New P3P new cooling fan on 4K camera

I have the p3p and always hear the hiss of the fan everytime i switch on the bird. So i think it run continuously as soon as the bird powers on
 
The DSP chip is indeed in the P3P's gimbal so if you replace your P3A camera with the P3P model you WILL have a full-blown, fully-functional, P3P. In fact you will want to update the firmware with the P3P version to complete the transformation.

That's really interesting.
I damaged the gymbal on my P3A last week and decided to use that as an excuse for a complete camera replacement.
I believed that if I put a 4k camera on it then I would effectively have a P3P.
So I am hoping that dedicated processing chip vs shared chip you mention is on the video board that gets swapped out with the camera, and not the main board.
Do you know?

And that 5x improvement in live streaming bandwidth, I doubt if I get that from just swapping the camera and its circuit?
I've not seen any problem with video rate on the P3A displaying on an Ipad Mini, but for anyone live streaming to Youtube I guess it could be important.
 
Your P3P actually has two fans. One on the gimbal & another on the Lightbridge module. The Advanced only has the fan on the Lightbridge board.

I have the p3p and always hear the hiss of the fan everytime i switch on the bird. So i think it run continuously as soon as the bird powers on
 
This is very disapointing news! I was just about to order a P3P camera for my P3A but will hold off until we can confirm that the fan will NOT operate even after flashing the P3P firmware onto a P3A.

Andy, after upgrading to the P3P camera, does the live video on your phone or tablet look much better than with your P3A camera?
 
I'm pretty sure it will work. Just needs the correct firmware across the board. The cooling fan on the camera is connected directly to the cameras top board. Meaning the camera firmware is responsible for running it. So maybe just a defective camera ?


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You are correct. The camera fan is integrated directly into the upper gimbal board. Installing a P3P camera on a P3A transforms the latter into a full P3P. At that point the FW will only permit install of P3P versions.

I'm pretty sure it will work. Just needs the correct firmware across the board. The cooling fan on the camera is connected directly to the cameras top board. Meaning the camera firmware is responsible for running it. So maybe just a defective camera ?


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Are y'all talking about switching just the camera part or the camera and gimbal? I was under the impression the cameras were the same and the gimbal on the P3P made it 4K.
 
The camera assembly (the camera / gimbal are one unit essentially


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I can hear the fan running as soon as my P3P is turned on.
That housing is one heck of a heat sink!
Fly safe ...
 
I was talking about replacing the entire camera/gimbal unit. I consider the unit to be the camera since DJI doesn't offer the components separately.

The sensor in the Advanced camera is 2.7K vs 4K in the Pro. The gimbal controller board on the Pro includes a separate processor chip & cooling fan not found on the Advanced. This accounts for why a Pro camera unit is about $120 more than an Advanced unit

Are y'all talking about switching just the camera part or the camera and gimbal? I was under the impression the cameras were the same and the gimbal on the P3P made it 4K.
 
This is very disapointing news! I was just about to order a P3P camera for my P3A but will hold off until we can confirm that the fan will NOT operate even after flashing the P3P firmware onto a P3A.

Andy, after upgrading to the P3P camera, does the live video on your phone or tablet look much better than with your P3A camera?

Maplin in the UK is the only Phantom parts supplier I can find that is actually claiming that this part is an compatible upgrade to the P3A. To me that is interesting. Have you heard anyone other than P3 users claiming that it is? Maplin are now raising this with DJI to clarify if what DJI Technical support wrote to me is true. I will also filter through this forum for anyone that has made the upgrade and ask them directly if they can see that little fan spinning or not. I already see comments that some P3P fans are not spinning. I am sure some will say "Hey, its not needed anyway!" But if my high performance PC Graphics card was fitted with a cooling fan, I would not be at all happy if that fan never went round.

As to the live video: There was nothing wrong with the quality of the video feed I had with the HD camera, and I've noticed no improvement with the 4k camera (that is when viewed on an iPad Mini Retina). Actually at 1km range in flat country today I had some (very brief) drop outs, which I have not seen before, and could be caused by trying to transmit a higher bit rate.

I would caution about hoping too much for the quality of the 4k recording too. Per pixel the bitrate is dramatically reduced compared to HD.
Basically it should be 4x higher to capture the same level of detail per pixel. And it is in reality only 50% higher: 40Mbps goes up to 60Mbps.
In Sony Vegas if I zoom up the 4k by 200% I can see the image quality is much poorer than unzoomed HD from the same camera.
So if you were hoping to be able to zoom and pan 4k by a factor of 2 and use as 1080 footage I would say: think again.
My view is that Sony would not dare to launch a 4k consumer camcorder that had such limited image quality.

Most people I think are just noting the visual improvement from HD to 4k in split screen comparison. Its true there is an improvement. But not as much as there should be.
Not as much as there will be in 4k cameras launched this year I would bet.
I will go back to P3A happy that I have explored the P3P capabilities and decided that P3A was anyway the right choice for me.
Maybe it will also give me an easier excuse to upgrade in the future when DJI launch Phantom 4 with a truly professional 4k camera!

The P3A really is a ground-breaking quality flying HD camcorder which offers us quite literally a new dimension in movie making.
I am going to make the most I can of it (before the geofences go up!!)
 
I was talking about replacing the entire camera/gimbal unit. I consider the unit to be the camera since DJI doesn't offer the components separately.

The sensor in the Advanced camera is 2.7K vs 4K in the Pro. The gimbal controller board on the Pro includes a separate processor chip & cooling fan not found on the Advanced. This accounts for why a Pro camera unit is about $120 more than an Advanced unit
 
Just checked and my fan on the lightbridge is on but the gimbal fan is not running constantly on brand new p3pro

Turns on after a few mins of use I'm guessing once a certain temp has been reached, but no way to check for certain.

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Last edited:
Dirty Bird,
I am not saying its a fact but there have been an awful lot of people in the last months stating this in different ways "The engineers at DJI already confirmed it's exactly the SAME Sony Exmor 1/2.3 CCD used in the Pro and Advanced. The only difference is that the software in the Advanced is locked at 1080."
And now we know that without any hardware change the software lock on the Advanced can be shifted to 2.7k. Even more likely it is just the same sensor.
We can speculate whether this intermediate 2.7k step was just a marketing game, or whether really they felt it was not safe to go all the way up to 4k without a cooling fan.
But I am as puzzled as you as to why the fan driver would not be on the video board.
So far all I have is the fact that my fan does not come on even after 30 minutes of encoding 4k video and an external case temperature of >60degC, and DJI telling me that it never will!
 
Just checked and my fan on the lightbridge is on but the gimbal fan is not running constantly on brand new p3pro

Turns on after a few mins of use I'm guessing once a certain temp has been reached, but no way to check for certain.

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app
That's great info Canada.
So there certainly is a fan driver then. The fan is not just hard wired to the supply rails.

When you say 'a few minutes use' do you mean the Phantom is just powered up, or do you actually have to record 4k for the fan to come on?
(I am thinking that for anything less than that, the fan should not be needed - according to P3A design anyhow!).
My video card case at 60degC is hot to the touch. I would not put the back of my hand on it.
Does your fan come on before that temperature level?
I had been hoping that maybe the fan was only needed in direct sunlight at midday in the tropics.
But if its coming on for you in the depths of Canadian winter I guess that's not the case.
 
I have yet to power on my P3P but when I do I will be sure to pay attention to the gimbal fan behavior.

From a manufacturing point it may well be cheaper to use the same imaging module in the camera.

Dirty Bird,
I am not saying its a fact but there have been an awful lot of people in the last months stating this in different ways "The engineers at DJI already confirmed it's exactly the SAME Sony Exmor 1/2.3 CCD used in the Pro and Advanced. The only difference is that the software in the Advanced is locked at 1080."
And now we know that without any hardware change the software lock on the Advanced can be shifted to 2.7k. Even more likely it is just the same sensor.
We can speculate whether this intermediate 2.7k step was just a marketing game, or whether really they felt it was not safe to go all the way up to 4k without a cooling fan.
But I am as puzzled as you as to why the fan driver would not be on the video board.
So far all I have is the fact that my fan does not come on even after 30 minutes of encoding 4k video and an external case temperature of >60degC, and DJI telling me that it never will!
 
Maplin in the UK is the only Phantom parts supplier I can find that is actually claiming that this part is an compatible upgrade to the P3A. To me that is interesting. Have you heard anyone other than P3 users claiming that it is? Maplin are now raising this with DJI to clarify if what DJI Technical support wrote to me is true. I will also filter through this forum for anyone that has made the upgrade and ask them directly if they can see that little fan spinning or not. I already see comments that some P3P fans are not spinning. I am sure some will say "Hey, its not needed anyway!" But if my high performance PC Graphics card was fitted with a cooling fan, I would not be at all happy if that fan never went round.

As to the live video: There was nothing wrong with the quality of the video feed I had with the HD camera, and I've noticed no improvement with the 4k camera (that is when viewed on an iPad Mini Retina). Actually at 1km range in flat country today I had some (very brief) drop outs, which I have not seen before, and could be caused by trying to transmit a higher bit rate.

I would caution about hoping too much for the quality of the 4k recording too. Per pixel the bitrate is dramatically reduced compared to HD.
Basically it should be 4x higher to capture the same level of detail per pixel. And it is in reality only 50% higher: 40Mbps goes up to 60Mbps.
In Sony Vegas if I zoom up the 4k by 200% I can see the image quality is much poorer than unzoomed HD from the same camera.
So if you were hoping to be able to zoom and pan 4k by a factor of 2 and use as 1080 footage I would say: think again.
My view is that Sony would not dare to launch a 4k consumer camcorder that had such limited image quality.

Most people I think are just noting the visual improvement from HD to 4k in split screen comparison. Its true there is an improvement. But not as much as there should be.
Not as much as there will be in 4k cameras launched this year I would bet.
I will go back to P3A happy that I have explored the P3P capabilities and decided that P3A was anyway the right choice for me.
Maybe it will also give me an easier excuse to upgrade in the future when DJI launch Phantom 4 with a truly professional 4k camera!

The P3A really is a ground-breaking quality flying HD camcorder which offers us quite literally a new dimension in movie making.
I am going to make the most I can of it (before the geofences go up!!)

Andy,

Thank you for this information. The main reason I wanted to swap my P3A camera out with a P3P camera is for the quality of the live video on my phone/tablet to increase. (2Mbps vs 10Mbps) Also, I want to purchase HDMI fpv glasses and I hear the live video output from the HDMI board is awful with the P3A @ 2Mbps. I read that users with the P3P and Inspire 1 are seeing a much clearer video from the HDMI out due to the higher bit rate.
 
Andy,

Thank you for this information. The main reason I wanted to swap my P3A camera out with a P3P camera is for the quality of the live video on my phone/tablet to increase. (2Mbps vs 10Mbps) Also, I want to purchase HDMI fpv glasses and I hear the live video output from the HDMI board is awful with the P3A @ 2Mbps. I read that users with the P3P and Inspire 1 are seeing a much clearer video from the HDMI out due to the higher bit rate.
I'd never thought of that. But I can imagine that a 2Mbps video stream would not look nice if is right in front of your eyes in FPV.
I find it spooky enough to see the video image on my tablet from a tiny speck in the sky. But to be up there with it in FPV. Wow.
Next step VR gloves!
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