I see the Skydio 2 is now shipping, lots of photos and videos appearing online of people who have received theirs.
Anyone in GADC bought one??
I thought the first batch were only available in the US. I may have to get my sister who lives over there to send me one as a belated birthday present. 
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This is my understanding too. I believe the US are the test bed for the Skydio 2.
I am very impressed with this thing! How responsive when the guy changes direction and how it ducks the tree around 8:30-8:40 
Wow, that looks amazing. Would be cool having some shots of mountain biking through some quite tight terrain.
His face! maybe this won’t be a purchase then?? 
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Not sure what I think about this one. It’s starting to get some traction with an increase in YouTube videos as people start to get their hands on it. But the controller is an extra, right? I’ve seen people describe this as an “autonomous drone” - you are supposed to tell it where to go and then leave it alone. I understand that Skydio bought the rights to the controller from Parrot? It’s supposed to follow you around by means of a “Beacon”, so what happens if you forget your beacon or it runs out of power, is that your day done? Finally, I really like the folding architecture of the DJI (and copy) drones. It makes the whole thing more manageable.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents.
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Credit cards at the ready, people!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Skydio-2-Drone-With-Beacon-Controller-And-Extra-Battery-New/174186810016
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Whose can I borrow?
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Plus I think with a bit of clever programming dji could make mavic 2 follow the controller/Phone like a beacon.
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Using Litchi, you can use another phone as a “beacon” with any DJI drone that works with Litchi.
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You use this app, by the same company.
You can use it for the drone to follow you, or have it running on another (friend’s) phone so that it follows him, but leaving you in overall control.
Used it to video my friend driving his car. Works well.
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I bet the seller wishes they had more to sell, nearly $600 profit over the RRP. 
With regard to beacon/follow mode using a mobile phone, Arducopter has had this capability for quite a few years. The location data of the mobile phone, GPS data and barometric height, is sent to the flight controller via the MAVLINK connection.
Nidge
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The more and more I read about features that need adding to dji products the more I realise they have been in arducopter for years. It just proves that if the users develope it they get what they want and need. When left to computer “whizz kids” they need their hands holding and being told so it take 3/4 times as long.
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It’s similar to the point I made in DJI’s Spark forum sometime back.
Loads of folk complaining that DJI would not update the Spark to 4K, wouldn’t enable RAW, no Waypoints, no this that and the other. My point was not received well when I suggested they’d bought the wrong product even though they were aware of its limitations at the time of purchase. DJI did offer the features they wanted but in other models.
As for the Ardupilot environment it is quite scary sometimes how quickly new features are added and general improvements are made. That is the big benefit of an Open Source architecture. I’d hate to think what would happen if DJI got into the racing drone market with a closed flight controller… Oh hang on, they did, and it failed.
Nidge.
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I have watched a few of these videos about the Skydio autonomous drones and have mixed opinions on them from the videos alone.
The autonomous follow me with automatic collision avoidance is pretty impressive watching it dodge trees and then instantly climb up over wall is pretty cool.
The controller in the video doesn’t look like it would give you much control it looks a little toyish. But at $1000 it’s no toy (+$100 reservation charge)
It superceded the Skydio r1 and this one although a completely different design is also pretty good. Neither there is the option to fly with a phone app or purchase a controller to use in conjunction with a phone app.
I am just curious about them and wondered is it just a gimmick or should the bigger brands be a little concerned?
I bet I could make it crash
Apologies, I missed this thread. Thanks for moving it. Upon reading through it seems opinions are mixed.
I’ve not seen any mention of this new development until today.
Skydio’s new X2 UAV looks incredible. Somewhere mentioned a $2,500 price tag, but I wonder if it’ll be more as it has a FLIR Boson hi res thermal camera with 4x the pixel count of the Lepton camera in the Mavic 2 Enterprise.
Looks like they’ve upped their game and are aiming for a higher end market, showing military and commercial users.
The new controller look to be a major improvement, better than a bought in Parrot unit. Reminds me of the Typhoon H and DJI Smart Controllers.
If it’s all they say it is, I’d be really interested.
Look at the demo video and check out the size of the battery… Lots of capacity I hope, aerodynamic it ain’t!
Which means you didn’t use the search before posting. 