Here’s a nice easy introduction to the Position, Sport and Attitude modes on the DJI Phantom 4. The Phantom 4 Pro is an excellent quadcopter for professional site surveying, 3D imaging of terrain and photogrammetry of structures. Scott Gilbertson is a senior writer and reviewer for WIRED, specializing in portable technology. He was previously a writer and editor for WIRED’s Webmonkey.com, covering the browser wars, web standards, the independent web, and all aspects of internet culture.
But I generally prefer proprietary software provided by the drone company since it has likely been the most tested and vetted for their own platform. I look for the universal basics – the offline ability to set flight line overlap, design polygon missions , set AGL, gimbal tilt, etc. Then I look for the camera settings crucial for successful photogrammetry missions. This is where I often see alternatives to GSPro come up short. The bad news is there’s yet another new style of battery (so if you already have a Phantom, your collection of cells won’t work). The good news is that the dji mini 2 fly more combo can fly for up to 28 minutes on one charge.
A little movement on the stick literally goes a long way, though. And the OSS doesn’t work in Sport mode so if you’re flying head-on into something, don’t expect these sensors to save you. Plus, when it is travelling at top speed, it takes much more time for it to stop. The DJI Go app warns you of this the first time you enter the mode, but never again. Regardless, it’s not a mode I would suggest for first-time pilots.
About 5 GCPs per flight battery is a good metric to use for non-RTK. The Phantom 4’s camera features a 12-megapixel sensor with an ISO range of 100 to 1600. The camera comes with single shot and burst shooting, as well as auto exposure bracketing, EV bias, and time lapse. HDR support is also included here, and you can save your photos in JPEG or DNG . Since there are a slew of recommendations that govern how and when you can fly a drone, the DJI drones come with advanced features that can detect when you’re in a No Fly Zone or flying too high. Your drone will immediately adhere to local laws to ensure you don’t get in trouble.
Which brings us to the discussion of ground targets, GCPs and checkpoints. You should always have some checks on the ground to know how accurate your work is. These are not GCPs, they are not used in the creation of your model but are points to compare, to ground truth your mapping.
Fast forward to the current day, and that means that you’re looking to spend $1,500 on a top-tier consumer-grade drone. Is it a lot of money for a semi-professional product, assuming you use the Phantom 4 Pro to making you money in some capacity? The default control schema assigns altitude/hover and yaw to the left stick (up/down, left/right respectively), and pitch and roll to the right stick. We found control with the DJI Phantom 4 Pro V. 2.0 to be very responsive, and once we adjusted the length control sticks to suit us better as we found it even easier still to control the craft accurately.
The 1-inch sensor is about four times the size of the more typical 1/2.3-inch class used by most drones , flagship smartphones, and point-and-shoot cameras. The phantom 4 Pro manages a top speed of about 30mph in its GPS-assisted flight mode, with forward and rear obstacle avoidance in full effect. When flying in this mode, you won’t see the rotors in your video, even if the camera is pointed straight forward. The drone has automated and semi-automated flight modes as well, controlled via the app, but you should be comfortable with manual control before using them. Even with all of its sensors and safety features, you never know when you’ll need to take control of the drone in order to avoid an accident.
The DJI Pro V. 2.0 also contains a wealth of intelligent flight modes. TapFly, for example, lets users simply tap on the desired location on the screen, and have the drone automatically fly there, avoiding obstacles and adjusting elevation as it needs. ActiveTrack lets users tap to select a subject and have the drone automatically follow the selected subject using either Trace , Spotlight , or Profile modes. Draw mode lets users plot a flight path by simply using their finger to draw a course. DJI’s Phantom Drones have continually set the bar for everyone else in the industry.
It was a quantum leap in combined drone and camera technology that, even today, remains the most sought-after drone for commercial aerial photogrammetric mapping. A 1-inch sensor with variable aperture on a sub $2000 drone with a 4.3 mile range and obstacle avoidance that could also shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second!?!? The Phantom 4 Pro quickly became the gold standard for anyone looking to use an affordable consumer-level UAV to jump into the drone industry to make a buck. An ultra-bright 5.5-inch screen makes vivid colors easily visible even in direct sunlight.
Sometimes when I asked it to navigate through a stand of trees with a few feet of clearance on either side, it refused. TapFly also declined to work when you were too low, for example right after an automatic takeoff. That meant I had to touch the sticks a little before switching over to rely totally on the screen of my mobile device. Like a tripod in the sky DJI claims the Phantom 4 is five times more stable than its predecessor, and in our testing it delivered incredibly smooth footage.