Hey, it's Greg from Scholar Farms,
and I'm going to go through a quick
unboxing of the new Phantom 4
multispectral drone by DJI.
So we're gonna go ahead and take it
out of the box and take a look at
what comes with this particular kit.
This is one of a couple of boxes
that come with it.
This is just the drone itself.
But we also have the
RTK base station as
well as a tripod that comes with
it. So let's take a look at the
drone. So this is a standard
Phantom 4 size of the drone.
What's different is really the RTK
antenna and then the camera that's
on it. This is this purpose built
vegetation or plant mapping camera
or narrowband, multi spectral
camera. We'll talk about that in
just a bit. So the RTK
antenna on here is a better GPS
that does corrections.
So we can do very precise mapping.
So if I map on one day versus
another day, all those pixels are
going to align within a couple of
centimeters instead of a couple of
meters, like a standard GPS
on a drone.
We also have an irradiance sensor on
here. This will tag all of my photos
with the incoming light data.
So as the drone is flying, the sun
is shining down.
But it may be a sunny day or a
cloudy day.
And in order to correct the amount
of light that's coming into our
lenses, we need to know how much
light is coming down from the sun.
And we take the difference between
the two and we can do radiometric
corrections is the terminology
for that.
That really helps us compare our
plants from one day to the next
day, even if the lighting conditions
change.
We'll go ahead and take off this
gimbal holder here and
we can go ahead then and look at the
camera.
You'll notice that there's six
lenses on this camera.
There are five narrow bands
as well as one RGB camera.
They're all two megapixels.
So we have red, green, blue,
red edge and near infrared.
Those are your narrow bands for
doing vegetation indices like
NDVI or NDRE or
many other indices that are out
there. There are dozens.
We can also trigger and take a color
photo at the same time.
So that's a nice feature of this
particular camera.
And so we get six photos every
time it triggers, which ends up
being a lot of data.
So we have two batteries
that come with this drone.
So we have one battery in the drone
itself, as well as
a second battery here that comes
with this particular setup.
These are the high capacity
batteries. But what I suspect
is that you're going to need to
order a lot more batteries.
This feels a lot heavier than
a standard Phantom 4.
And so I think you're going to see
reduced flight times.
And I'll keep you posted on what the
average flight time that I'm
getting. The rest of the kit is
pretty standard.
So we have our controller here.
This is where we're going to put our
tablet for doing our automated
missions. We're using Ground Station
Pro and we're using an iPad.
And so this is just your standard
controller here.
We have our chargers here then
for our batteries, as
well as a range of cables.
And then we have three battery
multi charger that comes with the
drone. So you can charge up to three
batteries at the same time.
I happen to have another one of
these for my other Phantom 4 Pro.
So I'll probably charge six
batteries at a time and take them
all out in the field.
Given that I do a lot of flying,
you have extra sets of propellers
as well. So you get a single set and
then a couple extra sets that are in
here and then you have
your info guide here
for the setup of what comes in the
kit as well as your instructions
in the manual for how to get
up and running. But I suspect many
of you, if you're buying the spot
form, you're probably advanced
users. You already know how to fly a
drone. But there's lots of
information in here.
What I don't see is, are
you typically there's a card that
would come with drones that would
give you logins to the software that
come with the platforms.
And so in this case, we have three
different software.
We have our long term extended
care. So DJI Shield.
We have a year of DJI
Ground Station Pro that comes with
it as well as we have a year
of DJI Terra for the image
processing.
So I found that that was a little
confusing when I first opened this
up that that wasn't in there.
But once I logged into
the app and registered the drone
on my DJI account, then I
got an e-mail for the year of Terra.
I got the coupon code from
the enterprise dealer that I
bought it for for the Shield
software and then Ground Station
Pro as soon as I logged in and put
in the serial number of this drone.
It gave me that free year.
So I encourage you once you get it.
Go ahead and open up your iPad,
log in and register the drone
with your DJI account.
And those steps then will be
automated for you and connected to
your email.
So that's the drone. Let's look at
the base station then.
So there's two big boxes that come.
I've already opened one of them and
that is the tripod that
comes with the base station.
And so it's a nice actually pretty
heavy duty, beefy
surveyor tripod.
And then at the end here, we'll
slide the base station down
in and lock it into place.
And we're typically setting up the
base station ahead of time in
order to allow it time to
get a lock on and start doing
the GPS. corrections.
And so once you set it all up, then
you don't want to move it before you
do your automated mission.
And so here we have the top of
the base station.
This is the standard base station
that comes with the other DJI
RTK for RGB.
And so we have two pieces here.
They just screw together.
And so this one just has a
precision point at the end that you
would then slide into your tripod
and then screw on and mount the top
here.
And this has the RTA antenna
on here. And so what this is
doing is real time kinematic
corrections.
So it's correcting for atmosphere
distortion and other timing
difference that can skew your GPS
data. That's then tagged onto
your photos.
So standard drones are off by a
couple of meters or so.
This is going to correct that.
So you're off by a couple of
centimeters.
So if you want to fly repeatedly and
map and make sure that that tree
is the same tree every time or that
plant is the same plant every time,
you're going to need to use RTK
or ground control or other
correction methods.
You have the battery bay here as
well as a level a little
level bubble here to make sure
that it's all leveled up.
And then we have
our batteries. So we get two
different batteries here for
as well as a charger.
And so we'll go ahead and you
can plug these in and turn them on
and then set up your base station.
That way, if you need more
batteries, you can just buy these.
They're fairly affordable relative
to other DJI batteries for
getting multiple batteries out in
the field. But this should last you
a really long time.
This power doesn't draw that
much just doing that kind of GPS
corrections.
Then we have our manual in here,
as well as some other bits and bobs
that we can talk about as we walk
through the different process of
setting it all up and getting
started with our mapping.
And we can walk through the
specifics of that and other videos.
OK. So that's a wrap on the new
Phantom 4 multispectral
RTK. I hope you found that
interesting. I'm Greg with Scholar
Farms. Excited to get this up in the
air and compare it, the data
from this camera to some of the
other multispectral cameras we've
been flying with.
So I'll keep you posted as I learn
about this new platform and run
it through its paces.
So we'll talk to you again soon.
