DJI Phantom 4 RTK: Insightful Intelligence. Improved Accuracy.

Introduction

On Octo­ber 15, the world leader in civ­il unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles and aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy tech­nolo­gies, DJI Inno­va­tions, announced the com­mer­cial ver­sion of the top fourth-gen­er­a­tion Phan­tom drone. The Phan­tom 4 RTK is a high-pre­ci­sion instru­ment with a pow­er­ful image pro­cess­ing sys­tem designed to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of indus­tri­al users in fields such as map­ping and inspec­tion.

Peculiarities

• New RTK mod­ule
• Cen­time­ter posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy with the least num­ber of con­trol points
• Posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy in the hor­i­zon­tal plane: 1cm + 1md
• Accu­ra­cy posi­tion­ing in the ver­ti­cal plane: 1.5cm + 1md
• Absolute accu­ra­cy of the pho­togram­met­ric mod­el in the hor­i­zon­tal plane: 5cm*
• New Time­Sync Cor­rec­tion Sys­tem
• New GS RTK flight plan­ning app
• 2 plan­ning modes
• Pre­cise image pro­cess­ing sys­tem built on a 1‑inch 20MP mechan­i­cal shut­ter CMOS sen­sor
• Mobile SDK sup­port
• Ocu­Sync 2.0 trans­mis­sion sys­tem
• Ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with D‑RTK 2 mobile sta­tion
• Adapt­ed to work in a metrop­o­lis

*When fly­ing in sun­ny weath­er at an alti­tude of 100m, the pix­el size on the ground (GSD) is 2.74cm.

Equipment

The com­plete set of Phan­tom 4 RTK entire­ly depends on the tasks set by the cus­tomer (user). To order the drone, it is rec­om­mend­ed to con­tact the near­est offi­cial DJI deal­er, or send your con­tact infor­ma­tion to the DJI team through the offi­cial web­site so that they can con­tact you.

The basic kit will include:

• Phan­tom 4 RTK
• Remote con­trol with built-in 5.5‑inch ultra-bright dis­play,
• 2 × intel­li­gent bat­ter­ies for P4 RTK,
• 1 × intel­li­gent bat­tery for remote con­trol,
• charg­er for simul­ta­ne­ous charg­ing of both bat­ter­ies,
• Charg­er pow­er adapter + con­nect­ing cable,
• 8 × rotors (4CW/4CCW)
• Cam­era hang­er
• 16GB MicroSD
• Trans­port case
• Micro-USB cable
• USB‑C cable
• USB‑C OTG cable.

Specification

Drone

Take­off weight:

1391 gr

Diag­o­nal dis­tance:

350 mm

Max. ser­vice ceil­ing at sea lev­el:

6000m

Max. take­off speed:

21.6 km/h

Max. sink rate:

10.8 km/h

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

50 km/h (P‑mode)
58 km/h (A‑mode)

Max. flight time:

30 min­utes

Oper­at­ing range tem­per­a­tures:

0°- 40℃

Oper­at­ing range fre­quen­cies:

2.400GHz — 2.483GHz (Europe, Japan, Korea)
5.725GHz — 5.850GHz (USA, Chi­na)

Trans­mis­sion pow­er (EIRP):

2.4GHz
CE (Europe)/MIC (Japan)/KCC (Korea)：< 20dBm
5.8GHz
SRRC (China)/FCC (USA)/(Taiwan, Chi­na): < 26dBm

Hov­er Accu­ra­cy Range:

RTK is enabled and work­ing prop­er­ly:
Ver­ti­cal: ± 0.1m; Hor­i­zon­tal: ± 0.1m
RTK dis­abled:
Ver­ti­cal: ± 0.1m (with visu­al posi­tion­ing);
± 0.5m (with GNSS posi­tion­ing)
Hor­i­zon­tal: ± 0.3m (with visu­al posi­tion­ing);
± 1.5m (with GNSS posi­tion­ing)

Image Posi­tion Off­set:

The posi­tion of the cam­era cen­ter rel­a­tive to the phase cen­ter of the air­borne D‑RTK anten­na below the axis of the drone body: (36, 0, and 192 mm) is already applied to the image coor­di­nates in the Exif data. The pos­i­tive axes X, Y and Z of the UAV body are direct­ed for­ward, to the right and down, respec­tive­ly.

Mapping features

Map­ping Accu­ra­cy**:

Map­ping accu­ra­cy com­plies with the ASPRS Accu­ra­cy Stan­dards for Class Ⅲ Dig­i­tal Orthopho­tos. ** Actu­al accu­ra­cy will vary depend­ing on ambi­ent light and sur­face tex­ture, flight alti­tude, map­ping soft­ware used, and oth­er sur­vey­ing fac­tors.

Ground Pix­el Size (GSD):

(H/36.5) cm/pixel, where “H” cor­re­sponds to the height of the air­craft rel­a­tive to the scene being filmed. (unit: m)

Data col­lec­tion effi­cien­cy:

Max. the work­ing area in one sor­tie (at a height of 182m) is 1km², that is, the GSD is about 5 cm/pixel, which meets the require­ments of the ASPRS accu­ra­cy stan­dards for class Ⅲ dig­i­tal orthopho­tos.

visual positioning

Speed ​​range:

≤ 50km/h at 2 meters above the ground

Alti­tude range:

0 — 10 meters

Work­ing range:

0 — 10 meters

Detec­tion range:

from 0.7 to 30 meters

FOV:

Front and rear sen­sors: 60°(horizontal), ±27°(vertical); bot­tom: 70°(forward and back­ward), 50°(left and right)

Fre­quen­cy def­i­n­i­tion:

10Hz

Mea­sure­ment fre­quen­cy:

Forward/Reverse: 10Hz; Down: 20Hz

Con­di­tions for nor­mal oper­a­tion:

light­ing over 15 lux, land­scape with a clear struc­ture

Camera

Matrix:

1″ CMOS; Num­ber of effec­tive pix­els: 20M

Optics:

Angle of view (FOV) — 84°, 8.8mm/24mm (35mm equiv­a­lent for­mat), f/2.8 — f/11, focus — from 1m — ∞

ISO:

Video: 100 — 3200/6400 (Auto/Manual), Pho­to: 100 — 3200/12800 (Auto/Manual)

Shut­ter speed:

mechan­i­cal: 8 — 1/2000sec; elec­tron­ic: 8 — 1/8000sec

Max. pic­ture size:

4864 × 3648 (4:3)
5472 × 3648 (3:2)

Video record­ing modes:

4K: 3840×2160@30fps H.264

Pho­to for­mat:

JPEG

Video for­mat:

MOV

Sup­port­ed file sys­tems:

FAT32（≤ 32GB);
exFAT(> 32GB)

Sup­port­ed SD cards:

MicroSD, max­i­mum capac­i­ty: 128GB. Class 10 or UHS‑1. Required write speed ≥ 15MB/s

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0°- 40℃

Battery

Capac­i­ty:

5870mAh LiPo

Volt­age:

15.2V

Qty. cans:

4S

Weight:

468 grams

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

-10° to 40° C

Max­i­mum charge cur­rent:

160W

Intelligent charging station

Input volt­age:

17.3–26.2.B

Out­put volt­age and cur­rent:

8.7V, 6A; 5V, 2A

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture:

5°- 40℃

GNSS

Sin­gle Fre­quen­cy High Sen­si­tiv­i­ty GNSS Mod­ule:

GPS + Bei­Dou + Galileo* (Asia)
GPS + GLONASS + Galileo* (oth­er regions)
Usable fre­quen­cy:
GPS: L1/L2
GNSS: L1/L2
Bei­dou: B1/B2
Galileo*: E1/E5a
First sta­ble time: < 50s
Posi­tion­ing Accu­ra­cy: Ver­ti­cal: 1.5cm + 1ppm (RMS)
Hor­i­zon­tal: 1cm + 1ppm (RMS)
1ppm implies that the error has an increase of 1mm for every 1km of move­ment from the UAV
*Com­ing soon

suspension

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

3‑axis

Oper­at­ing range:

tilt angle: — 90° to +30°

Max. angu­lar veloc­i­ty con­trol:

tilt angle: 90°/sec

Angu­lar Con­trol Accu­ra­cy:

±0.02°

infrared system

Detec­tion range:

0.2 — 7 meters

FOV:

70°(horizontal), ±10°(vertical)

Fre­quen­cy def­i­n­i­tion:

10Hz

Con­di­tions for nor­mal oper­a­tion:

Sur­face with dif­fuse reflec­tive mate­r­i­al and reflec­tiv­i­ty: > 8% (e.g. walls, trees, peo­ple, etc.)

Remote Control

Work­ing fre­quen­cy:

2.400GHz — 2.483GHz (Europe, Japan, Korea)
5.725GHz — 5.850GHz (USA, Chi­na)

Trans­mis­sion pow­er (EIRP):

2.4GHz
CE/MIC/KCC: <20dBm
5.8GHz
SRRC/CE/MIC/KCC: <26dBm

Max. trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

FCC: 10 km
SRRC/CE/MIC/KCC: 6 km (in inter­fer­ence-free zone)

Pow­er con­sump­tion:

16W (Typ­i­cal)

Dis­play:

5.5 inch, 1920 × 1080 res­o­lu­tion, 1000 cd/m² bright­ness, Android OS, Mem­o­ry 4GB RAM + 16GB ROM

Food:

2S 7.6V 4920mAh 37.39Wh LiPo

Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0°- 40℃

Appearance

Camera

At the heart of the 1‑inch 20-megapix­el CMOS sen­sor, work­ing in tan­dem with a mechan­i­cal shut­ter that elim­i­nates image dis­tor­tion when shoot­ing in motion, thus allow­ing you to imple­ment map­ping mis­sions or reg­u­lar data col­lec­tion seam­less­ly. Thanks to its high res­o­lu­tion, the Phan­tom 4 RTK can achieve a ground pix­el size (GSD) of 2.74cm from a height of 100 meters. To ensure this unpar­al­leled accu­ra­cy, each lens goes through a rig­or­ous cal­i­bra­tion process that mea­sures the radi­al and tan­gen­tial dis­tor­tion of the lens. The col­lect­ed dis­tor­tion para­me­ters are stored in each image’s meta­da­ta, allow­ing the post-pro­cess­ing soft­ware to be cus­tomized for any user.

In areas where there is no RTK cov­er­age, Phan­tom 4 RTK will allow you to use the kine­mat­ics in post-pro­cess­ing (PPK — Post Pro­cess­ing Kine­mat­ic) method. The drone cap­tures raw satel­lite obser­va­tion data as well as ephemeris data and saves them in a PPKRAW.bin file in RTCM 3.2 for­mat. In addi­tion, the P4 RTK con­verts satel­lite data to RINEX (Receiv­er Inde­pen­dent Exchange For­mat) on the fly and writes it to the RINEX.obs file.

By inter­nal­ly syn­chro­niz­ing the posi­tion of the GNSS and the cam­era, the Timestamp.MRK file pro­vides an accu­rate record of the high-pre­ci­sion image posi­tion. All data relat­ed to oper­a­tions is stored on the microSD card in a unique fold­er for each indi­vid­ual mis­sion.
Phan­tom 4 RTK data con­sis­ten­cy reduces data val­i­da­tion time and pro­vides an effi­cient post-pro­cess­ing work­flow with min­i­mal man­u­al adjust­ments.

Positioning system

To improve the absolute accu­ra­cy of the image meta­da­ta, a new RTK mod­ule was inte­grat­ed into the drone, pro­vid­ing real-time cen­time­ter accu­ra­cy in posi­tion­ing the received data.

With­out an RTK mod­ule, an unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cle requires up to 40 ground con­trol points (GCP) per square kilo­me­ter, which in prac­tice is time con­sum­ing. The DJI Phan­tom 4 RTK has a built-in cen­time­ter-pre­ci­sion RTK posi­tion­ing sys­tem paired with a high-per­for­mance imag­ing sys­tem. Tan­dem poten­tial­ly reduces the num­ber of break­points required for “0”, sav­ing at least 75% of instal­la­tion time.

Direct­ly below the RTK receiv­er is a redun­dant GNSS mod­ule, which is installed to ensure sta­ble flight in places with low sig­nal strength, such as large cities. The mod­u­lar Phan­tom 4 RTK tan­dem has opti­mized flight safe­ty and the most accu­rate data acqui­si­tion for com­plex sur­vey­ing, map­ping and inspec­tion work­flows.

The RTK mod­ule can achieve posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy of 1cm + 1ppm (hor­i­zon­tal), 1.5cm + 1ppm (ver­ti­cal), and the Phan­tom 4 RTK can achieve an absolute accu­ra­cy of the pho­togram­met­ric mod­el in the hor­i­zon­tal plane — 5cm* (*When fly­ing in sun­ny weath­er at an alti­tude of 100m, ground pix­el size (GSD) 2.74cm).

TimeSync

A new sys­tem for col­lect­ing accu­rate data — Time­Sync. Pro­vides con­tin­u­ous align­ment of the flight con­troller, cam­era and RTK mod­ule. In addi­tion, Time­Sync ensures that each pho­to uses the most accu­rate meta­da­ta and cap­tures it in the CMOS cen­ter, which in turn opti­mizes the results using pho­togram­met­ric tech­niques, allow­ing the image to match cen­time­ter-lev­el posi­tion­ing data.

OcuSync 2.0

The Ocu­Sync 2.0 video trans­mis­sion sys­tem pro­vides a sta­ble, inter­fer­ence-free con­nec­tion between the con­trol equip­ment and the air­craft at a dis­tance of up to 10 km with 720p video link qual­i­ty, which is ide­al for map­ping large areas. A flight time inter­val of up to 30 min­utes will allow pilots to com­plete longer mis­sions with­out hav­ing to land to change bat­ter­ies.

Even if one bat­tery is not enough to cov­er the entire work area, after a pow­er change, the “Oper­a­tion Resump­tion” func­tion will auto­mat­i­cal­ly resume the oper­a­tion of the GS RTK appli­ca­tion.

GS RTK App

The new GS RTK app, along with tra­di­tion­al flight modes, will allow pilots to con­trol the drone more intel­li­gent­ly thanks to two glide modes — Pho­togram­me­try and Way­point Flight. Plan­ning modes allow the user to select the drone’s flight path while adjust­ing over­lap ratio, alti­tude, speed, cam­era set­tings, etc., pro­vid­ing an auto­mat­ed map­ping process or work­flow con­trol as an out­put. Sched­uled depar­tures are eas­i­ly repeat­able, which makes it pos­si­ble to col­lect the same data over dif­fer­ent peri­ods of time to track any changes in the con­trolled area.

For flight plan­ning in the office, the GS RTK appli­ca­tion direct­ly down­loads KML and KMZ files. The new Shut­ter Pri­or­i­ty mode ensures sta­ble expo­sure even when fly­ing autonomous­ly in strong winds.

Mobile station D‑RTK 2

The Phan­tom 4 RTK is ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with the D‑RTK 2 mobile sta­tion, respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing the drone with real-time dif­fer­en­tial data and gen­er­at­ing an accu­rate geo­det­ic solu­tion. Rugged D‑RTK 2 con­struc­tion, degree of pro­tec­tion IP67, cou­pled with the Ocu­Sync 2.0 video trans­mis­sion sys­tem, ensure users receive cen­time­ter-accu­rate data even in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

The Phan­tom 4 RTK is easy to inte­grate into any work­flow by con­nect­ing the posi­tion­ing sys­tem to the D‑RTK 2 mobile sta­tion via a 4G don­gle or Wi-Fi hotspot using the NTRIP pro­to­col (Dif­fer­en­tial GPS Data Stream­ing over the Inter­net), or you can save all received data for Post Pro­cess­ing Kine­mat­ic post-pro­cess­ing (PPK).

Mobile SDK support

The Phan­tom 4 RTK is com­pat­i­ble with the DJI Mobile SDK, giv­ing the user direct access to the drone’s fea­tures for fur­ther automa­tion and cus­tomiza­tion via a mobile device.

Phantom 4 RTK in practice

DJI is work­ing close­ly with Euro­pean con­struc­tion giant Stra­bag SE, a major play­er in trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture. Using drone tech­nol­o­gy in sev­er­al map­ping projects since 2010 to reduce costs and improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, the com­pa­ny has seen the ben­e­fits of using aer­i­al imagery in 3D mod­el­ing. The DJI Phan­tom 4 RTK is the lat­est tool for doing this for the Stra­bag SE.

“Using drones for map­ping has many ben­e­fits. Their inte­gra­tion has changed our work­flow and sim­pli­fied many oper­a­tional steps,” said Thomas Groeninger, Head of Dig­i­tal Asset Assess­ment and UAVs at Stra­bag SE. “Con­ven­tion­al sur­vey meth­ods also pro­vide 3D mod­els, but dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­els gen­er­at­ed from drone data pro­vide high point den­si­ty, and there­fore more detail.”

Price

To order the drone, it is rec­om­mend­ed to con­tact the near­est offi­cial DJI deal­er, or send your con­tact infor­ma­tion to the DJI team through the offi­cial web­site so that they can con­tact you.

1. Phan­tom 4 RTK – 5700€
2. Mobile sta­tion D‑RTK 2 – 3600€
3. Phan­tom 4 RTK + D‑RTK 2 mobile sta­tion – 7800€

FAQ

Drone

Q: How is the Phan­tom 4 RTK dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous mod­els in the Phan­tom series?
A: All pre­vi­ous mod­els of the Phan­tom series have been aimed at pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers and drone hob­by­ists, the Phan­tom 4 RTK is designed for indus­tri­al users in fields such as high-pre­ci­sion map­ping and inspec­tion. The P4 RTK inher­its the same cam­era, shape and size, and adds an RTK posi­tion­ing mod­ule, a new Time­Sync sys­tem, a map-friend­ly app, and more.

Q: What pro­pellers does the Phan­tom 4 RTK have?
A: The P4 RTK is equipped with the stan­dard 9450 props that come with the Phan­tom 4 Pro.

Q: Can I fly the Phan­tom 4 RTK in oth­er coun­tries and regions?
A: No, P4 RTK has spe­cif­ic ver­sions for dif­fer­ent coun­tries and/or regions. Users can check the ver­sion code by look­ing it up on the prod­uct pack­ag­ing, or by using the GS RTK app (under Air­craft Infor­ma­tion + Firmware).

Camera

Q: What is the dif­fer­ence between Phan­tom 4 RTK and Phan­tom 4 Pro/Advanced cam­eras?
A: Even though all three are built on the same 1‑inch 20MP CMOS sen­sor, the P4 RTK cam­era has been improved through a new lens dis­tor­tion record­ing process. Each P4 RTK cam­era goes through a cal­i­bra­tion process that mea­sures lens dis­tor­tion and records the cor­re­spond­ing OPEN-CV para­me­ters. The cam­era allows you to dis­play the orig­i­nal images with­out dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tion, and the OPEN-CV dis­tor­tion para­me­ters record­ed in the XMP file can be used in post-pro­cess­ing.

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to use the Phan­tom 4 Pro ND fil­ters on the Phan­tom 4 RTK?
A: Yes it is pos­si­ble, ND fil­ters made for P4Pro can also be used on P4 RTK.

Q: Does the drone’s dig­i­tal sig­nal proces­sor (DSP) sup­port cam­era dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tion?
A: No, the user can turn on dewarp­ing in the cam­era, but then the image accu­ra­cy will be low­er com­pared to dewarp­ing in the post-pro­cess­ing soft­ware.

Remote Control

Q: What is the dif­fer­ence between the Phan­tom 4 RTK remote con­trol and the Phan­tom 4 Pro remote con­trol?
A: The P4 RTK con­troller received a num­ber of changes based on the needs of indus­tri­al users, includ­ing: microSD slot, built-in speak­er, hot-swap­pable bat­ter­ies. In addi­tion, users can con­nect the con­trol equip­ment to the Inter­net to oper­ate Net­work RTK with a 4G don­gle. Final­ly, a new cus­tom-designed GS RTK app is pre-installed on every piece of equip­ment, allow­ing the oper­a­tor to start data col­lec­tion tasks right out of the box.

Q: Can the P4 RTK be con­trolled with the Phan­tom 4 Pro con­trol hard­ware?
Oh no.

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to switch between FCC and CE modes?
A: Switch­ing between modes is not avail­able.

Video stream

Q: What is the FPV dis­tance from the Phan­tom 4 RTK?
A: The effec­tive FPV dis­tance depends on the user’s oper­at­ing meth­ods (eg anten­na posi­tion) and the actu­al envi­ron­ment in the manned area. In open and open envi­ron­ment, the max­i­mum FPV dis­tance is 10km (for FCC 5.8GHz) and 6km (for CE 2.4GHz).

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue the start­ed map­ping mis­sion if the P4 RTK los­es the video trans­mis­sion sig­nal dur­ing its exe­cu­tion?
A: Yes, if the video trans­mis­sion sig­nal is lost, the user can restart the equip­ment and con­tin­ue the mis­sion.

Battery

Q: Can P4 Pro bat­ter­ies be used in Phan­tom 4 RTK?
A: Yes, drone bat­ter­ies are ful­ly inter­change­able.

Q: How long does it take to ful­ly charge the P4 RTK bat­tery?
A: It takes no more than 60 min­utes to ful­ly charge.

Q: How should the bat­tery be main­tained and stored?
A: Store in a dry place. Before long-term stor­age, make sure that the bat­tery is charged at 50% or more and is dis­charged every three months to main­tain per­for­mance.

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to use the drone bat­tery in low tem­per­a­tures?
A: The per­for­mance of the bat­tery drops sharply at tem­per­a­tures < ‑10°C. It is rec­om­mend­ed to warm up the bat­tery to 20°C before fly­ing to reduce the effect of low tem­per­a­tures.

Q: Why do bat­ter­ies start to heat up after a long peri­od of stor­age?
A: This is nor­mal. When bat­ter­ies are stored for a long time with more than 65% charge, an auto­mat­ic dis­charg­ing pro­ce­dure is acti­vat­ed to reduce the charge lev­el to 65%, at which point the bat­ter­ies heat up.

Positioning

Q: What posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy can the Phan­tom 4 RTK achieve?
A: P4 RTK can achieve accu­rate data of 1cm + 1ppm (hor­i­zon­tal), 1.5cm + 1ppm (ver­ti­cal).

Q: What is Time­Sync and how does the sys­tem ensure that every drone image is posi­tioned accu­rate­ly?
A: Time­Sync is a data acqui­si­tion sys­tem that keeps the flight con­troller, cam­era and RTK mod­ule in con­stant align­ment, then cor­rects the posi­tion data in the CMOS cen­ter and writes it in EXIF ​​and XMP for­mat.

Q: What are the dif­fer­ences between PPK and RTK mode? And how to use them?
A: RTK and PPK are two kine­mat­ic tech­nolo­gies that refer to data in dif­fer­ent ways. While PPK pro­vides bet­ter posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy than RTK, both achieve cen­time­ter accu­ra­cy. RTK is rec­om­mend­ed for users who fly in envi­ron­ments that allow real-time con­nec­tiv­i­ty via Ocu­Sync or 4G, pre­fer­ring con­ve­nience and effi­cien­cy. For those users who do not have require­ments for time­li­ness and / or are forced to fly in con­di­tions with­out com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the best option is PPK.

Software

Q: In what sit­u­a­tions are the left and right TOF and IR sen­sors active?
A: Cur­rent­ly left/right TOF and IR sen­sors are not active, please fly care­ful­ly.

Q: What appli­ca­tions have map­ping and inspec­tion func­tion?
A: You can use the pre-installed GS RTK app for map­ping and inspec­tion. In addi­tion, users can install appli­ca­tions cre­at­ed in the DJI Mobile SDK.

Q: Does the Phan­tom 4 RTK Return to Home (RTH) mode work dif­fer­ent­ly from the Phan­tom 4 Pro?
A: No, the P4 RTK RTH mode is almost iden­ti­cal.

Q: Are there any restric­tions regard­ing set­ting way­points for the P4 RTK?
A: Yes, the dis­tance between points can­not exceed 2km, the total num­ber of points can­not exceed 99, and the length of the flight plan can­not exceed 15km.

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to enter lon­gi­tude and lat­i­tude val­ues ​​to set way­points?
Oh no.

Q: What is the max­i­mum num­ber of bound­ary points sup­port­ed by the GS RTK appli­ca­tion via import­ed KML files?
A: The app cur­rent­ly sup­ports up to 99 bound­ary points.

mapping

Q: What dif­fer­en­tial data for­mats does the Phan­tom 4 RTK sup­port?
A: P4 RTK cur­rent­ly sup­ports: RTCM 3.0, RTCM 3.1, MSM4 and MSM5 in RTCM3.2 for­mat.

Q: Are the coor­di­nates mea­sured by the Phan­tom 4 RTK absolute in the coor­di­nate sys­tem cho­sen by the users?
A: Yes, absolute.

Q: How to cal­cu­late the required flight alti­tude based on the GSD val­ue?
A: To esti­mate the appro­pri­ate flight alti­tude, you need to refer to the equa­tion: H = 36 * GSD. In this case, it is worth pay­ing atten­tion to the fact that the pix­el size on the ground (GSD) is mea­sured in cen­time­ters, and the “H” val­ue (height or flight height) is mea­sured in meters.

Q: Do images cap­tured by P4 RTK retain alti­tude data? If yes, how is this data stored?
A: Yes, they do. Alti­tude above sea lev­el and rel­a­tive alti­tude (rel­a­tive to the user’s take­off point). Absolute height can be used in map­ping. The rel­a­tive height is stored in the XMP file.

Q: How do I cap­ture a tilt­ed pho­to with the Phan­tom 4 RTK?
A: Oblique images can be acquired in pho­togram­me­try mode in the GS RTK app. In Pho­togram­me­try mode, you can adjust the gim­bal angle from ‑90° to ‑45° in the cam­era set­tings for each flight plan. The user can only set one hang angle at a time. In order to get mul­ti­ple angles, you need to sched­ule the same mis­sion and set the desired cam­era angle.

Q: Is it pos­si­ble to cre­ate a 3D mod­el or a point cloud using third par­ty soft­ware using images from P4 RTK? If so, what will be the accu­ra­cy of the result­ing mod­el?
A: Yes, it is pos­si­ble. How­ev­er, the accu­ra­cy will depend on the third-par­ty pho­togram­me­try algo­rithm used. To clar­i­fy the expect­ed accu­ra­cy, please con­tact the soft­ware ven­dor.

Q: What would be the best way to use P4 RTK for cor­ri­dor map­ping?
A: In cas­es where data is col­lect­ed along infra­struc­ture or anoth­er nar­row cor­ri­dor, the devel­op­er rec­om­mends set­ting a high over­lap ratio, fly­ing above nor­mal, and plan­ning at least two flight paths for the same cor­ri­dor.

Q: Is the Phan­tom 4 RTK com­pat­i­ble with third par­ty base sta­tions?
A: No, third-par­ty base sta­tions can­not be con­nect­ed to P4 RTK or con­trol equip­ment via a radio. How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to receive data from a net­work RTK serv­er (net­work RTK) via the Ntrip pro­to­col in a 4G/Wi-Fi net­work envi­ron­ment. Satel­lite obser­va­tion data can also be stored in the drone for post-pro­cess­ing (PPK).

Video

Video from DJI Phan­tom 4 RTK quad­copters.