Here is the new DJI drone, also capable of BVLOS missions

Flying in the rain is now possible! Here is the new DJI drone, also capable of BVLOS missions

How many times have you wanted to carry out a job but pouring rain or adverse weather conditions did not allow it?

Until now this was only possible with the M300 RTK, a high-end (industrial) DJI drone. Today the range of drones able to fly in adverse conditions is joined by the DJI Matrice 30, explicitly ready for "heavy rain, strong winds, high altitude, even in icy and snowy conditions from -20°C to 50°C".

The M30 has an IP55 protection rating, higher than the IP45 of the M300 RTK.

What's also interesting is that the M30 is more portable than almost all of the company's other industrial drones (excluding the Mavic Enterprise range) and small enough to fit in a large backpack or a small case.

An interesting innovation is the self-locking arms that snap into place and can be folded simply by pressing a button. The design is much closer to the Mavic, the leading drone in the foldable category.

M30 folded.

The maximum flight time is 41 minutes, not a revolution in this respect.

DJI Dock: the real DJI revolution

The DJI Dock has an integrated weather station, surveillance cameras, antennas, 25 minutes of automatic fast battery charging and can support missions up to 7 kilometres away, ideal for BVLOS!

The Dock needs a dedicated power supply and Internet access, although DJI states that there is an internal battery for power outages and that it can support a 4G dongle (like the one found on the Phantom 4 RTK).

DJI M30T.

As for the camera, there are actually two Matrice 30 models: the M30 and the M30T.

The M30 features a camera with a 48-megapixel 1/2'' CMOS sensor with 5×~16× optical zoom and 200× digital zoom, a 12-megapixel wide-angle camera, 8k video resolution and 4K/30 fps photos and a laser rangefinder that can provide the precise coordinates of objects up to 1,200 meters away. The M30T is equipped with an additional 640x512 px radiometric thermal camera.

There are also obstacle avoidance sensors and the three-propeller landing solution already widely tested on the M300 RTK.

And the costs? In the presentation the company stated that the M30 starts at $10,000 for the M30, while the M30T costs $14,000. The controller with a 7-inch screen and IP54 protection for use in heavy rain is interesting. Two drone batteries and a case are included.

The RC Plus controller: note the water ingress protection around the joysticks.