Let us know how that works out. I can't imagine owning a craft without Lightbridge, or a similar communications technology, but that's me.
Phantom 5 Leaks
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Let us know how that works out. I can't imagine owning a craft without Lightbridge, or a similar communications technology, but that's me.
GadgetGuy
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A word of caution. Swap cards every time you land. Each flight may be the last time you see your aircraft. Losing an entire road trip's videos because all your eggs were in one basket that didn't RTH would be mortifying.
Meta4
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There's no going back after you've flown Lightbridge.
And I wouldn't be very keen on going back to a camera with a small sensor like the old P3 again either after the P4 pro.
It's not about capacity, it's about redundancy. If I have 60 minutes of irreplaceable client footage on a single SD, it needs to be backed up. It's a hassle and waste of time to pop the SD after every battery and backup to a laptop. Dual SD slots handle the redundancy as you go. That's why all professional and pro-sumer level cameras have dual SD slots.
It's not "huge and clunky". It's a proper control platform that has all the functionality DJI still fails to offer in its garbage Ground Station that isn't even available on Android.
And yes, there's no reason to remove prop guards that are properly built to not block OA and not make the craft 50% larger like the current ones.
This isn't a good idea. If your craft is lost, now you have lost twice as much irreplaceable video with your plan. It's a much better idea to discipline yourself and take the extra 30 seconds to swap the SD card with each battery swap. I have about 8 cards, 5 of that are 32GB for 1080 captures, and 3 of the 64GB for 4K missions. Your plan would increase the cost, size and weight of the craft slightly for thousands of pilots that wouldn't use it because it's too much risk to have that much captured video flying around for no reason. It's better to keep captured video in your backpack, safe from potential loss.
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What missing functionality are your referring to? My recollection of my Yuneec software was nowhere close to the DJI Go app functionality, and you don't have the luxury of Litchi or Autopilot with Yuneec either. What's missing in the DJI controller?
Here's why the ST16 looks big and clunky. I tend to agree, looks twice the size, but a small screen that's fixed size, no options to have a larger screen, limiting the pilot from upgrading.
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As I said above, since you can fly a Phantom with just the RC, I'd like to see a screen similar to that of the Mavic Pro so you have a little telemetry. As a plus, it would even help a little when your phone or tablet goes down for some reason if you lost sight of your bird. I don't dislike the Phantom RC, but it could be upgraded with a screen. If the same RC body is used, then put the screen between the power and RTH button and the power LEDS.What missing functionality are your referring to? My recollection of my Yuneec software was nowhere close to the DJI Go app functionality, and you don't have the luxury of Litchi or Autopilot with Yuneec either. What's missing in the DJI controller?
Here's why the ST16 looks big and clunky. I tend to agree, looks twice the size, but a small screen that's fixed size, no options to have a larger screen, limiting the pilot from upgrading.
View attachment 91483
Just thinking out loud here, but I like the dual card slots instead of my original idea of internal memory storage. With the dual slots, I'd like the option for auto recording in addition to the option of the other card continuing recording of the footage after the other one fills. These would be among any other options I'm not thinking of right now.
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Please don't think I'm arguing, I just want to point out a few things, and express some opinion about your thoughts.
I'd like to see a screen similar to that of the Mavic Pro so you have a little telemetry
I'm unsure how often the average user would use this. I have a Mavic Pro and I have never used any of the telemetry in the RC screen when flying, because everything is in my iPadMini GO4 app. The RC screen is redundant. But when I'm not flying, I do like the ability to see the battery level with a percentage number in the RC display, versus the rough battery gauge of 4 LEDs used on the Phantom RC, however the 4 LEDs serve the same purpose to let me know if I need to charge or not.
....it would even help a little when your phone or tablet goes down for some reason if you lost sight of your bird.
If the phone or tablet app goes down, you can always reboot it and start it back up. Just make sure you're in P mode and don't move the RC controls. The craft will hover and wait for you to reboot and reconnect. In dire situations, such as low battery, just use the RTH button to bring back the craft until you can see the craft, then retake control with the RTH button. If you're worried about RTH height, because maybe you forgot to set RTH height for your environment, hold the left stick up for 15 or 20 seconds to ascend, then push RTH until it comes back into VLOS. If you set RTH height to 350' and leave it there that will suffice 98% of the time.
In the 2.5yrs I've flown DJI craft with Lightbridge, I have never had a situation where I could have used telemetry info in the RC. My Ipad has always worked perfectly, but maybe I'm lucky. For the rare occasion that something might go wrong with the display unit, the physical RTH button is your friend to get you out of trouble in cases where you have lost VLOS. Knowing how to engage and disable RTH is important, as well as knowing the limitations, and when not to use it, but I'm sure you know that already.
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Phone and tablets don't just go down with software problems, they also go down with heat, cold, battery or just plain hardware problems. Devices go down, and I can talk from experience when my iPad Mini 4 has gone down due to heat. The feature I'm speaking of is not an imperative but a positive feature. On both of my distance flights where I came 158' short of 5 miles on one of them, I shut down my the camera to save energy sometime during the flight. I couldn't see anything anyway out there in the desert, so telemetry was all I had. Yes, it is on my iPad, but if it went down, I'd still like to have had a screen on my RC to help with the return, especially since I had to take over after my bird was trying to land while passing 10% battery life.(I made it back with 1 or 2 %) Having a screen may or may not have helped in that instance, but I still don't want to fly completely blind when I don't have to.
Yes, RTH, either automatically activated or manually, is my friend. I use it regularly, but just as above, you may have to take over during a low battery forced landing. My regular flights now are pretty long Litchi waypoint missions with the longest over 8 miles in duration. My batteries don't like that anymore so my long distance flights are 7 miles. I hate to say that on some of these flights where they started off with no wind and the wind picked up where my bird had to fight extra hard to get back, I've had to take over during forced landing. Once, it was too far out to control so it landed safely in the desert, and I was blessed it had enough battery for me to locate it.
So again, the next DJI product which would make me open my wallet, whatever its model name is, would be of a folding Mavic Pro design with camera forward and battery top and rearward. This would hopefully allow for no props, prop shadows or landing gear in view. It would also allow for future physically larger higher capacity batteries. It would be larger than the Mavic Pro in order to resist wind better and to allow for a larger camera/gimbal assembly. It would have a removable camera for interchangeable cameras. They could also make the interchangeable camera model a "Pro" model more aimed at the professional market. Dual SD card slots with multiple memory use options. I'm not into zooms, but have a capability of minor to moderate optical zoom. If there is a rotating gimbal system, then great, but I have no desire for that. With the Mavic Pro folding design, have props similar to the Mavic Pro Platinum for less noise. An RC, if the Phantom type, then have an integral telemetry screen. If a Mavic Pro type RC, then have it geared for tablets with the capability of holding smaller phones. I shouldn't have to put this but it should have a gimbal which can hold a horizon, and the airframe should be robust where it won't show ANY damage for ANY length of time while being flown carefully(without too much stress put on the airframe) or crashed.
I would also like to see less expensive batteries. I'd like to see these batteries be dumb, but with an attachable "smart" connector. The connector to the battery can be a standalone design or is part of the charger/charger hub. It would do what the smarts of the smart battery does now...just not permanently attached. This would HAVE to lower battery prices since it would just make them, well...batteries.
You haven't lost twice as much data because the data is duplicated. It's the exact same data, on two cards. Trust me, there's a reason literally every pro level camera produced has dual SD slots. The concern isn't a lost craft, which is extremely unlikely. The concern is a failed or lost SD card, which is far, far more likely. You still remove the cards from the craft after each battery, but now the data is on two cards instead of one - without you having to waste the extra time to dump and organize 10-20gb of data with redundant file names onto a laptop in the field while on the customer's time.
This is an excellent idea as well. I see no reason for "smart" batteries when they're already hooked to a "smart" craft that can have all that circuitry onboard instead. It makes no sense to put all that extra equipment in a disposable wear item that it cannot be salvaged from. Put enough in there to do the LED charge level indication and leave the rest in the aircraft and charger.
Maybe on an M200, M600 or an I2 that might be worth the extra cost, size and weight to have a RAID system on the craft for those that are worried about their SD card integrity. In 2.5yrs I've flown DJI craft I haven't had one SD card go bad yet, but I buy good cards. Maybe I'm lucky.
What missing functionality are your referring to? My recollection of my Yuneec software was nowhere close to the DJI Go app functionality, and you don't have the luxury of Litchi or Autopilot with Yuneec either. What's missing in the DJI controller?
Here's why the ST16 looks big and clunky. I tend to agree, looks twice the size, but a small screen that's fixed size, no options to have a larger screen, limiting the pilot from upgrading.
View attachment 91483
Big and clunky? Compared to a tiny controller with heavy tablet mounted high on a stand, making it awkward and top heavy so you can't let it hang off a neck strap without flipping around and ejecting the tablet?
GadgetGuy
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If you have 60 minutes of irreplaceable client footage, it certainly does not belong in the air! Aren't you forgeting that having your back up in the same place as the original in the event of catastrophic failure means you have no backup at all? You need a separate card for each flight. Make your backups on the ground. Dual card slots are not necessarily about redundancy, but about different file types, and overflow. Video on one card, stills on the other. RAW files on one, JPG's on the other. Overflow from one slot to the other, especially where the camera may not support a larger SD card, and you need to shoot without interruption. The card slots are also often of different media, one of which is faster and more expensive than the other. You are far more likely to crash and lose both such duplicated cards, or to completely forget to record to either, than to have only one card fail. Just saying. Maybe rethink your workflow.
Meta4
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If you have 60 minutes of irreplaceable client footage on a single SD, you've got 3 or more flights on the card.
If it's irreplaceable client footage and you send it up flying again and again, you don't value the footage very highly.
If it's irreplaceable client footage, swapping the SD after every battery isn't a hassle and waste of time at all.
It's a sensible practice and good insurance that takes all of two seconds.
Here's how you do it:
Land drone, swap battery, swap SD card, used card goes in the used card side of the card holder, fly again.
Irreplaceable imagery only flies once.
Perhaps you do all your flying in cathedrals or museums?
I'd say that there's no reason to use propguards at all for almost all flying.
But I can think of several reasons why I wouldn't want to have prop guards for most of my flying.
Ensuring my Phantom can fight the wind and get back home is an important one.
This idea would require added smarts in the craft as well as the charger for cell charge equalization. But I do see potential cost savings for someone that has 6 or more batteries. The downside is the charger would get larger and more expensive, and the craft being slightly more expensive. The benefit is the batteries would be slightly smaller and less expensive. The question is how much less expensive?
I deem the DJI battery architecture a deliberate marketing ploy to mandate DJI pilots to buy DJI batteries. That's a smart plan to make money, being the sole source for batteries. Then implement firmware in the battery that prevents other battery manufacturers from cloning the battery (which I think is the case). It's like making cars and controlling the oil industry at the same time. Pretty much what Tesla does with their cars. Elon Musk says Tesla is a battery company, not a car company.
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I don't know what the battery smarts look like, but I can't imagine they would add very much cost or weight to the bird, and cost to the charger or charging hub. This is China, after all where they literally have vats of electronic parts. This is just an idea that will never come to fruition because, like you said, DJI wants the batteries used in their products to be proprietary.
You say that the charger will be larger and more expensive. I don't see it being larger, but it would probably be more expensive. That expense would be easily offset by the purchase of numerous dumb batteries which is difficult to due at this point due to the very high prices. Again, I don't know what the smarts look like internally, but it can't be too much more than a very small board and LED lights. An engineer could whip up a prototype in no time, but again, I see expensive smart batteries as the reality as printer cartridges are.
To add to my wish list, I forgot to add the external power either being a small socket or a dummy battery you plug into the bird which has an a/c and/or d/c connection. There are times I want to run my bird without juicing up a battery to do so. Batteries have a life cycle, so this would help.
If you have 60 minutes of irreplaceable client footage on a single SD, you've got 3 or more flights on the card.
If it's irreplaceable client footage and you send it up flying again and again, you don't value the footage very highly.
If it's irreplaceable client footage, swapping the SD after every battery isn't a hassle and waste of time at all.
It's a sensible practice and good insurance that takes all of two seconds.
Here's how you do it:
Land drone, swap battery, swap SD card, used card goes in the used card side of the card holder, fly again.
Irreplaceable imagery only flies once.
Perhaps you do all your flying in cathedrals or museums?
I'd say that there's no reason to use propguards at all for almost all flying.
But I can think of several reasons why I wouldn't want to have prop guards for most of my flying.
Ensuring my Phantom can fight the wind and get back home is an important one.
Guess how many SD cards that leaves the data on?
One. Still.
Again, there's a reason dual SDs are standard fare on any pro-sumer or higher level camera. SDs fail. SDs get lost. SDs get corrupted. SDs get accidentally deleted. Data in two places is a minimum requirement.
Meta4
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I've heard of lots of Phantoms being lost, some with large SD cards full of imagery from several flights.
I haven't heard of anyone losing images because an SD card failed during a flight.
It could happen but it's a very low probability and insignificant compared with the risk of losing the Phantom + SD card.
You are trying to manage a very rare risk but ignore a much greater one.
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