A Rundown of Drone News for September 2015

September was a busy month in the drone world. Unfortunately, some of us were out of the office for a chunk of this busy month. (I’m not saying it was me, but I am also not not saying it was me).

So, here is a quick rundown of some of the headlines from the drone world we missed in September, 2015:

• DJI has released a pair of new camera attachments for the Inspire 1 platform, the Zenmuse X5 and the Zenmuse X5R. The new micro four thirds cameras offers 16 megapixel stills and 4K videos at 24 and 30 fps. In addition the X5R includes a removable 512GB solid state disk and a D-LOG mode that offers a broader array of color correction options in post production.

You can check out some preliminary footage shot with the X5 right here:

 

• California governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have restricted low altitude drones from flying over private property without the express permission of the property’s owner. The bill easily passed in the state legislature in August but was vetoed by Brown who said, “This bill, however, while well-intentioned, could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action.”

 

• Yuneec, makers of the popular Q500 quadcopter, announced a new hexacopter -the Tornado H920- at the Interdrone Expo earlier this month. The H920 sports a carbon fiber body and can carry three batteries so operators can get up to 42 minutes of flight time, depending on payloads. Yuneec has designed custom gimbal/camera payloads for the H920, but the platform is also compatible with cameras from Panasonic and Sony.

 

• DroneDeploy, one of the most popular drone companies that doesn’t make any drones, announced that they have made a version of their drone mapping software free to anyone  Users can now create autonomous flight paths for their drones and create intricate 3D maps and models. Additionally, DroneDeploy has introduced a new Map Engine feature to their platform which lets users create these maps with any drone, regardless of manufacturer.

 

• PrecisionHawk has teamed up with Kansas State University to develop apps that will help farmers increase corn production and improve efficiencies using drone data. The partnership establishes the four-year project “Advancing an end-to-end solution for agricultural applications of unmanned aerial systems and remote sensing.”

 

• The Zano micro drone finally started shipping earlier this month. Zano made a huge ($3.4 million, to be precise) splash on Kickstarter in November of last year, but ran into trouble fulfilling some of the promises it had made to its backers. The original ship date was scheduled for June and some of the features that were prominently displayed in the Kickstarter video, including flight time and GPS connectivity, have yet to be proven.