Hi guys! Back in the day I bought a DJI Mavic (1st gen) for my travels, when they were not so absolutely obnoxious about sending ALL your flight logs back to the motherland. As the obnoxiousness increased, I ended up installing a CFW (Merlin, I think) on the drone, so I could fly unrestricted and with no logged-in account on the phone (custom modded app), with the app requiring no callback to any server. But seems these days the drone is increasingly misbehaving. Might be due to old age, but it tends to not detect obstacles at all, and also doesn’t detect the floor, so landing is…hairy.

So I’d like to have some sort of replacement, hopefully with similar flying aids (GPS positioning and obstacle detection at least, more are welcome), and hopefully smaller & foldable… but without the need to call home at every damn time. Is this possible? What are the recommendations these days? Can newer DJI drones be modded in the same manner? Are the alternatives?

Thanks!