DJI's Latest Drone Can Fly In The Snow And Rain

Drone manufacturer DJI has lifted the covers from its latest enterprise-focused flagship drone, the Matrice 30, or DJI M30, in company-speak. The key selling point here is the IP55-rating of the machine that is touted to perform its aerial duties in temperatures ranging between a chilly negative 4-degrees Fahrenheit and all the way up to a searing 122-degrees. Moreover, DJI says that its latest offering can brave past high winds, a downpour of rain, and even icy and snowy weather at high altitudes. And just like the drone, the accompanying DJI RC Plus remote controller is also resistant to the elements with an IP54-certified build and can be used while it is raining.

To go with its resilient drone, DJI has also launched a weather-proof drone-in-a-box solution called DJI Dock that serves as a mission management station for charging and deploying the aerial vehicle. The station allows the M30 series drones to cover a pre-programmed route for reconnaissance and come back autonomously to the station for charging sessions. The in-built battery delivers about 41 minutes of flight time on a single charge. DJI claims that the mobile station, which measures less than 10 square feet and weighs around 200 pounds, can provide enough juice for a drained drone to fly again in just 25 minutes. Obviously this is not a drone for beginners.

But it's not just the M30 series drones that come with weather-proofing tricks. The DJI Dock has a climate-controlled inner cabin that can bring the drone's batteries to the optimum temperature for charging, even if the temperature outside drops to as low as negative 30-degrees Fahrenheit or goes up to 120-degrees Celsius. The dust and water-resistant shell is IP55-rated, while the internal components offer IP67-level ingress protection. Plus, there's also a 4G dongle port on the dock and a backup battery inside to ensure that the drone returns back safely in power outage scenarios.

Introducing the DJI Matrice 30 Series: the future of commercial drones

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— DJI (@DJIGlobal) March 21, 2022

DJI is selling the M30 in two flavors. The base M30 model starts at $10,000, while the M30T will set buyers back by $14,000 and throws a radiometric thermal camera into the mix. As for imaging hardware, the DJI M30 comes armed with a 48-megapixel snapper, which relies on a 1/2-inch CMOS camera sensor that can deliver up to 16x optical zoom and 200x digital zoom, twice that of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. There's also a 12-megapixel ultrawide-angle camera onboard that sits alongside a laser rangefinder for more accurate object recognition and positioning from up to 1.2 kilometers away. The main camera can also capture 8K photos, while 4K videos are capped at 30 frames per second.