Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to Weekly Wings, your go to podcast from dronelife.com, where we soar through the latest in drone technology regulations. Exciting innovations each week. Join Samuel, Terry, and I as we navigate the drone industry, offering expert insights, interviews with key figures, and a bird's eye view of how drones are shaping our world. From commercial applications to recreational adventures, weekly wings dives into how these remarkable vehicles are impacting construction, education, agriculture, delivery services, and much more. Whether you're a professional drone operator, a hobbyist, or just drone curious, tune in to stay informed and inspired as we explore the heights of what's possible in the world of drones. Subscribe now and never miss an episode of Weekly Wings, where the future is looking up. Welcome, everybody, to our 7th episode of Weekly Wings.
Another great week in the industry of drones.
Just another great week in the world, right? We've got sporting events talked about soccer and stuff. Just always great things happening in the state of North Carolina. US Open 124th US Open is currently taking place in Pinehurst, driving lots of folks here. If you've tuned in, you could see right in the practice rounds. The drone video is out there. Golf course, big, big area, lots to see, lots of beauty. The drones are out there flying. So just really, really exciting. One other sports thing I wanted to say is just for the folks that are UFC, Conor McGregor. I don't know, Terry. This. This is poor. Poor what? Poor Michael Chandler, man. Dude. Dude should have been like three years ago. Just waiting on. Waiting on someone that he's gonna. He's gonna fight a ghost, man.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah, he'll be all right. He'll be all right. We do need to send him a wellness check eventually, though.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I love how they're using the laugh. Like the Conor McGregor laugh for the past month. You know, this is just mind games.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: From Connor, honestly, so.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: And from Dana White's perspective, I'm like, he probably just wants to be like, you know, just get out of here. But when the dude has sold four of the five highest gates, it's. It's not just about the fight itself, as much of an awareness to the. To the sport. So I'm like, he just probably just wants to tell the guy to get lost. But he. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Certainly disappointed, but should be. Should be some good, good fights going on. End of the month. Anyway, with that said, how's it going? What's going on, Samuel? How you doing?
[00:02:48] Speaker C: Doing well. It's pretty hot. So overall doing well, but I can definitely feel it a little bit today. That's North Carolina for you. In the summer, though, you know, drone gets picked up, but it's definitely hot.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And then we think that December could never exist because I'm, like, talking about cold weather and, hey, it's good for outdoor sports. You don't have to cancel out soccer tournament last week, golf this week. If you're UFC, doesn't really matter because we're inside. You just need people to show up. So with that, you know, gonna just dive into. We gotta welcome everybody. I appreciate you tuning in, listening. Hope you all had a great week as well and are following along with what's going on in the industry. If you're not, we've got a few cool, new, neat things here that we're going to discuss with. The first thing that we're going to talk about is a very, very old tree.
[00:03:43] Speaker C: Exceptionally old at that.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yes, the general Sherman tree.
Groundbreaking drone inspection conducted on general Sherman tree pioneering use of industrial grade drone provides comprehensive health assessment of the world's largest known living tree. And when I read this, I was just like, uh, you know, you're. It's just like, if. If the drone aspect of checking the tree and that the tree's named, if that's not enough, it's. And then you're like, the world's largest known living tree. Like, there could be a bigger tree out there. That's unknown at this point. We should go find it. But the world's largest known living tree, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National park, named after General Sherman.
What do you guys think about this?
[00:04:43] Speaker C: I think it's just kind of looking at the article, it's really cool because the volunteers started to climb the tree, and then there's like, you know, this. This is a lot of tree. And then the human ingenuity comes in with a drone and kind of makes the job so much easier with that. But. Sorry, I think I talked over you a little bit, Terry.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: No, you. I didn't talk.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah. In the video we got up here right now, folks watching on YouTube are getting to see this video. Anyone tuning in? Audio only.
You know what's behind this is doodle Labs from a software standpoint, hardware, softwares working closely with a UA's manufacturer.
And so a big piece of this flight in operation is that this is a just massive tree, the drone being used. Right. We're in a national forest here, you know, government land. Well, the drone is NDAA compliant, and the drone is on the blue UA's list. So for those individuals that have to adhere to those strict security requirements and, you know, the provisions that come along with government purchasing. This vehicle that you're looking at, it's a quadcopter, you know, it's built and it does things that we'll talk about later. The ban the chinese drones that those vehicles now. But look right here, like, look at the amount of cases and he's got a screwdriver out and like shout out to Matt Eisenbarger, you know, being on here. But when you look at this at the end of the day, it's, you know, we need to scale this. The industry needs a lot of these. Here's the doodle lab remote, here's it taken off. You've got Lidar that you can put on it.
So there is a piece here where it's like, hey, we're doing this. Maybe not necessarily because the tree needs it because we can get in there and physically see what's going on when it comes to the Beatles, but to be able to say that we took this drone that's blue and NDA compliant and then share this message, it's right in line with what everybody's talking about right now.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: I think notably too, this is a, this was conducted for just kind of a yearly health checkup on the tree to assess its condition.
Fun facts. 275ft high. That's over like almost half the limit for flying, you know, and then 2200 years old and now it has, I don't know, it's kind of crazy. That is an insane lifetime.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: You know, that tree was there before Jesus.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Right? That's, that's interesting.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Right?
And then you can see like free flies. Astro prime drone, state of the art NDA compliant and blue suas approved.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: It's a mouthful about.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: So the free fly and it's using doodle lab software for flight control and c two.
So when you see this now, the video on here, this, the size of it as these people scale this tree, like Samuel said, 275ft.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Hmm.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Do you guys think that this would possibly make someone be able to find like a bigger tree? Because they said like this is the largest known tree and, um, probably not.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: I don't, I'm, I know the Amazon rainforest hasn't been fully just like explored, but I don't think their trees get that tall. So the redwoods are kind of in their league of their own when it comes to trees.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: But like, if you're in sequoia though, is there a bigger tree than this? And this just happens to be the one someone saw and they put a path around because it was easy to access, it was easily accessible. Whereas there could be another tree, like, 415 miles away, and just, like, no one's ever measured it or really looked at it. I don't know. I. Maybe I should go out there.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, next week. Mapping tree hunting software on your drone.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, we're doing. Our next week's episode is going to be from Sequoia National park.
[00:09:20] Speaker C: That would be kind of sick.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Just get some lidar, start mapping the entire forest.
Can't do that. Sorry.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: And then the aspect to here, we're like, oh, we're using an NDA compliant blue drone. The whole video here at the end, Doodle Labs is presenting this, but it's like, okay, this tree that's in a publicly known location and readily accessible in the fact that you could go visit it. What. What's. Is there. Is there a threat that. That someone's going to look at the pictures of the Beatles that they took, as opposed to. We're flying a blue NDAA secure drone over here near a military installation where you actually have, like, a asset that is sensitive. I'm just not sure where people would, like, classify the Sherman tree and, you.
[00:10:17] Speaker C: Know, what in terms of a top secret or. Yeah.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Security threat. If someone. If someone got their hands on one of those photos of the Beatles on the tree, would that pose us a threat to american citizens?
[00:10:32] Speaker C: I mean, is it purely kind of the photos that people were worried about or the dead? Overall, I'm kind of asking it.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: If someone had. If someone could tap in and steal the photo and the videos of that tree, would it pose a threat to America's national security?
Could someone take that and plan, like, another September 11? Could somebody take that and access secure files?
[00:10:59] Speaker C: It's what they're not telling us. What's inside the tree, Paul? That's. That's the big thing there. There's a secret weapon.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: It's actually a nuke.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: The beetle is right. I'm gonna have to go back and watch that video again and try to find the thing that they were actually looking for. Because the beetle was just a front, right.
[00:11:22] Speaker C: Honestly, like, I was a little distracted because of the height. Like, that tree is so massive, it just kind of dwarfs. Even with those tall trees around it, it's still kind of. It gives you a really good perspective of just how tall that tree is. Dizzyingly high, but, yeah.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: So it's actually now, like, trying to look. Let's see. Let's bring this up for comparison.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: What's the main apes name from Planet of the Apes.
[00:11:49] Speaker C: Caesar.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: You might know that off top there. Caesar. That's Caesar's house. That's.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: It's. And it will actually, Terry, if you did, I don't know if you watched the recent trilogy of the new Planet of the Apes movies, but it. I recall part of it taking place in the redwoods, in the sequoia porridge.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: So I think you didn't watch the recent one.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Okay, so you got. You got almost 2000, some 2000 sequoia trees in Sequoia National park.
And it looks like in 2001, some of these forest fires that happened out there threatened this tree. So they wrapped the tree several times with. With aluminum foil.
[00:12:37] Speaker C: That's impressive.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: And that. That looks like some, like, massive aluminum foil sheets. That's not like wood.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: That's like, aluminum foil.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Solar storm fixing the space station.
Like, we need to patch the space station. Get the foil.
[00:12:57] Speaker C: Notably, this is the first time I can account for a drone legally flying in a national park. I don't. I feel like you might have.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Oh, no, no.
Yeah, no, this. It's definitely happened before.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: From them collecting their own imagery. And then, like, things like. Like, parks are always. You're always wanting to promote it, like, like, you know, National Geographic Channel, the History Channel, you know, whenever they've done, you know, kind of like documentaries and stuff. There's definitely been folks putting up, like, phantom threes years and years ago in national parks. Here's a great image right here that just shows kind of in reference the. The height of that great general Sherman sequoia tree, almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
[00:13:57] Speaker C: That's insane.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Threatened by wild.
[00:14:04] Speaker C: Do they have an estimated lifetime for those stories? I feel like with it being so old, I don't even know how you would expect its lifetime. You know.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: I bet he's.
[00:14:18] Speaker C: When does it stop?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Right now.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: What's that, Terry?
[00:14:21] Speaker A: Like, what's like, what's a. What's the. Have they found ones that were, like, fallen? And they've been able to study them and determine, like, you know, based on the number of rings on this fallen tree, it lived to be this old.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: I faintly remember seeing something about the world's largest, like, plant. It was some type of root, but it, like, spanned the entire west coast. Just one, like, root system.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. In that forest that was like. That's like, the forest where those people go. I'm pretty sure the, like, the death.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Forest bohemian grove is that we're talking.
[00:15:01] Speaker C: About the suicide forest in Japan.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Is that. I think.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: Well, that's amazing.
Okay.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: There's something like that where everything's connected, right? Every, everything in the whole thing is sharing the same entire root system.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: I think it goes up in the Canada a little bit too.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: 3000 years, giant sequoia trees can live to be over 3000 years old. In fact, one giant sequoia was found to be 3210 years old. And some of the larger trees maybe even older. So.
So right. When you look at this whole video, they didn't say it was the oldest, right. It was the largest. So general, the general Sherman tree is the largest known living tree. It's not the oldest.
[00:15:48] Speaker C: So that also means it's not dumb.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: You do if you want potent, like, unless you're Terry, you know, you definitely just judged it off of like one video. Yeah. He didn't even get to see the whole analysis of the lidar and he just said it. It looks like it's on its way out.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: Said that. I'm just saying. He's probably mexican.
[00:16:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, not really because if it's 2000 years old, it's. It's just hitting extra. Terry, the general Sherman trees is.
No, it's. It's. It's past that. It's hitting its stride. It's. It's, uh. It's like just got its kids out of the house. It's ready to get back. Back into crisis.
[00:16:29] Speaker C: I want to do.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: That's what the wildfire.
[00:16:34] Speaker A: It's. Yeah, the wildfire might have been that. That crisis, you know, it might come there on age gone.
The foil. All that foil on it. It had no idea what to do. It was very, very. It was. It went through a difficult time, but 3000 years old. And it says in the converse basin grove of the national park they found a specimen that was 3266 years old. So I wonder if, like, you know, maybe a thousand years ago that tree was the biggest one. But just, like, you know, you know, as it got older, maybe it just kind of, like, shrunk a little.
[00:17:14] Speaker C: Hmm.
[00:17:15] Speaker A: We'll find out. We'll have to keep. Just keep up with them.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: Checking if they. I'm curious if that's.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: And I looked it up and I.
[00:17:24] Speaker C: I was gonna say I'm curious if they're pretty happy with the results of the drone. Like, it seems like that was incredibly beneficial being able to just throw a drone up. I mean, there's no. Did they say risk of human when you're just throwing a drone up as opposed to someone climbing up that bad boy, especially if you're climbing. I think you could potentially harm it. I mean, not extensively, but.
[00:17:47] Speaker A: And I also. I hear that, but I also do feel like we. We have to at least just bring this guy up once, uh, for folks that are. That are viewing, so that everyone can see this just warrior face of William Tecumseh Sherman, who, because my first thought here was like, oh, my gosh, is the name of the tree going to change? Like, that's just what I was thinking. So I was like, oh, let me look up, you know, who this. This guy was. And, you know, Union army general, scorched earth policy. Right? So the dude just laid waste and just kept it moving, you know, is recognized by, you know, a british theorist, historian as, you know, the most original genius of the american civil War and the first modern general. So William Tecumseh Sherman, helping lead the Union army in the civil war and keeping these great states together and.
Yeah, very interesting, really interesting article. Right? In the sense that it just has the nature aspect, the fact that it's environmental based. You got the history of the individual who it's named after, which brings a lot of american history into it. You're using aviation technology, disruptive technology, drones, lidar, and it's an aviation asset. And then you bring in that technological aspect of, you know, it's lidar. It's not just your standard video and photo that we've seen, and then the security aspect that you lay on, because it's an american made drone. It's NDA compliant, it's blue UA's. And so it's also hitting, like, that political aspect. So I really did think, you know, for this week, that that was. That actually kind of was just a really neat featured story to have. So, you guys got any last thoughts on the old gray sequoia?
[00:19:57] Speaker C: I'm gonna have to get out there and see it for myself one day.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll plan a weekend trip, Samuel. No worries.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: One quick weekend trip to the west coast, California.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: And I completely agree that. Yeah, now, as you learn more, you're like, yeah, you know what? That is a pretty significant thing to look up and be like, wow, that tree is 2200 years old.
That's pretty cool. Pretty cool. So, moving into our next topic here, Terry, I'm just going to go ahead and let you introduce this. I'm going to share my screen, but tell us, what are we looking at here, and how many should we buy?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: All right, so before I start talking about it, I would like to say that I am not anti drone. I just like all things that involve drones. So that includes dismantling drones, unfortunately.
So what we got here is we have a shotgun shell filled with almost like a parachute slug. So basically there are multiple kind of wires connected to weights at the end. It shoots it out the barrel and it expands and gets that bad boy out of the air. I'm not exactly sure how far. It's like 2ft. God.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Jesus.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Luke, calm down.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: And it looks like.
Yeah, so Terry, you know, is like, all right, let's. Let's take a look. Am I. Oh, this is not even. I thought this was a video.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: I don't think they're going to be shooting $600 drones. I don't think that's that type of.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: Company that we need to see a video.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Yeah, this is not.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: It shows the. The wingspan of it somewhere. I remember seeing the wingspan of it. You might have to scroll down on it. Oh, it's on the packaging.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: You know what? There's. Realistically, we're finding something. We're finding there's no video of it. So what I'm saying is we have to make a video of it.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: All right?
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:05] Speaker B: So, Paul, you're going to get one of your drones out of your arsenal all by the shotgun shells.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: I got the camera.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: Yo. Um, let's.
Yeah, let's do it. We can totally. We could get like, there's like 30. There's like $60 drones on E. On Amazon. You. We just throw up. Like, you know, we should totally do it. I just. What is it called? Sky net. Drone defense. There has to be a video. There's no way someone didn't shoot. Yeah, there's like a four.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Now, I would say from a price standpoint, these are pretty expensive. It's a three pack, costs $36.
If you're really in a pinch and you get that drone down, I'm sure bird shot or even a wide expanding buckshot would work. Or if you're a good shot, get some flight forward.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: And this guy's one sponsor, too, and he's going to shoot a drone.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: This is us next week.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: He's weighing it. Going all out here. Look at this. We got. These are good distance. They. Dude, they have definitely. Look at this. Easy. Oh, my goodness. Get rid. Get out of here. Easy shot marksman, above average expert. Good luck. All luck.
If the drones moving 40 miles an hour and it's 300ft away, you need all luck to hit it. This is hilarious.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Wow. That's a very in depth card they give you, too.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: That is significant. Breakdown this guy.
Thousand feet per second. Yeah.
Look, we're even getting, like.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: Oh, it drops.
It drops very steeply. It looks like.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Yeah. See what they're shooting down, though?
He's got, like, kind of, like, pens. What is that, homemade? No, it's just like a homemade.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: It's not even flying. They put it on a stick.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: They have the heart, though, right?
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Terrible.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: The hearts in it.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: And then they're just shooting a drone that's not flying.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: It actually doesn't look like it would destroy a drone. It just kind of wraps it.
I'm sure if the weights hit it.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Well, the whole. The whole idea, right. Is that you're shooting it out so that it gets into the right, like, caught up in the propeller blades. It gets. And then causes, like, if you can just get one prop blade to get hung up and freeze up that one motor, you're gonna take down any quadcopter. It's just not gonna be able to sustain flight. So I think it's not that it's gonna, like, take it down. It's gonna wrap up those props, and it's gonna prevent it from. From flight. That's.
That is interesting, though. I would be anxious to see if he lost his drone for psyche. Just bringing this back up. He says, like, I'm getting clickbaited or whatever.
I don't know what the hell that was.
So. Yeah. Oh, crappy phantom here. Dudes in Texas, man, they'll shoot. They'll shoot things down in Texas. Yeah, I mean, they don't care. They're going to shoot it down.
Did he shoot it? All right, here we go.
Oh, he missed.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: What a terrible shot, man.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: Just missed.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: He's like, directly towards power lines, by the way. I would like to point that out.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: He's like, you gotta get. Yeah, you gotta get closer.
That is funny. It's gonna end up like shoes. Like a pair of shoes. I mean, at this point, just throw shoes at it.
They were literally. It's like, hanging. That'd be hilarious if the thing was just dangling. And so, for the folks on audio only here, the video that's pulled up is like, at this point, the dude is directly below the drone. She's guns pointed straight in the air, shotgun straight up. And he hits it. And at that point, it's like he almost hit himself with the drone.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I see. Now, this makes me think, like, how accurate is it for drones flying by? Like, would you be better off just getting some bird shot or something if it's somewhat close and then some wider expanding buckshot and just pray you hit it.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: Yeah, because at the end of the day, you just hit one prop it. One projectile hits one prop and busts it, then it's gonna. But then it's all about the fire. It's like you're shooting up in the sky, and then what goes up must come down. The idea of, like, that yarn and net coming down is, I don't know, like, the risk to the people on the ground, like, what you're shooting toward. Clearly, these people are, you know, somewhere in Texas.
Yeah, like, I don't know. It's kind of weird, though. Cause it's like, is there. What is on it looks like there's some pretty heavy, I don't know, bearings or something on there.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like fish weights, it looks like. I'm sure there's a better way to do this. Now, I'm not going to make it, but I'm sure something will come out eventually.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: And so it's hilarious, because once you watch this video now, you're. You go back and you look at that sheet where it was like, if the drone's going 20, he couldn't hit the drone, and it was hovering right under.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: Is that good luck, what he just did, or. Yeah, a marksman shot or what? According to their little chart, what he.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: Just shot was like, for sure. That was like a. You can't miss. But even where it was like, even. Even where he was in a green area, he completely missed it. So I think. I think the name Skynet. Like, you think Skynet and, you know, drone defense, and it makes you. That's what I think. I'm like, you know, it's kind of like a play on know. Drones are going to take over, and what are you going to do when a rogue drone comes to your house? And literally now the company is making a drone called rogue that has a warhead. You know, we had it on episode two, I think, the rogue drone. So it's like, how do you stop that? And the whole idea here is, this is cute for an individual person, but when you are a secure environment, you're using technology to detect aircraft before you.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Lasers see them almost.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: But this is neat. It's kind of a cool thing here, but after watching the video that it really makes sense there.
Whoops.
Their whole.
The whole paper that they came up with, because it's kind of a. It's kind of a little bit of a joke, you know, don't like a victim if you're trying to. If you're trying to shoot a drone going 40. It just. The Skynet or even any weapon system is. Is, you know, your standard weapons. You're gonna be able to shoot a drone going 40 down, fly a drone past going 40 miles an hour, and just, you know, it's. It's cruising.
[00:30:01] Speaker B: So, out of curiosity, see how much the. Let's see how much the 10,000 pack cost.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: All right.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Just $118,000. That's nothing.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. And in shipping, calculated.
ABC. The supplier is ABC.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think maverick drone systems actually makes these. I think they just. It looks like they just kind of sell products from different companies.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: You know, reseller, action, air, land, and sea.
All right, awesome. Cool stuff. Terry, that was pretty neat. When I saw it, I just saw Skynet, and I was like, oh, this is gonna be so.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I see, I've seen it on Twitter, and I was like, all right, this is somewhat relevant. You know, this is definitely.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: I was like, this is definitely gonna be interesting. So tech side, on the. On the technology side and kind of like a product thing here going along with.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: There's.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: There's a little theme here that I just wanted to make sure to highlight.
But dronelife.com and others, you know, announced this past week, earlier this week, Teledyne, Flir, last week announced, introduces a Hadron 640 series thermal sensor.
So, you know, people are familiar with Flir, like, oh, flir thermal camera. And Flir and Teledyne, right, came together, and they're manufacturing a drone, like an actual drone, NDAA compliant drone that has thermal capabilities, zoom capabilities. It's priced around $10,000. But what they also do is they manufacture the sensors. So there are companies and DJI, when DJI started and introduced thermal, they were actually using flir thermal sensors in their DJI drones. But what DJI did is they, you know, learned a company over there, DJI themselves, they learned the ways to develop and make their own thermal cores. So now DJI drones no longer have flir sensors. And Flir definitely built up a lot of business because DJI sells a lot of drones. And then all of a sudden, they didn't need, they weren't buying Flir's product anymore. So if you build up a company and you have sales, and then those sales stop, what do you do? You pivot, you shut down, you make adjustments. And what Flir, you know, was kind of able to do and was doing in other products is they were just integrating their own thermal core into the solution.
So they said, well, you know, instead of just giving DJI the core, and then they build it into their payload, and they make it on their drone. They started making, like, their own payloads that companies could buy and put on their drone. So you can see next to a quarter folks on audio are looking at this image here.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: It's.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: It's a quarter next to this camera, and the camera is like, two or three. Two and a half quarters tall.
[00:33:31] Speaker C: Easily fits in the palm of your hand.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Right? Easily fits in the palm of your hand. So it's like the exact size of, like, a mavic.
Mavic three thermal payload, a Mavic two enterprise thermal payload.
And so companies can. It's plug and play. A drone manufacturer, and the company mentioned here in the article was teal drones.
So, Teal is one of those companies that's trying to manufacture a us drone in the United States that can compete with a DJI product, at least at the military side of things. So, now teal. And Teal has been integrating the flir, you know, sensors, I think from very early on, is teal can just focus on building the drone and the motors and the flight software, and then they can just take this sensor and just plug it into their stack. Right? They've got their drone, put it on a gimbal, plug it in, and you're good to go. You don't have to worry about engineering or designing that thermal camera.
And again, it goes back to this idea of teal. Drones isn't gonna buy a chinese sensor because there's.
They sell drones to the military, so they have to be able to support NATO allies in the United States Army's short range reconnaissance trance, too.
So you have to, again, if you're free, fly right, the drone we looked at before. Hey, you want a quick thermal? This is something that you could integrate.
So it's not the drone itself, but it's the technology that has enabled drones to do really, really significant things in law enforcement, public safety, search and rescue, facilities management.
And to this, be bumped up 640 thermal. You've got a 64.
64 mega pixel.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: Out of curiosity, 64 mega insight on this. But who do you think their primary audience for selling this camera kind of is to, like, who. Who would be their prime audience for something like this?
[00:36:19] Speaker A: So, the Hadron 640, like, this new Hadron sensor that we're looking at that's like the size of a quarter, is two companies that are trying to make a drone in the United.
In the United States or for the United States that meets these NDAA requirements. So the country of origin, the ban, all this stuff that's being discussed, you can't just go buy the chips and sensors and cameras from China and then put them together in the United States. You have to buy products that are sourced from the US or from NATO approved ally countries.
And Flir has been known for ever as just very high quality thermal forever. And that's why DJI started working with them. But they were probably charging DJI a significant amount of money for every sensor they sold them. And it got the point where it's like, hey, Amazon effect, you can kind.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Of see the pricing on this thing. It's what, 3000? $503,872.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you have. Is that.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: I went ahead and pulled up one of their.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: On their page.
[00:37:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I was looking at the specs for it, but it looks like that's a part of a kit.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, go ahead.
Oh, yeah, it's. This is for enterprise. These, these are. This is to put on a drone that's gonna cost minimum ten grand.
[00:37:58] Speaker C: Right. So this is like, they. They have an audience lined up specifically like, hey, this is. This bill's coming up. We were gonna prep. Seems like they know what they're doing with that.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And so this right here is a video of teal drones.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: So.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Teal drones, what I've mentioned the teal to Red Cat company. They are a defense manufacturer. They are, they. They sell the defense. So multi vehicle control.
Right. This company, Teal, is making drones, but they're focused on all the other things. So they can just buy this camera for three grand. But again, they're not buying one. Right? Teal's not buying one drone.
And by the way, George Mateus, I think Miriam had mentioned in our first episode, this kid, like, started this company. See right there, Teledyne Flir. You can see the camera integrated. He, like, started the company when he was in high school, I think.
But it's huge play on marketing and advertising and like, you know, showing people what things could be and then seeing what, you know, what they really are. And then when you just look at where it is compared to the China stuff, we're behind. We're a little bit behind, but it's american. So, yeah, this drone right here, and then there's. There's, you know, other organizations.
I'm trying to think. I just. From pulling off top of my head, I can't.
Can't even remember. But, yeah, it's. Companies that are manufacturing, like here in the US, don't want to use chinese product because of country of origin. And you're manufacturing drones that are going to be 1012, 15 $20,000 where people expect high resolution thermal, high megapixel zoom capability, all that. So that's what they're doing. They're releasing that product. They're saying, hey, you build the drone, we'll make you the camera.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: It gets insane performance for that footprint as well, I'd like to say. It's not very big.
It packs a very big punch.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: Yeah. For the weight and then the integration and then power consumption. Like, there's so many things, challenges to when you look at a drone. It's not just hardware. They've literally taken a phone, they've taken a camera, and they found a way to make it fly, stabilize. It gets really smooth quality.
So, design and development of the. The payload itself, the camera, the payload, you got to consider, well, how much power is available, right? What's the power consumption going to be? What's the functionality? What's the weight? What's the. And they really have created, like, a plug and play sensor that checks a lot of boxes. It's not the cheapest, but at the end of the day, if you're going to start selling a lot of drones, your cost, your acquisition cost with flir is going to go down. Right. The more units you buy, if you're going to make one drone. And that's the huge challenge for us manufacturers. Everybody has a great idea and can make a drone, but you can't create customers.
How do you scale it? How do you make more? More you can make, the less it costs. They're making EV cars in China for, like, five grand. Ten grand. You can buy an EV car in China for ten grand.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: That is insane.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Lug.
[00:41:36] Speaker C: I've been on a larger trip lately, so that's. To me, that's insane.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: And you've got Bluetooth. That's not, like, crappy EV car. That's like, a quality EV car. In the same quality product in the United States is $50,000. And so there's a huge ban on EV cars. You. You chinese manufacturers cannot import EV vehicles into the United States.
This is not.
This is.
You know, you could call this protectionism, right? You can call it nationalism, patriotism. Label it however you want. What it is, is GM, Ford, Chevy, you name the big us auto manufacturers, they're selling cars five times the price. The cost to do things here is outrageously high. The cost to get things is. It's. There is a lot of layers to all this, but when you look at the auto industry, ask yourself, the american manufacturers might be judging, but they're successfully making cars and servicing them. So there's a shit ton of jobs, right, that exist backed by these, this industry. From, from the dealership repair shops, go to a Honda or Ford, go to that dealership and see not just how many people are selling stuff, how many people are working on and maintaining those cars and those gas cars have a lot more maintenance requirements and things that ev cars don't. So there is, even if they hit a 200, like I read something that even if they taxed, even if they tax chinese ev cars 200%, you know, if they, they marked the price up 200% and import added a tariff when they came in, those cars would still be cheaper. They could, they could tariff the crap out of these cars, but they would still be less expensive. And they're fighting tooth and nail, big auto to keep it from coming in. And there's a lot of jobs that the auto industry creates. So I get it. But when you look at the drone industry, how many people are employed by this handful of american manufacturers?
And how many people are going to profit off of a ban of DJI drones, a handful of high executives at an organization?
Because at the end of the day in China, it's robots that are putting these drones together. It's not people.
It's advanced automated manufacturing where a machine is putting a screw and it's going down a belt, and there might be a couple humans that just kind of put and puzzle piece bigger sections together. Yeah, I probably just went off on a bit of a tangent there. Even sweating, I swore for the first time. So welcome. Welcome to Weekly Wings dronelife.com podcast. Appreciate, really appreciate everybody who tunes in and listen and just, you know, at the end of the day, this is, this is my, my, this is not my life, but this is where, this is where I work and in this industry, and I stay very informed. Just today I've had two conversations with people reaching out say, this thing passed. It really looks like we're headed closer toward a band of DJI drones. What should I do? I'm not going to be able to fly my drone. I'm like, guys, hang on to your drone. Because.
And I'm asking these questions. I'm like, maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I don't understand this, but if, if they ban DJI drones, all the police, and we can just, you know, get into how public safety is against.
I'm gonna bring this up because this is part of the conversation is relevant, and we're gonna get to the drone light show thing. Don't forget, folks, we have drone light show stuff. This wouldn't be weekly wings if we didn't talk about drone light shows.
The first responders are opposing.
Right. Inclusion of the countering CCP drones Act in the NDA, in the National Defense Reauthorization act. Right? So our authorization act. So what, what they're saying is this has now been taken and slid into a different. This is government, right? You take it, people don't like it. You hide it under something else that people do like. And when they did that, now it's like, oh, this is definitely going to happen because we know that the 2025 NDA is going to go through.
So everybody's now going, wow, this is. Here we go. Well, first responders, police and fire are coming out and saying, right? Over 800 fire agencies in California, along with public safety advocacy groups and law enforcement. These folks are all coming out and saying, we are against this.
We don't believe in this. Here's our key points of concern.
So then these, so then these people ask me, they say, they say, what's going to happen?
Well, do you think that the police and fire use these drones? Are they going to come take them from you?
Is somebody going to come?
If you're flying a DJI drone and arrest you, are we going to start putting people in jail?
Like, there's space and room? And how do you enforce this remote id? There's an article that came out that remote id went into effect, but does anybody have any clue how much that's being enforced? Do we have any people who have violated remote id? It's been in effect for however many months. Who's been violated? Who's been captured? Who captured, you know, who's been.
There's no numbers. It's just paper. It's just great on paper. It sounds safe and good and great for everybody, but with this, it's like, oh, the police officers who are pissed because they're getting their drones taken away. Were they going to come take yours away? No, no.
The National Guardian come in and, you know, is the president, oh, go get those DJI recreational consumer drones. So that's my first point there is that, hey, by the way, the folks who police our communities are actively speaking out against this. And then 0.2 was like, what is the federal government going to tell DJI? They have to shut their, their app down.
They have to shut. It's. All this firmware and software is, is in the remote. It's been said numerous times you can fly your DJI drone without being connected to the Internet. So if my DJI drone is over here right now and it's not turned on and it's not connected to the Internet.
How is the us government, or is the, is the government going to tell DJI, hey, you know that switch that we told everyone you have and is a big concern because you can shut everyone's drone off? Yeah, we want you to flip that switch because you guys aren't allowed to fly these drones anymore.
Or could somebody like, is the FCC gonna like, put something in the air, in the waves? And when you turn your remote on, all of a sudden your 2.45.8 isn't going to talk to your drone anymore? What the hell technology is that?
How in the hell is someone not, is your drone overnight not going to function because someone's going to tap into it when it's not turned on? That's not how these things work. So DJI is no longer going to be able to sell and import new drones into the United States. So that's how you, that's how you shut down DJI. You don't give them an FCC license and without that licensing, you cannot import your product through customs. So you, you use this other regulatory piece in order to prevent these vehicles from coming in. But once the vehicles, the ones that are already here.
And so I'm just speaking here. I'm not advocating for anybody to do, I'm advocating for people to speak out and do anything that they think would help to kind of raise awareness and prevent this. But at the end of the day also, it'd be like saying you can't drive Honda anymore. And then you go out on the road and 1015 percent of the cars are Hondas and you don't even have enough cops to pull over all the Hondas and you don't have anywhere to put them all. So I, I don't know, I suppose it could be like medicines, like if they're gonna paint. I'm gonna go, I'll go start, I need to start buying up DJI drones and maybe they're gonna have like a cash in day, bring your DJI drone down to, you know, town hall and, and, and put it in the crusher and we'll give you a $50 gift certificate.
Hell, I don't know. But you see what I'm saying? Like, how do you, how do you.
[00:50:42] Speaker C: You more concerned about that, enforcing this rule that we're in, trying to, that's trying to be input, I guess we should could say. But, yeah, I definitely see what you're saying with that. It's like, yeah, you know how many of us actually fly with DJI? And pretty much everyone I know is using a DJI product, whether they're an FPV racer, someone taking photos for real estate. It's very ingrained in our community here. It's going to be insane to try and divulge from that. I mean, yeah, I mean, we can try, but we'll see how that goes.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah, or it's. Or it's an autel drone. Going to be banned on a Holly stone drone. Like, just look on Amazon.
Just go on Amazon. Anyone that buys a $50, $100, $200 drone on Amazon, you're not buying in a. That's chinese.
So this isn't just DJI, this is the countering Chinese Communist Party, the countering CCP drone act. So the countering chinese drones. So there's $200. Those inexpensive vehicles that are made and manufactured with parts and components from China, you're not going to be able to buy those. And there's not. We'll have to look it up. I don't, I'm not sure. Skydio was like one american made drone, like the blue Skydio drone. It was $1,000, 1200 bucks. It was for the, for the recreational prosumer. And it did some neat things. Yeah, well, they stopped making them. Skydio went and did this, this whole thing and then they stopped making thousand dollar drones. And now the only drone they make is 25, 30 grand. So it's, it's really terrible. I mean, from a, from a commercial standpoint, it's not. I can't imagine, though, 19 drones working with folks.
[00:52:34] Speaker C: Well, I was just going to say, I can't imagine me like maybe six or eight time flies when I got my first drone, but I think 2017 or so, but I can't imagine having to. It was a very low entry fee. You know, you could get a very affordable drone at that time. And that's what kind of really propels people getting into it. What's the barrier to entry, at least in my thought process?
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Yep.
Yeah, 100%. It's not, it's, it's like boats too, you know, if you think about it like you want to, you know, you know, you like the water and you want to go out on a boat and just have a decent time. You can buy a boat for like 300, 400, $500, put a trolling motor in it. Hell, you could pedal it, paddle it yourself. You don't even need a motor.
[00:53:16] Speaker C: Sort out with a.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Then it's like, hey, I want to do this.
Paddling out with the canoe, right? Flip it. I'm paddling my canoe. Flipping you off in your yacht, right. A little Eminem thing. It's just whenever I hear canoe, that's what I think of, like someone in a canoe. Yeah. Telling the person in the yacht, you know, it's just like that. There's different levels here. If you want to go tubing, you can't do it in your dinghy, you know, you got to get a little bit bigger boat. But if you just want to get started and you just want to do a little fishing and just get off the shore, you know, and that's what's being potentially removed here because there's other products that are six, seven, 8910 thousand dollars that you could use and then just to touch on it, licensing. Right. So what we're also seeing, you can go on Amazon right now. There's a drone called the Cognito Spectre Air Cognito. Like, companies have already licensed DJI's firmware. So you can make the drone in another country and not China and you can license like DJI's workaround to continue to make money is they're just going to license their software to other manufacturers because at the end of the day, they're a business that wants to make money. Hey, if in the United States you can't buy drones with chinese parts and components and hardware, well, that's fine because we can always partner with a company that makes drones somewhere else and we're just going to sell them our software and they can brand the software however they want.
And that's literally what's happening. This has opened the door not for more american companies to become competitive, but again, it's opening. This is everyone always finds an opportunity and there's always something here and something there and someone that's always willing to find that, whatever that thing is and work around it. So power to the people, you know, however it is, you know, folks are going to continue to get drones and the industry will grow and continue to advance. It's just at what speed here in the United States will, will it advance? I said kind. It's like a divorce, you know, mom and dad and, you know, the kids, someone's telling the kids what they shouldn't, shouldn't use. Well, this is what's best for you and this is what's best for you. But meanwhile, the whole rest of the world is like completely fine with either mom or dad. So it's like they're telling you that that one or the other is bad. But you go to any other country, they're not banning it. It's gonna fly here and fly there, and it'll be neat. Well, we'll certainly have a lot to unpack in the, you know, in the time between now and then where there's going to be just consistent developments.
[00:55:56] Speaker C: Well, like the drone show. Drone light shows. I think this will reoccur again. I think this is going to be an ongoing topic, one of those long term pieces. So we'll definitely be circling back.
[00:56:09] Speaker A: And so to transition the last topic and bring this video up, because we're coming, you know, up on time here is. Is think of light show drones. If you're a company who purchased light show drones from China, you know, are you going to be able to operate that drone in the United States?
And I don't know. I think Korea and some other countries have manufactured these things. So it's maybe one or two people might get legally impacted, but I don't know. So we're seeing here, as we're coming into the end of the episode, Samuel brought this up because Samuel is just constantly solicited all day with drone light show videos.
What are we looking at here, Samuel?
[00:56:57] Speaker C: We have a D day presentation of kind of amalgamation of drones presenting a light show. It's actually really cool to be watching. We have a few different formations. One was a plane coming in a battleship. All these different images coming together via drone over a rather large body of water. This whole plane is actually moving.
A really cool animation, not just 2d, but 3d elements in play here, I believe. Where is this?
[00:57:28] Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I was gonna go Port Smith, Portsmouth, uk. Yeah. Kingdom, huh.
[00:57:40] Speaker C: But yeah, it's.
A lot of drone shows are popping.
[00:57:45] Speaker A: So is the.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: My feed. So I thought this was one that kind of stood out just with the whole remembrance of D Day. And they're doing a very tasteful presentation of it, too.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of movement on that. The first video, I think it's a Mustang, but yeah, look like a props are rotating and the planes moving.
[00:58:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:58:15] Speaker A: Yeah, you have the actual prop rotating. The aircraft is rolling.
And even this, the one of the parachutists there was.
[00:58:26] Speaker C: You can see that, the 3d string that at first.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: That'S so.
[00:58:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that's wild.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: And then battleships moving, too.
[00:58:40] Speaker C: Mm hmm.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: And then you mentioned, too, how the water there. So for folks that are tuning in, watching, seeing it, you see the water, folks, visually, what it is is all these drones that are performing are hovering over the water. So for the entire time of the light show, if one of these drones were to kind of, like, fail, have a battery failure, a motor failure, you know, it's the, the, the risk to individuals, people and property on the ground is extremely low because the vehicle, barring a significant fly away in any one direction, north south or east west, that vehicle is going to go down in the water.
So probably pretty scary. I mean, definitely not this company's first light show here, but hundreds of drones. This has to be hundreds of drones. And each drones say $1,000. So over $100,000 of equipment, fully autonomous, hovering over the water.
You know, could you imagine, like, someone hit, like, you know, disarm, like, all drones and they.
[00:59:53] Speaker C: Gone.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: But again, when you're doing these complex operations, it's about mitigating risk. And by having these shows over water and areas where no one is, you're probably always going to get that approval from the FAA.
But super neat, super great way to commemorate D Day, especially with the fact of, like, can you imagine having participated in D Day and then to now still be alive into, like, see this technology unfold and display this, like, that would.
What a lifetime.
[01:00:37] Speaker C: It truly works. Generation.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: We can open up it. It's. It's got to be cool. It's got to be cool to know that your life has spanned from, like, that. But then the crappy thing is to then see how we're, like, circling back to just the same, similar, you know, political issues. So politics, geopolitics, and, you know, technology changes, but people, countries, cultures, you know, tend to stay the same.
[01:01:24] Speaker B: I'd like to note something. Next time they do the D day drone light show, if they ever do it again, they should definitely have some extra drones around the guns of the ship and, like, one really bright red one, just, like, shooting the gun at some point while they're flying, that looks like, make an explosion around it.
[01:01:45] Speaker A: And then just to have, like, like a line that isn't lit up. So you'd have a really long line and then, and then you would just have it be like. So it would kind of look like it's moving. Like they've done.
[01:01:56] Speaker B: Separate them a little bit, make them.
[01:01:57] Speaker A: Look like individual bullets like they've done with formula racing. They will literally line the track with drones hovering. And then they. They play. They play, right, the colors, and it activates. So it. The color is moving from one drone to the next, and it, and it gives this appearance of, you know, like, the drone itself is moving, so it's pretty cool.
Well, awesome episode today, as always, I've been into.
Right. We started out here, real environmental with the general Sherman tree, talked about the Sequoia National Forest. That was a really neat topic. Check it out. Article on dronelife.com, the video that we were watching. It's a neat video. We talked about the Skynet drone defense, you know, shotgun shells, I don't know, definitely not buying a case of 100,000. But if you got space and time and stuff, check it out.
Don't be a victim as they would say. That's hilarious. And then we talked about the, you know, the Flir Teledyne Flir Hadron 640, that thermal sensor and how folks are really integrating payload into their, into their drones in order to provide a really advanced flying system that also has the advanced thermal and visual capabilities that FLIR has always been good at providing.
Jumped into the first responders, opposed the countering CCP act and just kind of touched on other things. You can probably understand where, where I am at on that, on that topic. And again, we will continue to unpack this as, as it moves forward. But yes, as people have reached out, to me it does seem like as each day goes by, we are moving closer towards this DJI band. I know they're running crazy sales right now. So that's the other reason people reached out. Should I buy one? Should I? Yes. If you are, if you're a fan of DJI and you want to have quality DJI product to fly in the coming years, you should be purchasing a DJI drone, you know, if that's the position you're in. And then finally we wrapped up. We talked about the D Day drone light show because it would not be a weekly Wings episode without light shows being discussed. So really appreciate everybody joining, you know, nothing right off the top upcoming to mention we appreciate everybody for tuning in, listening, you know, please engage social media, reach out email, ask questions, comments on the YouTube. You can email Miriam iriam ronelife.com. you can also email Paul Rossi at 910 drones.com any questions you have. Terry Samuel, appreciate both you insights, inputs, questions and you know, stay safe. Look forward to seeing you both on the next episode.
[01:05:02] Speaker C: We'll be here next week.
