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A drone can lift itself only through the power of a solar panel
(thelemmy.club)
Some amazing engineer built a drone that can lift its own weight using only the electric power that it gets from an on-board solar panel and nothing else (no battery).
Video: I Built a Solar Powered Drone and it WORKS by Luke Maximo Bell
This is excellent, now pair it with a lightish battery to fill in any gaps in sun exposure and add lora and this is the start of emergency deployment of meshtastic. Imagine just tossing one of these up and it can stay up all day.
Oh and give it the ability to switch to glider mode so it can "land" without damage.
Uh no. This thing is really fragile and at the limit of what's technologically feasible. It won't survive in any real world application.
Yet.
Sure. Technology moves on. This sort of thing may well be commonplace in a few years.