Phantom 5 Leaks

[sar104]

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.

In the case of Nikon cameras, the default setting for the second slot is overflow, not mirroring, although it can be used for that. Personally I use one card for JPEG and the other for RAW, but then I’ve never lost data on an SD card.

 

[ftttu]

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.

I had mission video fail on one mission, but I have no idea if it was the card or the bird. I could see the video files but they wouldn't open. The card was the one that came with the bird, and it worked perfectly from then on.

Also, I really like the idea of dual card slots as a hobbyist, but I'd almost demand it on my income maker bird. I can only see any weight added as negligible.

 

[MagicCarpetRide]

This is obviously a direct stab at those wanting to dive into the inspection market. That includes me. The only question now is the cost. I'm assuming that the price will be at the upper range of the Phantom series. If so, it represents a relatively low entry point for that type of service.

I said that with autonomous flying in mind. It's simply stupid of DJI to have heavy drones flying autonomously without actually being able to see where they are going. Take the Spark it can't even see in front of itself during a return to home.

 

[MagicCarpetRide]

Found this but looks like a p4

http://bestdroneunderhalfapound.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/maxresdefault-1024x576.jpg

Lol it's Photoshop

 

[GadgetGuy]

In the case of Nikon cameras, the default setting for the second slot is overflow, not mirroring, although it can be used for that. Personally I use one card for JPEG and the other for RAW, but then I’ve never lost data on an SD card.

Exactly as I stated earlier. Redundancy is NOT the primary purpose of two card slots, and it makes absolutely no sense to have your backup in the same location as the original in the air!

 

[ftttu]

Exactly as I stated earlier. Redundancy is NOT the primary purpose of two card slots, and it makes absolutely no sense to have your backup in the same location as the original in the air!

I still think it does. Let's say you leave a 124 gb card in #1 slot and you use #2 slot for your card you remove to view hobby or work vids/pics. Let's say you show up at a location without that #2 card. That no longer will be an "oh dang" moment anymore. That is just one use, but again, the slots have to have setup capabilities to realize the potential of having two.

Also, you may not think this is an important feature, but some do. If I became a 107 guy, it would be even more important since I'm forgetful.

 

[Dronefriend]

You are derailing the thread with this crap guys!

Some people depend and appreciate two SD card slots and some don’t, end of story. The Phantom 5 wont have it regardless.

Are there any news or leaks, rumors?

 

[GadgetGuy]

I still think it does. Let's say you leave a 124 gb card in #1 slot and you use #2 slot for your card you remove to view hobby or work vids/pics. Let's say you show up at a location without that #2 card. That no longer will be an "oh dang" moment anymore. That is just one use, but again, the slots have to have setup capabilities to realize the potential of having two.

Also, you may not think this is an important feature, but some do. If I became a 107 guy, it would be even more important since I'm forgetful.

There is no need for two slots for overflow for drone video when a single 64GB microSD card has enough memory to record three full flights of continuous 4K 60 fps video from 100% to 10% reamining battery. That's enough room to allow you to forget TWICE in a row to reformat before each flight. The card should also be replaced after every landing. So buy three 64 GB microSD cards for your 60 minutes of irreplaceable footage! QED!

 

[Meta4]

I still think it does. Let's say you leave a 124 gb card in #1 slot and you use #2 slot for your card you remove to view hobby or work vids/pics. Let's say you show up at a location without that #2 card. That no longer will be an "oh dang" moment anymore. That is just one use, but again, the slots have to have setup capabilities to realize the potential of having two.

Also, you may not think this is an important feature, but some do. If I became a 107 guy, it would be even more important since I'm forgetful.

It should only take one "oh dang" moment to get you carrying more than one or two cards in your drone case.
This is what you need if you ever go pro.

Note the cards are only 16GB which is plenty for all the 4K video you can shoot with one battery.
Huge SD cards are wasted $$ if you are doing serious drone photography.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Note the cards are only 16GB which is plenty for all the 4K video you can shoot with one battery.
Huge SD cards are wasted $$ if you are doing serious drone photography.

For continous 4K 60fps video on the 100mbs P4P, a 16 GB card is no longer large enough for a full battery flight to 10% remaining. It's about 17.4 GB. This is why I had to upgrade to 32GB cards. Because in the heat of the moment, I have occasionally forgotten to reformat before flight, I switched to using 64GB cards, which allow for two "senior moments" before my forgetfulness becomes a problem. I never intentionally have more than one flight per card, and I always swap cards every time I land. Best Buy was selling the 64GB Sandisk Extreme Plus cards for $25 this last weekend (cheaper than the every day 32GB card price, even at B&H), so I bought the limit of five, as I now have an Osmo+ which needs a 64GB card for continuos 2 hour event videos!

 

[Meta4]

For continous 4K 60fps video on the 100mbs P4P, a 16 GB card is no longer large enough for a full battery flight to 10% remaining. It's about 20 GB. This is why I had to upgrade to 32GB cards. Because in the heat of the moment, I have occasionally forgotten to reformat before flight, I switched to using 64GB cards, which allow for two "senior moments" before my forgetfulness becomes a problem. I never intentionally have more than one flight per card, and I always swap cards every time I land. Best Buy was selling the 64GB Sandisk Extreme Plus cards for $25 this last weekend (cheaper than the every day 32GB card price, even at B&H), so I bought the limit of five, as I now have an Osmo+ which needs a 64GB card for continuos 2 hour event videos!

OK ... you're right that 60 fps makes for bigger file sizes.
But 16GB should still be fine for most purposes.
Pros aren't often going to shoot for the full time of a flight and there's no need to shoot 60 fps most of the time.
If you want to shoot a whole battery at 60 fps, use a 32 GB card.
64GB and 128GB cards still don't make much sense if you value your work.

 

[GadgetGuy]

OK ... you're right that 60 fps makes for bigger file sizes.
But 16GB should still be fine for most purposes.
Pros aren't often going to shoot for the full time of a flight and there's no need to shoot 60 fps most of the time.
If you want to shoot a whole battery at 60 fps, use a 32 GB card.
64GB and 128GB cards still don't make much sense if you value your work.

Agreed, unless you are shooting lots of bracketed DNG's or using continuous video. The 64GB size is not to store more than one flight. That would, indeed, be foolish! It's to cover me, if I inadvertently forget to format the card from the previous flight before take off, after turning on the battery. Nothing worse than being 2 miles away, on the way home, and the card suddenly fills up because an already offloaded flight wasn't cleared off first. The 32GB can't hold two such flights any more than the 16GB can hold one flight of a full battery of continuous video of my flights. I also start the video recording as soon as I format the card, before launch, so I don't later forget to hit record once the motors are armed, so the videos are about a minute longer than the flight time. My own unique workflow is designed to work around forgetfulness! The 128GB cards, however, are indeed overkill, even for the most forgetful pilot! However, when you can buy a 64GB card for less than the price of a 32GB, why not? Besides, the Osmo+ takes up to 64GB cards, so they do double duty for me.

 

[ftttu]

You are derailing the thread with this crap guys!

Some people depend and appreciate two SD card slots and some don’t, end of story. The Phantom 5 wont have it regardless.

Are there any news or leaks, rumors?

Internal memory and/or 2 card slots are my desires for what ever is taking the Phantom 4 series' place, but I don't think that is even in the hearts and minds of DJI. To me, it is a positive idea, but others don't agree. More features that add to a bird's capability is not a step backwards, but forwards to me. Retractable landing gear, rotating camera, 360 camera, removable cameras/gimbals, water proofing, etc are all desired features by posters on here, but none of them push my buttons.

 

[John Locke]

My own unique workflow is designed to work around forgetfulness

Consider erasing the video from the SD card while its in your computer during post edit. If you forget that, then the backup is formatting the card in the craft. You can save battery time that way, plus this adds an extra layer of forgetfulness. I'm all about minimizing things to forget. I'll get excited about the plans I've made for shots, then forget something like putting on the Windsurfer or swapping out the ND filter, etc. I've added to my routine looking at the remaining recording time at take-off as a sanity check, shown on the home screen at all times, which is another layer of forgetfulness prevention.

 

[Drestin Black]

I read all the Above, then asked myself: what is my absolute #1 concern when flying a 4/4P today.
To me, safety is paramount, above all else. My single biggest concern with ANY flight I take is how to handle potential collisions. Everything is behind that.

So, my request for the next in the big Phantom series is full time, all direction obstacle detection.

Forget parti-time IR sensors, I want the good stuff all around. And i am willing to give up flight time (power and Weight additions) to gain this.

The front, back and side should be the most capable, the up and down could be of Lower quality as our max speed in those directions is not as great.

If I can’t have this dream fully realized then I’d ask for full time/quality side plus a lower quality top.

One of my pet peeves is that as much as I love Automated RTH, the fact they it blindly goes up before beginning an obstacle avoiding return scares me because loss of signal while in a covered environment (tunnel, tree cover, bridge/overpass) is common.

 

[Drestin Black]

Keeping with my prior message about what i consider concerns more than wants and related to safety is my next idea:

A low power, gps and control signal only mode. This would have two modes of operation.

In-flight: disable everything (for example, turning camera gimbal, camera and its signals transmission off completely) except what is required for gps flight and control. This would be used in low battery conditions, you need to get your bird home and you are very low. Following the rules you are, of course, in VLOS so you visually guise your bird back. If you should happen to lose sight you’d be able to use the visual indicator in the Go app to show direction and orientation to pilot to return your bird.
Mode 2: on ground. And there should be the option to engage this mode anytime a return to home is automatically engaged and used to land. Once on ground, turn off everything including GPS (we’re no longer moving and have our landing coordinates) and the control link To pilot to stay on as long as possible to allow recovery for the greatest time possible.

Note: in all modes the control link is still fully operational so These modes can be disabled and full flight functions returned at any time.

My goal is addressing my two biggest concerns:
Collisions and Low battery return/recovery

I hope I wrote these clearly and with few errors, I’m ill as I write and too tired to proofread properly, forgive this.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Consider erasing the video from the SD card while its in your computer during post edit. If you forget that, then the backup is formatting the card in the craft. You can save battery time that way, plus this adds an extra layer of forgetfulness. I'm all about minimizing things to forget. I'll get excited about the plans I've made for shots, then forget something like putting on the Windsurfer or swapping out the ND filter, etc. I've added to my routine looking at the remaining recording time at take-off as a sanity check, shown on the home screen at all times, which is another later of forgetfulness prevention.

I have always followed the protocol of formatting in the aircraft only. It did fail me once, losing a flyover of a defunct nuclear power plant, after apparently corrupting the card by previously formatting it in my TV (Note to self: That was a dumb idea!), but you already know that. The other reason for not formatting the card in the computer immediately is it remains as a secondary backup, until the card is actually needed for flight, in case the hard drives fail. I have a dozen cards in rotation, and use the oldest one first, giving me an 11 flight backup on the cards. The card formatting in the aircraft is done during the 45 second IMU warmup, so uses no extra battery time. I keep my windsurfers permanently installed, and leave my GND filter on all the time, and have one of each for each RC and its paired aircraft that I am currently flying for quick deployment. Even the props stay on, unless I need more space in the hangar. Thanks for the tip about checking remaining recording time before takeoff! That's an excellent suggestion to add to my preflight checklist!

 

[John Locke]

The other reason for not formatting the card in the computer immediately is it remains as a secondary backup

For the short time you have redundancy in the SD card I don't see that as much help. If your hard drive fails you have much larger problems with all the other video files which are likely more important if you have no HDD backup method in place. For important video files, consider online backup and create special folders for video files you value, enough to protect.

 

[John Locke]

I have always followed the protocol of formatting in the aircraft only

When you have the card in the computer, consider just deleting the video files instead of reformatting all the time. That minimizes the writes to the card and lowers risk of a bad format. I personally don't like formatting anything that doesn't need it, kinda like compass calibrations.

 

[GadgetGuy]

For the short time you have redundancy in the SD card I don't see that as much help. If your hard drive fails you have much larger problems with all the other video files which are likely more important if you have no HDD backup method in place. For important video files, consider online backup and create special folders for video files you value, enough to protect.

Yes, YouTube does a great job of hosting my master files, and I do have hard drive backups, as well, of all the original files. 11 flights averages out to about a month of recent flights on microSD cards. That's long enough to make it worthwhile to me, at no additional cost or effort. Just need to remember to reformat it in the aircraft when it next gets used. If I forget, I can still use it for two more flights, before the forgetting twice becomes a problem, as a 64GB card can hold 3 full flights of continuous video before it would fill up halfway through the 4th flight. However, now that I have added your "check the remaining recording time" to my preflight checklist, before arming the motors, that is less likely to be necessary.