Will DJI Phantom 5 be your drone?

What are the typical time frames for versions with DJI? What are the rumors concerning Phantom 5?

We scoured the internet to find all of the rumors, leaks, and allegations that are surrounding the drone that has everybody at the edge of their seats.

Design

The shell of the DJI Phantom 5 will be available in two colors (white and black) this will give it a sporty look and a glossy finish to it. The motors are firmly attached and stand tall while the top of the drone is mounted by a quick release propeller. These are raised in particular, so that the stators can allow the props to get out of the way and so that the brakes can be applied at high speeds.

Another upgrade that you will immediately notice is that to the Gimbal as well as the camera that has been fitted. Why don’t the legs retract? With the legs out of the way you could have a gimbal that rotates 360 degrees, you could put on shorter focal length lenses or you could swap out that lens for one-half of a 360° camera. Maybe the other side of the 360° could snap onto the top of the drone? Anything can happen.

Camera 

The Phantom 5 will have a better camera. The Inspire 2 has a 5K capable camera. We would be surprised if the Phantom 5 doesn’t follow suit with upgraded video processing.

It is capable of taking high-quality images which can also be streamed to the controller live. It is ideal for those who want to use it for surveillance purposes or just for appreciating mother nature and clicking still images of birds, sunsets, etc. The high resolution of the camera ensures that the pictures do not get pixelated, thus allowing you to enjoy them full later on.

It’s also rumored that, the Phantom 5 comes with a removable camera which allows you to replace it, upgrade it or even swap it out with a 360 degree or thermal camera.

The Flight Time

The Phantom 5 will have a longer flight time. The Phantom 4 Pro can fly up to 30 minutes.

The Phantom 5 has been rumored to have a flight time that is up to 30 minutes long on a single charge, but some are saying it can even go up to 33 minutes. Others are claiming that it could even be 40 minutes on a single charge, which makes sense if the rumors of a never before seen battery are actually true.

Others are also saying that when the Phantom 5 is in Sports Mode you can get more than the average 30-minute claim, which doesn’t seem all that true considering Sports Mode usually drains the battery faster. However, these are all rumors, so there isn’t anything too solid yet.

Range

The Phantom 5 will have a longer range. The Phantom 4 Pro has a range of 7000 m. We expect the Phantom 5 to have a range of at least 8000 m, but potentially even up to 10,000 m.

The Features

The Phantom 5 will have front, rear and side cameras to help it avoid obstacles. The side cameras will give the Phantom 5 full 360-degree obstacle avoidance.Top and bottom obstacle avoidance.

It’s rumored to feature a second FPV camera. A second stationary lag-free camera could allow the pilot to fly the drone with an FPV headset while a second cameraman operates the camera and gimbal. The Inspire 2 has this feature so the Phantom could follow suit, but only if they also add retractable legs.

We may even be getting a waterproof drone. How awesome would it be to fly your Phantom at the beach and not have to worry about getting it wet? They might not make all Phantom 5s waterproof, but maybe we can hope for a dual release with a Phantom 5W model that can handle the elements and take off out of the water.

We may also have newer flight modes that are going to be paired with older ones, too. For example, Auto Takeoff and Auto Return, similar to Return to Home, may be coming into play here. We may also see GPS, which has supposedly improved drastically, reliant features, such as TapFly, ActiveTracking, and features that do not need GPS while in Sports Mode. In fact, Sports Mode is rumored to have replaced Flight Mode completely for the purpose of providing 10 additional minutes to flight time, but we can’t be too sure yet.

One of the more popular rumors is when the release date is. Some say that it will be in April, while others are thinking it’s going to be much closer to the holidays. We expect the Phantom 5 will not be around until the second half of the year as there is no need for improvement because the previous newly Phantom 4 Pro are awesome, so why keep going soon?

The post Will DJI Phantom 5 be your drone? appeared first on Drone Inner.

How to take off/land your drone during sailing

 

Professional as Inspire 2 or small as Mavic Pro, you can order most DJI drones to take off/land with one button. Well, you may not want to do that when you’re on yacht/ship.

So today we’re going to talk about a few know-hows for flying drones above ocean.

1.Take off

 

There is a lot to consider to take off on ships: weather, temperature, wind, signal, as well as whether the ship is stable or spatial enough to take off.

If you’ve got quite a ship with spatial, unobstructed deck, of course you can set flight by simply put it on deck and press take-off button on RC.

However, if you’re on a speed boat/sailing boat, you’d better take off by holding your drone in hands in order to avoid obstacles like rope and mast.

If you’re going to take off the drone by holding its landing gear, I strongly suggest you to cooperate with your teammates. It’s difficult to keep balance on the ship/yacht.

Raise the drone above your head. Start the motor, when you feel the lift, let go of the drone.

2.Shoot footage

 

Make sure you have got good GPS signal before taking off, so that you can see Home Point on the map of DJI Go 4 app.

However, the map of the sea will be a vast blue, it’s hard to tell which direction the drone goes. Also, you may lost track of it easily with strong glows of sea.

 

Watch your monitor screen closely. Stay concentrated on critical flight parameters including battery level, speed, distance, altitude etc., and adjust parameters when necessary.

 

Do not go beyond your visual range. In this way, you can keep the drone safe while get what you want to shoot.

If you really want to let drone go beyond your sight distance, it must not exceeds the official transmission range. Otherwise the drone is highly likely to be gone. When you lose the video transmission, try to adjust your antennas to see if the drone can return.

3.Return and land

 

You need to refresh home points frequently as the ship moves. We strongly suggest:

 

 

1. Do not go beyond visual range;

 

2. Return and land your drone manually, and do remember to refresh home point frequently. So you can use RTH to make it hover near you, and then land it manually;

You can refresh home point in setting.

3. Land it manually.

Stay patient when it’s approaching the ship. With the ship waving, it’s quite difficult to success in one time. We recommend to get it with hands. If the weather is quite good, you can catch the landing gear very easily. When it gets windy, it’s quite difficult for us to finish it.

Do keep in mind: don’t put down your hands until the motors stop completely.

More Q&A

1. Can I use the drone to follow a ship/yacht?

 

Usually a ship moves around 20km/h, ocean liners may sail at 40-70km/h. You can command the drone to circle around the ship, you will get quite some good photos. Don’t go too far, though.

2. Can I fly it close to sea level?

 

Yes. But make it 5 meters above the water. In case waves smash down your drone or splash water into it. Remember

3. Can I take off when it gets windy?

 

DJI Inspire series can endure wind at 10m/s. You can use app to check the wind speed or consult the crew. Please remember 1 nautical mile/h=1.852km/h.

4. What can I do if I lost control over the aircraft?

 

Before taking off, you need to set the aircraft’s action if lost control. Set it as ‘return to home’. If you lost control over it, wait patiently at the last home point, there is a chance it would come back.

5. Any relevant video I can check?

We uploaded a video of our aerial footage acquired above sea, you can check that.

 

The post How to take off/land your drone during sailing appeared first on Drone Inner.

DJI Technology- Video Transmission

Multi-rotor aircrafts use wireless technology to transmit the images captured to ground devices, pilots can view the video in real time. To provide environment information and camera views in time, video transmission requires low latency, long transmission range and excellent anti-interference ability.

Video transmission is realized by either digital signal or analog signal. Usually drones without gimbal cameras apply analog signal. Despite that video rarely gets stuck or loses frame with analog signal, it is highly power-consuming. With transmission range being 2km, the transmitted power goes far beyond what is allowed by authority. Moreover, video streamed back is in standard definition, which is unsatisfying.

Three major video transmission technologies using digital signal are: DJI Lightbridge, OcuSync and Wi-Fi. DJI Lightbridge and OcuSync are DJI’s patent communication link technologies. With transmission range of 7km and ability to stream video as clear as 1080P, DJI Lightbridge and OcuSync outpace Wi-Fi video transmission greatly.

DJI Lightbridge

Fast Communication Link

Wi-Fi uses traditional protocol stack, so a handshake mechanism must be established between transmit end and receive end first. It takes several seconds to ten seconds to establish or re-establish the communication link (when step-out happens), leading to latency in communication. The communication in DJI Lightbridge is directly linked between physical layers, so the communication link is fast and prompt without protocols.

Long Transmission Range and Ultra-clear Image

Lightbridge is able to transmit 1080P video. With optimized compression algorithm, video can be streamed fluently on complex channels. Advanced codec algorithm and improved frame structure ensures demodulation process even with weak signals. Meanwhile, the RF circuit is optimized to receive weak signals without being greatly interfered by noises.

High Reliability

DJI Lightbridge 2 applies a wireless HD image transmission technology, which dynamically weighs transmission distance, electrical environment and image quality for best effect. In addition, Lightbridge 2 would automatically choose the best channel, switch to a better channel or adjust the band width of video when necessary. In this way, the occasion of losing frames and video stuck could be avoided as possible, increasing the reliability of wireless video transmission.

Multiple devices

Lightbridge supports multiple controllers to control one aircraft at one time. In a typical scenario, pilot would use master controller to command the flight, while gimbal operator uses the slave controller to adjust gimbal to finish complex shooting task. With multiple controllers connected, each of them could send order to aircraft via master controller, or receive video and flight data from aircraft via master controller.

2.4/5.8GHz Control Frequencies

Selectable 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz frequencies are supported by the Inspire 2. Generally speaking, a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi video transmission system is used with a 5.8GHz remote control link providing aircraft control. This is because if the video transmission and the remote control links use the same frequency, interference between the two may cause signal loss. This same rationale is why interference may be caused by other users of radio frequencies in surrounding areas. The Inspire 2’s new Lightbridge HD video transmission system uses a Time-division multiplexing mechanism to transmit both video feed and remote control signals on the same frequency. In urban areas, the 2.4GHz frequency band may suffer from high levels of signal interference from sources such as Wi-Fi routers and 4G base stations. As an option, the 5.8GHz frequency provides a broader communication bandwidth and has more available channels for transmission, making it more suitable for stable signal transmission in these types of environments. After powering on, the Inspire 2 automatically scans the environment and selects the band with the least amount of interference, ensuring optimum video feed quality and remote control reliability.

 

OcuSync

The Mavic uses DJI’s newly developed OcuSync transmission system. Part of the Lightbridge family, OcuSync performs far better than Wi-Fi transmission at all transmission speeds. OcuSync also uses more effective digital compression and channel transmission technologies, allowing it to transmit HD video reliably even in environments with strong radio interference.

Excellent Video Quality

Compared to traditional analog transmission, OcuSync can transmit video at 720p and 1080p – equivalent to a 4-10 times better quality, without a color cast, static interference, flickering or other problems associated with analog transmission. Even when using the same amount of radio transmission power, OcuSync transmits further than analog at 4.1mi (7km)*.

Stable Communication

OcuSync goes even further than optimizing the communication mechanism and parameters of aerial imaging. There are several video transmission systems on the market claiming to offer video transmission with zero latency. However, it should be noted that the physical layer of those transmission systems is too simple to adapt to changes in the environment. When affected by signal interference, the image quality of the video being transmitted will fall sharply. This means these systems are not suitable for far field transmissions and transmissions in interference-heavy environments.

Also, because these video transmission systems are not integrated into the whole system, latency will immediately start to rise up from 0 when working with devices including cameras and displays. OcuSync is able to strike a perfect balance between latency and receptivity, reducing latency to 5ms for remote controller transmission commands, 10ms for video data and 130ms for videos. More than low enough to ensure that Mavic is able to fly reliably despite interference. OcuSync’s integration with video processing, coding, and signal transmission systems also make it more cost effective. Before taking off, OcuSync will automatically scan the environment and choose the frequency band with the lowest interference, ensuring more stable video transmission.

Fast Communication Link

As Wi-Fi was primarily designed to connect electronic devices locally, it works best when connecting to nearby devices. As it was designed for short range, Wi-Fi systems use low cost transmitters that suffer from weak data links. This means that a Wi-Fi cannot detect weak signals or signals with interference. OcuSync however, uses many cutting-edge communication industry technologies to outperform Wi-Fi in terms of sensitivity, anti-interference, and anti-fading, as well as when flying at high speed. It also supports simultaneous connection to multiple devices.

Multiple Devices

As well as point-to-point video transmission, OcuSync also supports wireless connections to multiple devices. For example, you can connect the DJI Goggles, remote controller, and Mavic wirelessly to OcuSync all at the same time. You can also add an additional remote so that you can control the Mavic with two remotes or share First Person View (FPV) videos.

* Unobstructed, free of interference, when FCC compliant.

 

The post DJI Technology- Video Transmission appeared first on Drone Inner.

DJI Tech-Flight Controller

In recent years, multi-rotor aircraft has become the main form for drones. Compared to the helicopters, multi-rotor aircrafts feature simpler structure and cheaper cost; compared to fixed-wing aircrafts, multi-rotor aircrafts are easier to operate and ready to hover with less requirements for the flying fields. This helps explain why a wide range of drones from aircraft toys to industrial drones are made into multi-rotor ones.

All multi-rotor aircrafts are similar in mechanical structure where you only have to mount the propellers on the motor, yet their flight performance varies due to different flight controllers. The flight controller can ensure precise operation and stable hovering by controlling the motor speed, making it possible for beginners to quickly get the hang of drones through simple learning. So to speak, a drone’s performance is mainly decided by its flight controller.

Flight Status

Before attitude control and navigation, the flight controller needs to check the aircraft’s flight status first, which includes 15 parameters such as the three-dimensional location, three-dimensional speed, three-dimensional acceleration, three-axis angle and angular speed. As the multi-rotor aircraft itself is not stable, the motor power has to be constantly tuned for stable hovering and flying. Therefore, even for the simplest action of releasing the joysticks to keep the aircraft hovering, the flight controller has to consistently monitor the 15 parameters and conduct a series of “cascade control” in order to achieve stable hovering.

The first technical difficulty for the flight controller is to precisely perceive the flight status. At present, drones normally use GPS, IMU, barometer and magnetic compass to measure these parameters. The GPS can track the location, sometimes even the altitude and speed; IMU can measure the drone’s three-axis acceleration and three-axis angular speed, and obtain the speed and location through calculation; the barometer is used to measure the height above sea level; the magnetic compass is used for orientation and navigation.

Due to limited sensor design level at present, the data collected by these sensors will generate certain errors and might be disturbed by the environment, consequently reducing the precision of flight status. In order to guarantee normal flight performance, the data collected from different sensors should be fully integrated to conclude 15 high-credibility parameters. We call it as integrated navigation technology which makes the most of the advantages of the GPS, IMU, barometer and magnetic compass and integrates various sensors’ values through electronic signal processing technologies to acquire more precise status measurement.

Integrated Navigation

In order to improve the drones’ sensory ability and flight performance, apart from adopting basic sensors mentioned above, DJI also equips its popular drones with advanced vision sensors, ultrasonic sensors, and redundant IMU and Compass navigation system. For example, DJI Inspire 2, Phantom 4 series and Mavic Pro are equipped with these sensors and intelligent navigation solutions. The dual vision sensors can calculate the object’s three-dimensional location based on continuous images. In addition to obstacle avoidance, it also supports positioning and speed measurement. The ultrasonic sensor can help monitor the flight height. Thanks to the redundant IMU and Compass, when the system detects an inconsistency in one sensor, it switches to the other one, keeping your flight steady and reliable.

The intelligent navigation system in addition to these sensors can increase the drone’s accessibility to more environments and improve its reliability. The drones using traditional navigation system cannot fly stably in environment without GPS while the intelligent navigation system can improve the precision of speed and location measurement through visual sensing system with good GPS signal. With weak GPS signal, the visual sensing system can replace the GPS to provide positioning and speed measurement so that the drone can fly stably indoors and outdoors.

These sensors have significantly improved the intelligent navigation system’s data volume and complexity. Regarding the vision and sensors, DJI conducts several system reconfigurations for the navigation and flight control algorithm and adds new software modules and architectures, comprehensively improving the flight performance and reliability.

 Control Performance

Advanced control algorithm empowers DJI’s flight controller with remarkable control quality, featuring high control precision at normal flight state and ensuring stable and high-speed flight. The Inspire 2 can reach a maximum horizontal speed of 94 km/h, the Phantom 4 can reach 72km/h and the compact Mavic can reach 65 km/h, while other similar drones can only reach 30 to 50 km/h. High-speed flight requires high control quality and response speed in addition to powerful propulsion system. Apart from high-speed flight, DJI drones also support high-precision hovering and idling control, making for flexible flying and image composition.

While designing the flight controller, DJI not only pays attention to the control precision at normal flight state, such as hovering position and attitude control precision, but also particularly enhances the control quality for unusual flight status. In case of broken propellers, sudden clash, added weight or external force interference, DJI drones feature strong recovery ability and robustness and can survive various extreme situations, keeping your flight safe and reliable.

Fault Diagnosis

Before or during the flight, any tiny fault may result in flight accidents. If the flight controller can monitor and diagnose faults in real time, the probability of accidents can be dramatically lowered. The flight controller can monitor various flight status parameters such as vibration, voltage, current, temperature and motor speed and diagnose potential fault through these characteristic signals. Yet these signals are generally complex and irregular. Based on massive data mining and Deep Learning technology, DJI builds a fault diagnosis system to tell the fault probability through pattern recognition. The fault diagnosis system enables early forecast or emergency treatment of various faults such as broken propellers or IMU failure, helping you fly without worry.

The post DJI Tech-Flight Controller appeared first on Drone Inner.

Inspire 2, Mavic, phantom 4 pro, which is the easiest one to set up?

When you have Inspire 2, Mavic Pro and Phantom 4 Pro in hand, what to do with them?

Have fun flying, of course.

But which one is truly ready-to-fly?

With embedded screen on controller, Phantom 4 Pro is much faster to set up than the rest.

All in all, with so many drones this year, which is the best?

Portable, unexpected Mavic Pro? Xiaomi’s drone with bracelet?

Or Inspire 2 that raced with Tesla and Audi? (Link here)

We’d like to hear your thought on【Drone of 2016】

Vote for:

DJI-Phantom 4

DJI-Phantom 4 Pro

DJI-Mavic Pro

DJI-Inspire 2

Xiaomi- Mi drone

Zero Tech-Dobby

Yuneec-Breeze

Yuneec-Typhoon H

GoPro-Karma

Zero Zero Robotics-Hover Camera

Tecent-Ying

Flypro- XEagle Pro

Liveman F1

Feima Robotics- J.Me

PowerVision- Power Egg

DJI- Agras MG-1S

DJI- M600 Pro

Xaircraft- P20

Others

What do you expect for drones in 2017?

What makes your choice the drone of 2016?

Leave comments and tell us your story with drones.

 

The post Inspire 2, Mavic, phantom 4 pro, which is the easiest one to set up? appeared first on Drone Inner.