Be thankful that consumer/hobbyist drones haven't been banned entirely already (banning other model aircraft along with them as collateral damage).
Especially after all the footage of essentially-hobby-grade drones with familiar open-source flight controller software being turned into very effective weapons of war in Ukraine.
Or 3D printers! You can print scary "ghost guns" with them. And they're mostly made in China. Although maybe Stratasys will push for that next now that they're lost their stranglehold on the market.
That depends entirely on your definition of "behind".
The MK4 delivers pretty much the same quality at the same speed as the P1P.
Paying 30% more to get an open-source, fully modular, fully repairable and customizable product that's made sustainably with fair wages is not a huge markup.
I'd gladly pay 30% more to get an Android phone that's fully modular, open-source, repairable, upgradable and made in the EU.
That's... quite misleading? The MK4 with input shaping is limited by extrusion speed, not the motion system.
The printers are both pretty identical in performance today. And while CoreXY has significantly more headroom in case you'd like to upgrade the current bottlenecks, that's not an option with the Bambu printers anyway.
While Bamboo etc are one head in front of Prusa now, they are still very close in the context of printing weapons. I mean, neither are particularly suited compared to a CNC mill or lathe. And both have come quite a long way since what we had 10-15 years ago, when FDM for non-industrial users got started.
They could put anybody who assembles those parts into a drone into prison. Of course it would still be technically feasible to make one anyway, just as it's technically feasible to make an autosear, or for that matter a whole gun. Doesn't mean it can't be banned.
Doesn't stop them from making marijuana illegal and putting people in prison, does it?
That said, I think enforcement would be more effective for drones. Marijuana can be effectively enjoyed in the privacy of your own home, but that's only true for a limited extent of drones. They're noisy and usually flown out in the open where annoyed neighbors can narc on you. Furthermore, just my subjective guess, I think people will be more willing to break the rules to enjoy marijuana than to enjoy drones. Marijuana is very effective at making a shit life tolerable, so people are more willing to break the law for it (and alcohol, etc).
No, but them making marijuana illegal and putting people in prison for it didn't really stop millions of people from having regular access to it.
And it'll be the same here in this context. If the government wants to make drones illegal because people are using them domestically for vigilante/terrorism purposes that'll be quite difficult.
People regularly ran clandestine grow operations that used 100kw+ of power for years and were never caught. If there's a desire for drones to commit crimes than someone will easily be able to make a clandestine drone factory.
True but some efforts are way beyond what is done in agriculture. They for example have been mutation breeding[0] since it was discovered on much larger scale than public efforts. The mutants check all possible boxes except taste. Grow faster, drinks more, more THC, resistant to heat and diseases, likes light 24/7 even while flowering, all the same size, no branches, few leafs, easier to clone.
Whoa there big fella. Let's not denigrate weed growers with your broad brush trying to a make a point. Anyone that believes growing pot takes minimal effort clearly does not know what they are talking about. Maybe you can just drop some seeds in the ground somewhere, and maybe a pot plant will grow, but good weed will not be a plant of any value what so ever.
My joke was to ask who is in charge, the pot grower or the plants? You get people who don't know personal hygiene, cant cook, cant run an agenda, cant read a book, cant pay their bills in time, cant keep a cactus alive. They cant do any of those things if their life depended on it. Then all of a sudden they are busy every waking hour doing all of those things to perfection and they talk like professors. Not to mention the possible consequences. If the plants had legs, arms, a brain and access to the internet they would be doing and thinking precisely the same things. Who do you think has the pants on?
Low effort doesn’t mean zero effort. 19 states legalized home cultivation and many people are perfectly happy with what they get with minimal effort. Even in states where they can legally buy a higher quality product.
> not be a plant of any value what so ever
It’s long been a perfectly viable strategy to plant pot on public lands and then come back for harvest. That doesn’t mean people are tossing seeds randomly, but lower rewards are balanced by lower risks. Some customers are always interested in savings cash even for a terrible product.
I hope not, i'm pretty involved in the high power rocketry hobby and the materials/electronics and knowledge exist in the hobby to make something like a guided surface-to-surface rocket with a range in 10s of miles but no one does because it would instantly ruin the hobby for everyone. A friend of mine in heavy into r/c planes and is an embedded engineer so he has a bunch of autopilot stuff going on. I'm sure he can scale as high as he wants (he's also a private pilot) and fly a heavy payload to a point on a map autonomously. Again, no one does it because it would ruin the hobby for everyone.
Lots of people want to do this but the place for it is like a DARPA challenge not in the general hobby. If the authorities got wind of it then down come the regulations and no more hobby.
Yes, as a long-time fixed-wing RC hobbyist, it's generally the newbie idiots who do stupid things that threaten the entire hobby. Despite all the new rules (which I don't even bother to keep up with anymore), I still fly my planes like I always have. And just like always, I don't bother anyone and no one bothers me.
The problem for drones is easily weaponizable models exist off the shelf for people with malicious intentions and no interest in preserving the hobby. To weaponized a rocket requires more intellectual investment.
Especially after all the footage of essentially-hobby-grade drones with familiar open-source flight controller software being turned into very effective weapons of war in Ukraine.