The author mentioned DJI, creator of the phenomenally popular Phantom line of quadcopters, as a company which combined software and hardware to open new realms.<p>From my personal experience, their software is absolutely atrocious. Talk to anyone who has built more than a toy app using their SDK and you&#x27;ll be regaled with stores of insane hacks. For example, at least in the Phantom 2 days, they didn&#x27;t provide any method to determine the capabilities or model number of the quadcopter that you were controlling. As a result, my friend&#x27;s company had a hack that would rotate the camera gimbal until it hit a limit stop and use that angle to determine the model.<p>On the flip side, their &quot;range extender&quot;, a required component if you want to talk to a Phantom 2 from an Android&#x2F;iOS device, is really just an OpenWRT router acting as a 802.11g bridge.<p>There&#x27;s a lot to be said about improving quality of Chinese hardware and software, but it&#x27;s definitely not up to western quality levels yet.