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> I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card.

I'm sure you know this, but in addition to the imagery being saved on the SD card, it is also streamed to your smartphone, which runs proprietary software and is connected to the internet.

This is a very good point. There is absolutely the potential for the video feed or screenshots of the video feed to get onto their servers.

Any you switch off the internet?

> Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage

>I flew the drone over to a friend's back yard, and had misconfigured the "return-to-home" altitude too low

You claim to understand the need for responsible drone ownership, yet in the same comment mention how you crashed your drone (luckily only into a tree) while violating clearly-stated FAA line-of-sight guidelines (and also not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options). This is some serious cognitive dissonance.

What is the real cognitive dissonance is how "flew the drone over to a friend's back yard" is interpreted as some violation rule about line-of-sight guidelines -- or whatever this has to do with "not having understood the basic flight controls and recovery options".

I think it’s possible to both understand that something is a serious responsibility as well as still crash a drone as an inexperienced operator.

There was never danger to people or property (besides the drone itself). I just misjudged the one tall tree in the field between our houses which managed to exceed 30 meters, and somehow was unlucky enough for the drone to decide to fly exactly straight into the very top of it when the link dropped out.

Worth noting that the range of the remote is significantly less than claimed in the marketing materials, which is not really surprising because they claim 4km (!) and it dropped out on me at ~200 meters.

I do think they oversell their “return to home” feature and after spending more time on the forums and reading many similar experiences to my own, it’s much better to configure it to hover-in-place (or go up to a set altitude and hover there) on a lost signal, and then you can go to it instead of having it come to you.

Basically the marketing, training videos, and manual all make “return to home” sound like a better idea than it really is in practice.

Now I know from experience if the drone ever decides to fly itself somewhere you’re probably going to have a bad day. You aren’t going to learn that from reading their manual or watching their video tutorials.

>Worth noting that the range of the remote is significantly less than claimed in the marketing materials, which is not really surprising because they claim 4km (!) and it dropped out on me at ~200 meters.

This isn't really true. While radio links can of course perform poorly or unexpectedly at times, DJI's actually does deliver on their promises. It's quite incredible what they're doing with range of the control & video systems on 2.4 & 5.8Ghz actually. Not sure which model you have but the 2.4Ghz one will perform far better, though 5.8 is plenty fine in decent operating conditions. As you saw though, just because it can go 4km in normal conditions doesn't mean it won't ever hiccup for a variety of reasons (noise floor, obstructions, orientation, etc).

I must have been holding it wrong. </s>

Seriously though, they must have a very high gain antenna to get 4km range at 2.4GHz with streaming video at unlicensed power levels, so there probably is a very specific antenna and controller orientation you are supposed to maintain to achieve that range.

I got it to go 2.5 km away on a very long beach, so it always had line-of-sight. It didn't lose control, so I imagine it could have gone farther (but probably wouldn't have enough battery to come back).

> Drones are a serious responsibility, and can be misused to cause a lot of damage, I'm totally willing to trade off some amount of tracking for the ability to have off-the-shelf access to this tech.

Depends how big your house is, but in the UK (in the US you're OK I think) you would probably be flying the drone illegally. Here unless you have prior permission, you're not supposed to fly a drone within 150m of a "built up area". For most people your house is out because your street is not controlled by you, even if you only fly in your garden. Parks also count as built up areas.

"Fun with the kids" is a use-case with a very low need for confidentiality, integrity, and availability, and a very low risk of targeted attacks. The US federal government use-cases are obviously very different. Note that the "ban" in the article is not for consumers it is for the federal government.

For personal confidentiality, sure. For an enemy state, having the ability to have eyes on the ground at a mass scale is pretty useful though. Want to know what’s happening right now at xyz cords? No problem, someone’s flying their drone there right now because it’s “fun with the kids”