DJI Ace One
This is one of the earliest flight controllers that DJI made back in time before multirotors haven’t become popular. In 2010 the world was still flying on helicopters and multirotors were unknown for a wide audience. Ace One could fly in Atti mode, which is kind of a big deal for the drones 7 years ago, it included GPS and Auto-Take off features ad well as a complicated software for adjustments on PC.
Today it is hard to imagine that this they were selling this piece for 3499 USD. You can get 3 Mavic Pro Combos for this money today.
Product page of Ace One Flight Controller still exists here, on DJI’s official website.
PC Ground Station
Today, DJI ground station is just a software that you can download in App Store on Google Play. It allows the pilot to setup the missions and let the drone fly automatically. But back then you would need to purchase a whole PC with the GS software inside. It has very industrial look and weight. Using one of those back in time would mean that you are not just reach but also very professional.
In our days most of the features are available for everybody in DJI GO and GS Pro.
You can check the old product page here.
DJI Dropsafe
Not many people have heard about the Dropsafe. But as the name suggests it’s just a parachute that can be fixed on S1000 or S900 drones and deploy in case something goes wrong.
Just like any parachute it can’t safe the drone from the ground impact completely, but it can definitely be useful, minimising the damage. But to be honest, I have not seen many pilots using parachutes on their drone. The main reason is that extra weight cuts the flight time by quite a bit and not everyone is ready to trade it off.
It is not available anymore, but you can learn more about it on the old product page here.
Manifold
The Manifold is a high-performance embedded computer specially designed for the DJI Onboard SDK. It enables developers to transform aerial platforms into truly intelligent flying robots that can perform complex computing tasks and advanced image processing literally on the fly. With the NVIDIA Tegra K1’s 4-Plus-1 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 Processor, the NVIDIA Kepler GPU that contains 192 CUDA cores in each SMX, and clock speeds of up to 2.2 GHz
Unlike Mavic or Spark this isn’t a toy for everyone, as user will probably spend more time programming it than actually flying it.
D-RTK GNSS
Another toy for professionals that not many people have heard about.
D-RTK GNSS is quite a nerdy name, but the abbreviation stands for:
D-DJI
RTK- Real Time Kinematic
GNSS- Global Navigation Satellite System
You can understand this as a more complicated version of GPS with the precision of 1cm horizontally and 2 cm vertically. It can keep the aircraft stable even in the event of strong magnetic interference. Yes, it sounds like a future, but don’t forget that at the price of $4599 it costs like a future as well.
Well, those were some cold DJI products that you might never heard about. We would appreciate of you share this article with your friends and follow us on social media.
