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

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:Now is the time

[amiga3D]

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

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.