Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Yuneec Typhoon G wifi comparing the DJI Phantom 4’s Lightbridge

Yuneec Typhoon G

“I have been losing Yuneec Typhoon G wifi connectivity as of late. I look down and the display as saying it is trying to reconnect. This was a short flight. I was at 55 feet and 267 feet away. One flight I lost connectivity and it never re-connected. I hit home, landed craft, and had to cycle power to Typhoon to re-establish connection to camera. Any ideas??”

“I have had the exact same issue three times now…..but it displays the last connected still video frame instead of plain black….have to land, power down and wait for a new connection to get rid of the still frame video image stuck on the st10. …will test again to see if i was not keeping the st10 pointed directly at the Q500 within a 30¤ window.”

These are some cases from Yuneec forum, Yuneec Typhoon G wifi issues still bother some pilots.

Compared to Yuneec Typhoon G wifi, DJI’lightbridge is a great work. Lightbridge is a DJI proprietary communication link technology used to broadcast 720P live “near real time” video from a drone to the ground, over a mile, often 2+ miles. Lightbridge uses the same 2.4Ghz frequency band that Yuneec Typhoon G WiFi uses, however Lightbridge is much different than the standard WiFi communications other drone manufactures use (think Yuneec, Blade, 3DR). Lightbridge is a one way stream of data with no two way handshaking. It’s literally a broadcast of data, like TV broadcasters use from the top of hills. This is very different than Yuneec Typhoon G WiFi that requires constant two way “hand shake” communications with every packet of data. With WiFi, each data packet has to confirm a packet was received, and all 512 bytes in the packet was received intact. If one byte is lost, the whole 512 byte packet is sent again! This is where latency occurs. Resending data for one byte loss is a waste of time in the wireless video world of drone flying. Although wifi is very fast from a data point of view, the two way handshaking of the TCP/IP protocol WiFi hinders the goal of “real time” video, which everyone needs to fly drones FPV. There is NO TIME for resending packets when real time video is the goal.

When you reach the distance limits with Lightbridge the screen will typically show streaks and you’ll get a warning of connection weakness. Most of the time reconnecting is generally fairly quick, because there’s NO requirement for two-way handshaking to re-establish connection, like Yuneec Typhoon G Wifi. Lightbridge is much faster at re-establishing a connection when it reaches it’s distance limit.

Another weakness of Yuneec Typhoon G WiFi is wooded flight locations. Briefly going behind a tree with leaves can disrupt Yuneec Typhoon G WiFi signals and affect video a lot easier than Lightbridge. Wifi is more sensitive to lockups and disconnects with tree/leaf interferance. Trees contain moisture, a signal blocker, and will trigger Yuneec Typhoon G WiFi will lose a few bytes, triggering re-sending of large packets, impacting the latency and video consistency. Lightbridge reacts a little different with slight data is lost from trees. This looks more like video streaks or static, but you’ll always see an image, with a low latency of 100 to 200ms.

The post Yuneec Typhoon G wifi comparing the DJI Phantom 4’s Lightbridge appeared first on Drone Inner.

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