DJI Spark Owners Must Update Firmware By September, Or Their Machines Will Be Bricked (suasnews.com)

garymortimer shares a report from sUAS News: News has arrived of a mandatory firmware update from DJI. Owners of DJI's latest and smallest quadcopter must update their firmware by September the 1st or their machines will automatically ground themselves. The Firmware update apparently is to stop in flight shutdowns that have been occurring. So no bad thing to fix, a safety issue. Perhaps questionable is DJI's ability to brick other peoples property if required. The "Kill Switch" option is already causing consternation in user groups.

Comments

Now is the time

[Snotnose]

To ensure your firmware can't be updated without your explicit permission. See also, Win 10.

Re:Now is the time

[somenickname]

Come on, man. You bought it so, what? You think you own it? That's totally 90s thinking. You just rented it until we decided you can't use it anymore.

I have that Stallman manifesto around here somewhere...

Re:Now is the time

[amiga3D]

Sadly, you may be joking but these companies now seem to think just like that.

Re:Now is the time

[ckatko]

SaaS is a super dangerous concept that he majority of computer users have no idea of what's going to happen.

  1 - Consolidation of services from standard capitalism. (I'm not arguing against capitalism.) As far as I can tell in my reading of history and experiences in life, all economies eventually end up as monopolies because users prefer simplicity.

  2 - You don't own your products.

  3 - What happens when the company goes out of business? We're basically banking our entire ownership of media on one thing. Either the owners of our current products will NEVER GO OUT OF BUSINESS (yeah, we're all using AOL--the last big tech company--right?) . Or 2), that somehow, through the "goodness of their hearts" all businesses will magically assume they might go out of business and have in their contract that your content must be transfered over. Except when they declare bankrupcy... what happens then? And what happens if people don't want to RUN the servers anymore? (Think of 90% of great FPS games from the 90's and 2000's that need dedicated, proprietary servers that were shut down.)

The ONLY thing that can save us is either moving away from SaaS, or, a law (good luck!) that stipulates that user content must be storable on the user's machine if no equivalent service is instantiated by the next company. And what if the next company has your stuff... but doesn't give a shit about your privacy and dumps adware into the old products? It's not like any company took someone else's products and bundled adware with it... ::cough::sourceforge::cough::

We are heading for a disaster and nobody even realizes it. What happens when we hit the next major recession / tech bubble burst? It's not like we're living in an era of super-hyper-valuation of unicorn startups with no viable income strategy yet. .. Oh... shit.

So what is the kill mechanism?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anyone know how the kill is implemented? Was the original firmware set with an expiration date, in anticipation of it receiving an exciting and mandatory upgrade; so the deadline was baked in from day one? Did some earlier, smaller, update quietly add this 'feature' to be announced at a later time? Is there no change whatsoever in the drone's behavior; but some companion app does a version check before it issues any flight commands; and will be updated to refuse to talk to the older version?

Regardless of implementation, this is a fine testament to the advantages of products that spend their entire lives phoning home to the vendor; but some implementations are even worse than others.

Re:So what is the kill mechanism?

[ShanghaiBill]

Anyone know how the kill is implemented?

I have DJI Mavic, not a Spark. Mine uses a smartphone as the controller GUI. When I connect my phone to the drone controller, the app will sometimes, but not always, check for updates. If an update is available, it is downloaded and installed, without any opportunity for opting out. Some of the downloads may be legally required, such as data for restricted airspace. Others, as in this case, are safety issues, so I don't see why anyone would want to opt out, or why anyone should be allowed to, since they may be endangering other people.

Nitpick: The headlines use of the work "brick" is misleading. The drone cannot be flown until it is updated, but it is not "bricked". As any true nerd knows, when something is "bricked" it is permanently and irrevocably disabled, which is not what this is.

Re:And the Army is really buying these things?

[ShanghaiBill]

What is the alternative? The DJI drones are a generation ahead of anything else on the market ... and with an 85-90% market share, they have enough revenue to extend their lead.

Disclaimer: I have a DJI Mavic Pro. It is very nice.

Re:Serious question

[andydread]

see here

Re:And the Army is really buying these things?

[fustakrakich]

What is the alternative?

Best drone ever... single motor, caged prop so you can safely bump into things, spherical shape so it can upright itself or even roll along the ground. Unfortunately the market has spoken, so there are very few of them.

Re:That's a good point, NEVER BUY FROM DJI

[110010001000]

No need to brag about living in a manor. We just have houses here.

Re:LOL, bricked

[ArchieBunker]

There is a good Defcon talk about this. The software keeps track with a database file and you can edit the file on your phone and override any no fly settings.

Re:And the Army is really buying these things?

[_Sharp'r_]

The army already builds (contracts out the building of) their own drones.

The micro-UAVs, the ones closest to a DJI ~(4.5 lbs), cost the Army (These are the inexpensive ones) $35,000 each for a Raven RQ-11B. A complete system (controller, spare parts, and three UAVs) costs $250,000 for the Raven and over $400,000 for Puma (6 lbs, heavier battery, flies longer).

So yeah, for the price of one Raven, you could only afford to buy 25 DJI Phantom 4 Pro drones. The Raven can go farther faster, the Phantom has a better camera and can avoid obstacles on it's own and circle/follow a target on its own, so they have complementary uses, but one is obviously way cheaper than the other.

Just the tip of the iceberg.

[CptLoRes]

The hacking community have been pulling apart DJI drone software and firmwares for a while now. And the more they learn, the worst it gets. For example both the iOS and Android versions of the DJI GO 4 app have built in hot patch functionality (Tencent Tinker / JSPatch), then enables DJI to make unrestricted app modifications outside of the users control. This is in direct violation of app developer policies on both platforms. And after the community found out, DJI has been scrambling hard to avoid getting their apps banned. It is also speculated this is one of the primary reasons why DJI drones recently was banned from US military usage.