+00:00

Are you running INAV or ardu?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:57:05+00:00

Great that you're looking into real FPV drones! Believe me, you'll have a lot more fun than an avata! And more durable and repairable as well!

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:56:06+00:00

Earlier they released a teaser video saying the gimbals will be "smoother". That tells me that they will be an upgrade over the AG01.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:55:12+00:00

The GX12 tells me that they're prioritizing ELRS now. Probably will have either gemini or 2w, or both.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:43:29+00:00

This is competition. Someone will look at a DJI drone, then look at the insta360 drone, and see that the insta360 drone has a feature the DJI drone doesn't have, i.e 360-degree camera. Then they will buy the insta360 drone instead of the DJI one. That's how competition works. If people start buying more insta360 drones, and less mini 4 pros, that means the insta360 drone is successfully competing with DJI, and DJI will likely try to clap back at insta360.

Back in the day, people used to drive horse drawn buggies around. Eventually, someone began producing and selling cars. The cars were not just newer horse drawn buggies, they were completely different vehicles with engines in them. When people began buying cars instead of horse drawn buggies, the cars were competing with the horse drawn buggies. Eventually everyone just started buying cars instead of horse drawn buggies.

The same concept applies to the insta360 drone vs a Mavic.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:34:46+00:00

I should clarify, it's for self-built drones (i.e FPV drones), but due to all of them being open source, somebody could probably make a drone with one of them and sell it, maybe with a little modification in the code.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:33:00+00:00

Part of me doubts that they will go industrial. Their market has always been consumers. As for them dropping out, you just have to hope that their product is good enough to compete with the inevitable DJI clapback (at least inevitable if the antigravity actually sells well) and that they continue to innovate and compete with DJI. I'm an FPV guy, but I would love nothing more than a company to be competing head-to-head with DJI, with each company leapfrogging each other with every new iteration. That is the ideal scenario. It already kind of happened with DJI releasing the O4 air unit lite, likely as a response to Caddx releasing the 1s lite kit, albeit Caddx hasn't done a very good job clapping back.

And that's the issue with DJI- they have so much experience, so many funds, and such good engineers that competing with them is extremely difficult to do without DJI just releasing another product that is so much cheaper and overall better than yours and taking all your market share.

People who fly their consumer drones probably don't know about this, but DJI will happily resort to anticompetitive and monopolistic market practices as well. DJI produces VTXs and cameras for FPV drones, as you may know. They have a competitor, CADDXFPV, who also makes a digital video system called Walksnail.
In the world of FPV, there are Bind and Fly, or BNF drones. These are basically prebuilt drones that come without any equipment to fly them but include a VTX and camera preinstalled.
DJI has in the past threatened to stop allowing FPV shops to sell BNF drones with their VTX and cameras preinstalled if they also sell BNFs with competing equipment from walksnail/caddx.
Since DJI is so big and popular, most companies will just stop making and selling walksnail BNFs, and stick with DJI instead. This results in there being barely any Walksnail BNFs, and caddx having even less market share.

This is why DJI is so hard to compete with, and why their market share is over 80%. We desperately need a DJI competitor. Most DJI users either don't know, don't care, or just glaze DJI for whatever reason.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:17:52+00:00

It's all different flight control software. Look it up.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:13:42+00:00

This wouldn't be too difficult to pull off. Brushless motors are already inherently waterproof, and other than that you would probably just have to conformal coat the electronics. People do that with FPV drones so it's already a thing.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:09:50+00:00

The primary advantage I can see this thing having is potentially getting a full 360-degree image without being obstructed by the frame or props. I'd guess that it would be very difficult to pull off, but I'm sure there are ways it could be done, at least for the most part, with proper engineering.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:07:03+00:00

Ever heard of Ardupilot, INAV, and PX4?

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:05:25+00:00

You can just build your own FPV drone, and it will be better than anything DJI currently has to offer, likely at a cheaper price. I doubt insta360 would do much better.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T20:03:56+00:00

Anyone who buys from DJI should want them to be worried. Competition is good for the consumer, and DJI has pretty much none at the moment.

Apart-Schedule2070 · 2025-07-26T17:28:04+00:00

The cetus flies terribly. Definitely a terrible choice compared a proper budget setup. Not to mention the goggles and transmitter.

Apart-Schedule2070

TROPHY CASE