Remote ID Requirements starting Sept 2023

[majordomain]

Hello,

It is to my knowledge that starting Sept 2023, the FAA will require Remote ID on All Drones flying. I have personally reached out to AUTEL Enterprise Support asking for support on this issue. According to the FAA Remote ID Declaration, the EVO 2 Dual 640T Enterprise is not listed as a unit carrying a remote ID Apparatus Internally, that will will be activated via some firmware upgrade. This is a real issue since those who recently purchased an Enterprise V2 will have nothing more that a paperweight on their desk since they will no longer be able to fly their $5000.00 drone. The worst of this is that AUTEL had prior knowledge of this regulation, and instead of fixing the issue with the Enterprise V2, they continued to sell and bait customers by providing discounts on the V2 models. This action reflects on the character of AUTEL Marketing Team, and their lack of transparency on this issue. They moved to sell as many of the V2 Models knowing this would be an issue starting Sept 2023. When you pay over $4000.00 for a Drone that you can no longer use due to not meeting the requirements of the FAA, this presents a real issue. AUTEL should upgrade the V2 Models of those who recently purchased these units, at least in 2023, and be transparent that if you purchase a V2, you will not be allowed to fly the drone unless you add a 3rd Party Remote ID Module.

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

sometimes government regulations are painful. please tell us why you cannot get an approved 3rd party remote id module, attach it, and keep flying?

 

[majordomain]

sometimes government regulations are painful. please tell us why you cannot get an approved 3rd party remote id module, attach it, and keep flying?

sometimes government regulations are painful. please tell us why you cannot get an approved 3rd party remote id module, attach it, and keep flying?

It is no secret that this policy was already in the Works. All drone manufactures were aware of this requirement, and while other manufactures made provisions to meet this requirement by including the necessary hardware and enable it through the use of an Firmware Update, AUTEL simply avoided updating the drones they were selling, and made a distinction between a V2, and a V3 without going into specifics regarding the remote ID requirement. I am sure that if folks around the US would have been clearly informed that the V2 Version of the EVO2 Dual 640T did not include the remote ID hardware, as this information was purposely hidden from consumers, many would have opted to go with another brand that included the hardware with the firmware update to enable it. Instead AUTEL Marketing began to sell the V2 at discounted rates while omitting that fact that by Sept 2023 these drones could no longer fly unless they are fitted with a 3rd Party Remote ID, something that will cause even more problems as users will try to add these by themselves, thus breaking the drones and rendering them useless. I praise the other manufactures that clearly disclosed that this feature would be enabled by the use of a firmware update. Not to mention that the EVO2 Dual 640T runs for about $5000.00 in various markets. Since AUTEL had prior knowledge of this requirement, and yet continued to sell the V2 Units, it would be helpful if AUTEL swapped these units with the remote ID built-in for Drones that have been purchased within 2023. Many have made tremendous efforts to pay for these units just to simply leave them as paper weights since they will be no longer able to fly them by Sept 2023. Granted, this does not affect other Countries, but for sure the US. Furthermore, the information recorded in the FAA Compliance website reported by AUTEL is misleading. Listing of the EVO II does not make the distinction between the V2 or V3 of the EVO 2, yet hiding the fact that the EVO2 Dual 640T V2 may not include the Remote ID Hardware as with the V3 version of the EVO 2 Dual 640T. You will have to spend more money in order to fly your $5000.00 drone by adding a 3rd Party Remote ID Module.

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

i feel your pain because it's all very confusing to those of us who often frequent this forum and the internet so i can imagine what it's like for those who don't; must be very frustrating. unfortunately, i don't remember it like you do. in fact, that's not the way it went down, not at all. well, no wonder you believe it's all nefarious. you should have a good talk with the dji flyers, they're not happy at all either. lots of "issues."

not sure what to tell you except that horse has left the barn already since the time to fight these battles were long ago when the "rules" were being forced upon us. and you still haven't mentioned why you can't take the "easy road" and get the broadcast module. i can't say with certainty but my guess is other than getting ahold of one at the right price, there's nothing complicated about using one for the remaining life left on your drone. i've read that if you attempt to get one and you have a backorder, you can get a pass on flying until your ship comes in.

in a few short years, hopefully this is all behind us.

 

[pedals2paddles]

if you purchase a V2, you will not be allowed to fly the drone unless you add a 3rd Party Remote ID Module.

This is the solution for every drone that is pre-remote ID. There are tens of thousands of them. Your $5,000 enterprise drone is not grounded and unable to fly. You attach the external module, and you're done. Like everyone else with a pre-remote ID drone.

 

[majordomain]

This is the solution for every drone that is pre-remote ID. There are tens of thousands of them. Your $5,000 enterprise drone is not grounded and unable to fly. You attach the external module, and you're done. Like everyone else with a pre-remote ID drone.

When you pay as much as you pay for an Enterprise Drone, such device should have been included inside the unit. Its not like they didn't know about this beforehand. Ironically other Drone manufactures had no problems including the Remote ID hardware into their drones and have them activated via a firmware upgrade. This knowledge was known to AUTEL. Yet they continued to sell these units without warning their customers of the upcoming enforcement. Car manufactures would have initiated a recall and corrected the issue at no additional cost. Now many will have to spend additional money on all their drones, just because AUTEL wanted to get rid of the V2, V3 Models, and not be transparent on this new requirement. In the end AUTEL will continue to hide this information and sell as many units as they can, regardless if users can fly their drones or not. Will AUTEL disclose on their documentation that these Drones will not be allowed to fly straight out of the Box when you purchase one? I don't think so. This type of action will hurt their sales .... We are now stuck with back orders and RID modules unavailable because everyone AUTEL Pilot will have spend more money purchasing a 3rd Party Remote ID Module. Changing the weight, and Air Aerodynamics of the drones. It is not an easy task to just slap an external Remote ID Module to the body of the drone, and expect the advertised performance specs to be the same ...

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

When you pay as much as you pay for an Enterprise Drone, such device should have been included inside the unit. Its not like they didn't know about this beforehand. Ironically other Drone manufactures had no problems including the Remote ID hardware into their drones and have them activated via a firmware upgrade. This knowledge was known to AUTEL. Yet they continued to sell these units without warning their customers of the upcoming enforcement. Car manufactures would have initiated a recall and corrected the issue at no additional cost. Now many will have to spend additional money on all their drones, just because AUTEL wanted to get rid of the V2, V3 Models, and not be transparent on this new requirement. In the end AUTEL will continue to hide this information and sell as many units as they can, regardless if users can fly their drones or not. Will AUTEL disclose on their documentation that these Drones will not be allowed to fly straight out of the Box when you purchase one? I don't think so. This type of action will hurt their sales .... We are now stuck with back orders and RID modules unavailable because everyone AUTEL Pilot will have spend more money purchasing a 3rd Party Remote ID Module. Changing the weight, and Air Aerodynamics of the drones. It is not an easy task to just slap an external Remote ID Module to the body of the drone, and expect the advertised performance specs to be the same ...

ok now you are just being dramatic.

you have a lot of valid points but most are misplaced. of course we all knew something was coming, we just didn't know exactly what. you can blame the faa for coming out with the final details long after the drone was designed and baked. making it impossible to go back and retrofit. you'll recall the faa gave a deadline of sep/dec 2022 to autel: stop making drones without standard rid after the deadline. if you have a drone made before the deadline that doesn't handle rid, you can blame the faa. if you have a drone made after the deadline that doesn't handle rid, you can blame autel.

all autel drones that are not standard rid have already left the barn and are located on retail store shelves and retailers and resellers warehouses and various other locations across the globe. autel was told by the faa that they have a valid and legal option to address those orphan drones and make them legal for all consumers to fly: it's called the broadcast module. and autel and many others (including dji) took that option because it's simply impossible to reclaim and refit those drones, physically and technically. if you don't like this option, call the faa.

a recall is done when there is a safety issue and it's usually mandatory when it's ordered by the government (since a company usually uses tech bulletin or voluntary recalls, etc). in this case, it is not necessary to recall the drone. the drone is safe to fly and there is nothing wrong with the drone. going forward, if you need to pay a fee, or get a license, or make a phone call first, or get permission from your parents, or....you need an external module, none of those require a recall (which includes packing up the drone, shipping back to china, and do what exactly)?

your car analogy is invalid because the government doesn't force these kinds of recalls on all calls, they grandfather them. whether it's a third brake light, a cat converter, a rear backup camera...cars never have to go back to the shop to be retrofitted to comply with a new law or regulation. recalls are for safety issues where you have to stop driving NOW and we fix it NOW before you are safe to operate. don't abuse the recall process trying to comply with a regulation. imagine if all mobile phones had to go back to the factory so they could be compatible with amber alerts or have a gps antenna added so 911 calls could be pinpointed. those were rolled in with all new phones have the feature, eventually old ones die off.

there's nothing to disclose on the box. the drone will be "allowed" to fly, there's nothing stopping it. if you can't get a broadcast module, blame the free market; supply and demand. can't blame any business for not wanted to get involved in a government cluster but that is apparently what happened. who in their right mind would build 100,000 modules only for the FAA to say "never mind" which apparently they are about to do.

 

[majordomain]

I believe the Sept 2023 deadline has been suspended by the FAA ...

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

who in their right mind would build 100,000 modules only for the FAA to say "never mind" which apparently they are about to do.

I believe the Sept 2023 deadline has been suspended by the FAA ...

shortly, we will know for sure.

imagine if you were crazy enough to build 50,000 modules for your first run and another 75,000 for your second run trying to get ahead of the pent-up "demand" only to have the rug pulled from under you by the faa? if they postpone until december, we still might get a healthy supply. if they suspend indefinitely or until mid next year you can kiss your inexpensive tiny broadcast module goodbye. fool me once....

 

[CrashRecovery]

So the OP isn't far off saying Autel isn't playing along with the RID rules. Here is a screen shot of the beginning part of a conversation I'm having regarding my unit. I'm in the beginning phase of going commercial and I use mine for emergency calls I respond to with my volunteer department. Multiple times my videos and pictures have been requested by my states regional fire marshal to be used for their investigation. In the future, I don't want my media to be thrown out in court because the aircraft wasn't registered with the faa and the arson case gets thrown out. Because I work for an online hobby retailer as one of ther flight technicians they are sending a stand alone unit we are selling to me so I can play with it and gain knowledge on how to hook it up and everything else.
But back to the email. Lucy has repeatedly said my V2 unit is RID compliant but has yet to tell me where to find the number I need to register the unit. They have my units serial number so they can look in their database and see if it is or isn't compliant. To me that's being deceptive and since this date has been posted for almost a year now, you would think they would have a solution. You can go to Autel's site and buy both versions of the V2, only difference is one has the rtk module. So if it's a firmware update just push it out. If it's a module they added, offer it for sale especially for those like me who bought their unit within the last year after being told that it was RID compliant.
Don't get me wrong, I love my unit and it's been an awesome purchase so far, I'm just not thrilled about being lied to.

 

[pedals2paddles]

TLDR. In the time it took to write multiple page long dramatic complaints, you could have purchased and attached the external module that everyone else uses.

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

So the OP isn't far off saying Autel isn't playing along with the RID rules. Here is a screen shot of the beginning part of a conversation I'm having regarding my unit. I'm in the beginning phase of going commercial and I use mine for emergency calls I respond to with my volunteer department. Multiple times my videos and pictures have been requested by my states regional fire marshal to be used for their investigation. In the future, I don't want my media to be thrown out in court because the aircraft wasn't registered with the faa and the arson case gets thrown out. Because I work for an online hobby retailer as one of ther flight technicians they are sending a stand alone unit we are selling to me so I can play with it and gain knowledge on how to hook it up and everything else.
But back to the email. Lucy has repeatedly said my V2 unit is RID compliant but has yet to tell me where to find the number I need to register the unit. They have my units serial number so they can look in their database and see if it is or isn't compliant. To me that's being deceptive and since this date has been posted for almost a year now, you would think they would have a solution. You can go to Autel's site and buy both versions of the V2, only difference is one has the rtk module. So if it's a firmware update just push it out. If it's a module they added, offer it for sale especially for those like me who bought their unit within the last year after being told that it was RID compliant.
Don't get me wrong, I love my unit and it's been an awesome purchase so far, I'm just not thrilled about being lied to.

"They have my units serial number so they can look in their database and see if it is or isn't compliant."

No they can't.

"To me that's being deceptive and since this date has been posted for almost a year now, you would think they would have a solution."

No they don't.


Sir, don't be naive. Who are you going to believe, the people that give you information on the forum or Lucy at "Autel?"

Autel isn't playing along with the RID rules

Of course they are. Autel has one one rule to abide by: "Stop cranking out drones from your factory without standard RID." That's all. And they have. Anything other expectations and you're in the ether; you're dreaming.

 

[JerryPikePhoto]

Forgive my ignorance but I found this video yesterday that seems to assume remote ID has been pushed back again, for an indefinite amount of time. He does not list any sources however and I cannot find anything online about this but he is a fairly well known figure in the drone space and I’m not sure why he would go spewing nonsense for no good reason. Anyone have any more info on this?

 

[christr]

Forgive my ignorance but I found this video yesterday that seems to assume remote ID has been pushed back again, for an indefinite amount of time. He does not list any sources however and I cannot find anything online about this but he is a fairly well known figure in the drone space and I’m not sure why he would go spewing nonsense for no good reason. Anyone have any more info on this?

This document last updated by the FAA a few days ago says Sept 16th 2023

https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/aircraft_certification/aircraft_registry/RID

Until the FAA actually publishes something that states otherwise we have just 2 more weeks to comply.

 

[CactusJackSlade]

It took me four attempts (Direct email, Facebook etc) to contact Autel to finally get the confirmation that the EVO2 Dual 640T V2 does NOT have RID capability and you will need to get an add on module. This, is why I believe they are on sale so cheap compared to DJI's equivalent. Given a module will be costing anywhere from $50 - $200 that, for "flagship" drone does not take it off the board for me anyway. I still think about getting one at their current price.

Here was the Autel response after three weeks of trying:


Thank you for contacting Autel Robotics.

EVO II series V1 and V2 (including the Dual 640T) need external RID, other models are supported and do not need external RID module.
You will need to purchase from a third party manufacturer as we do not manufacture that device.
I am including a link to our authorized vendors as they may have the RID modules already or can direct you where to purchase them. Authorized Partners-Autel Robotics Enterprise Drone, Quadcopter & UAV for Sale | Leader in Drones ;
Also, one company is called Dronetag you are suggested to reach out to.

Your kind understanding will be much appreciated.

Michael| After-sales Technical Support

 

[G_G]

So the OP isn't far off saying Autel isn't playing along with the RID rules. Here is a screen shot of the beginning part of a conversation I'm having regarding my unit. I'm in the beginning phase of going commercial and I use mine for emergency calls I respond to with my volunteer department. Multiple times my videos and pictures have been requested by my states regional fire marshal to be used for their investigation. In the future, I don't want my media to be thrown out in court because the aircraft wasn't registered with the faa and the arson case gets thrown out. Because I work for an online hobby retailer as one of ther flight technicians they are sending a stand alone unit we are selling to me so I can play with it and gain knowledge on how to hook it up and everything else.
But back to the email. Lucy has repeatedly said my V2 unit is RID compliant but has yet to tell me where to find the number I need to register the unit. They have my units serial number so they can look in their database and see if it is or isn't compliant. To me that's being deceptive and since this date has been posted for almost a year now, you would think they would have a solution. You can go to Autel's site and buy both versions of the V2, only difference is one has the rtk module. So if it's a firmware update just push it out. If it's a module they added, offer it for sale especially for those like me who bought their unit within the last year after being told that it was RID compliant.
Don't get me wrong, I love my unit and it's been an awesome purchase so far, I'm just not thrilled about being lied to.

Whether or not your drone was broadcasting RID is irrelevant to the admissibility in court of any media evidence gathered by it! You, as the pilot and videographer merely authenticate the media you captured with it. RID has nothing to do with the camera on the drone!

 

[kenautelevo2pro]

Whether or not your drone was broadcasting RID is irrelevant to the admissibility in court of any media evidence gathered by it! You, as the pilot and videographer merely authenticate the media you captured with it. RID has nothing to do with the camera on the drone!

he said "registered" and using a drone that is not properly registered with the FAA could like affect the media content that it gathers. Just like if the police use an unregistered radar unit....fine if it has been properly tuned and the target speed of the offender was visually observed to be speeding. but the officer runs the risk of his unit not be approved and registered for law enforcement usage (for whatever reason) and therefore the evidence gathered by the radar unit could be invalidated. Not a guarantee but risky...and unnecessary risk. otherwise, you are correct, the registration and the rid transmission don't affect the video at all.

 

[G_G]

he said "registered" and using a drone that is not properly registered with the FAA could like affect the media content that it gathers. Just like if the police use an unregistered radar unit....fine if it has been properly tuned and the target speed of the offender was visually observed to be speeding. but the officer runs the risk of his unit not be approved and registered for law enforcement usage (for whatever reason) and therefore the evidence gathered by the radar unit could be invalidated. Not a guarantee but risky...and unnecessary risk. otherwise, you are correct, the registration and the rid transmission don't affect the video at all.

You are conflating the camera which captures the video with the drone flying it. In your analogy, the proper comparison would be if the radar officer's car's LoJack system for locating his car wasn't working at the time of the radar ticket, or his police car's license registration tag was expired. Totally irrelevant to the admissibility of the radar evidence. A drone not transmitting RID doesn't make the video captured with it any less valid or admissible, nor would the lack of registration of the drone. The pilot is authenticating the video captured with the camera, not the drone. No different than stating I set up my tripod here and turned on the video camera. The brand or type of tripod, or even if it was a stolen tripod, is irrelevant. The drone is just a tripod in the sky.

A separate issue is a technical violation of the pilot for not registering the drone with the FAA or flying without RID. However that is between the pilot and the FAA, and not relevant to the admissibility in court of the video evidence that the drone's camera captured.

Same would be true of a recreationally flown drone that captured a crime. That video evidence is also fully admissible, with proper authentication by the pilot/ videographer in court, whether or not the pilot was registered, and whether or not the drone was broadcasting RID, after it becomes required.

 

[JoeLypowy]

Hello,

It is to my knowledge that starting Sept 2023, the FAA will require Remote ID on All Drones flying. I have personally reached out to AUTEL Enterprise Support asking for support on this issue. According to the FAA Remote ID Declaration, the EVO 2 Dual 640T Enterprise is not listed as a unit carrying a remote ID Apparatus Internally, that will will be activated via some firmware upgrade. This is a real issue since those who recently purchased an Enterprise V2 will have nothing more that a paperweight on their desk since they will no longer be able to fly their $5000.00 drone. The worst of this is that AUTEL had prior knowledge of this regulation, and instead of fixing the issue with the Enterprise V2, they continued to sell and bait customers by providing discounts on the V2 models. This action reflects on the character of AUTEL Marketing Team, and their lack of transparency on this issue. They moved to sell as many of the V2 Models knowing this would be an issue starting Sept 2023. When you pay over $4000.00 for a Drone that you can no longer use due to not meeting the requirements of the FAA, this presents a real issue. AUTEL should upgrade the V2 Models of those who recently purchased these units, at least in 2023, and be transparent that if you purchase a V2, you will not be allowed to fly the drone unless you add a 3rd Party Remote ID Module.

Just purchase a Dronetag Mini and attach it to your drone and you can keep on using it.

 

[Tman1265]

Forgive my ignorance but I found this video yesterday that seems to assume remote ID has been pushed back again, for an indefinite amount of time. He does not list any sources however and I cannot find anything online about this but he is a fairly well known figure in the drone space and I’m not sure why he would go spewing nonsense for no good reason. Anyone have any more info on this?

Russ says the same thing