With Phantom 4 availability still in the dumpster, is there an alternative that closely matches the P4 capabilities? Do the Mavic 3 or Skydio2 perform similarly? I am currently using an original P4.
Edit- Really do not want to shift away from Phantoms because I have 10 batteries already.
The Mavic 3 is a great aircraft but DJI decided (as of right now) that it won’t be releasing the SDK so there almost surely won’t be any mapping support unless someone figures out something that all the others haven’t been able to. The Skydio is not a good mapper. The upcoming Mavic 3 Pro will probably get adopted but that could be a year away. I would recommend the DJI Air 2S if you do small work under 30 acres or the Autel Evo II Pro for larger work. Unfortunately they both have electronic shutters but are still very good for general modeling and when combined with GCP’s can provide mapping results that are acceptable for most use cases. Beyond that you can probably find a Mavic 2 Pro easier than a P4P at this point.
That’s really disheartening to hear. I map larger tracts of land, usually 100-400 acres. The P4 is just so good at it.
Thanks for the reply!
The Evo II Pro will do better than the P4 from an aircraft standpoint but the camera just won’t allow you to fly as faster. I usually kept it between 8-12mph depending on how high the overlaps were and never had any issues. It does have a longer flight time so it balances out. I guess the biggest downside is that DroneDeploy doesn’t support flight for it but its native software is plenty good. You can also use Dronelink or UgCS if Autel Explorer doesn’t get what you want but I never needed to.
The Yuneec H520E is also a good drone but when I was running it there were software issues and not a lot of support. There has since been a specific US group called AirWise and I know the people so I am sure it is much better. Worth talking to at least. Being a hexacopter it is actually my favorite drone in this space but I just couldn’t trust it to fly hundreds of maps without issue at that time which was about 2 years ago.
Thanks for this good info. I fly all my missions at 400ft. Is the Evo ll Pro still limited by the camera at that altitude? Usually can go much faster at higher altitudes.
For sure. Our default is 200ft or 100ft over the tallest object if is of any consequences. At 400ft you could probably get away with 20mph on well lit days but the slower you fly the more fine detail you get. Honestly I have had terrain missions where I flew fast on purpose in order to blur the really fine detail a little bit so that the resulting cloud didn’t have as many points. I don’t need points every 1/10ft on terrain when the final product is basically a 1ft grid with breaklines.
I’ve got one of your willing to buy second hand
Hi @cglass , we recommend the Mavic 3 Enterprise as a replacement for the P4P as not only does it have SDK support (meaning you can fly with DroneDeploy), but it also has a mechanical shutter (similar to the P4P) which produces higher quality orthomosaics. Neither the standard Mavic 3 nor Mavic 3 Pro have SDK support or a mechanical shutter. https://www.dronenerds.com/products/specials/bundlepackages/drone-deploy-bundles/drone-deploy-mavic-3-enterprise-ready-to-fly-bundle-package.html