More questions from a P4P+ noob :)

[Zaiforce]

Hi all,

I have returned with some more (probably) stupid questions after some more experience flying the P4P+.

I have chalked up around 20 'ish flights now and am a lot more confident in my abilities and have noticed a few quirks in the drone that I have questions about if that's ok.

Again I apologise if these are very basic questions but you don't know unless you ask sometimes.

1) The altitude meter on the P4P+ is always based on the location I took off from, just wondering if that is the only option available or is it possible to show your current height relative to the ground directly underneath you? I assume the P4P+ doesn't have the capability to do this as you'd think it would be activated by default if it could.

The reason I ask is because I live in Australia and we aren't allowed to fly over 120m altitude, so if I take off on a hill for example and ascend to 120m altitude, then fly away from the hill, technically I am going to be well above 120m in height, so I will not know how far I need to ascend? Is this a liability?

2) Similar to the first question, in the DJI Go4 app for our P4P+ it allows us to change the maximum flight altitude up to 500m, I have not moved ours any higher than 120m as I know that is our legal limit, but I thought the firmware in the drone prevented it going any higher, so just wondering why the option is there to change it up to 500m?

3) Signal range... I see a lot of people posting videos where their P4P is multiple kilometres away from them and ours doesn't seem to have anywhere close to that range, I can't get ours any more than around 700m away before it complains about weak signal strength, and that is with a clear line of sight... If I have any trees around me etc. that range drops to as low as 300m before it loses signal, is there something wrong with our drone or transmitter?

4) Sometimes our P4P+ controller beeps constantly once we connect the drone and are ready to take off... It happens randomly about every 4th or 5th flight even when the batteries are 100% full and no objects are anywhere near the censors, it will just beep endlessly through the whole takeoff and flight, however the drone acts completely normal, the sensors show no hazards etc, it just appears to beep for no reason?

5) After flying this thing at work I am very tempted to get my own drone and have been weighing up the cost / features of the P4P and the Mavic 2 Pro as my first personal drone... Just wondering, if I do decide to go towards the Mavic 2, are the controls etc. the same as the P4P? If I am adept at flying the P4P will I have no problems adjusting to the Mavic 2?

6) Lastly, I noticed the Mavic 2 has some cool new features such as the hyperlapse mode... While I know it is possible to manually create a hyperlapse with the P4P, is it possible to get that inbuilt feature on the P4P or is it exclusively available to the Mavic?

Surely if it is just a software feature then DJI should make it available to all their drones that a technologically capable of performing it, which the P4P obviously would be? Or do they really make you buy a different drone just to get that one feature?


Thanks for any help! Sorry for the wall of text

 

[Meta4]

1) The altitude meter on the P4P+ is always based on the location I took off from, just wondering if that is the only option available or is it possible to show your current height relative to the ground directly underneath you? I assume the P4P+ doesn't have the capability to do this as you'd think it would be activated by default if it could.

No .. the VPS sensor can tell how high the Phantom is above the ground ,, but it only works to 10 metres

The reason I ask is because I live in Australia and we aren't allowed to fly over 120m altitude, so if I take off on a hill for example and ascend to 120m altitude, then fly away from the hill, technically I am going to be well above 120m in height, so I will not know how far I need to ascend? Is this a liability?

You just have to do a little mental arithmetic and estimate, the same as a pilot of a small plane does.

2) Similar to the first question, in the DJI Go4 app for our P4P+ it allows us to change the maximum flight altitude up to 500m, I have not moved ours any higher than 120m as I know that is our legal limit, but I thought the firmware in the drone prevented it going any higher, so just wondering why the option is there to change it up to 500m?

Because the earth is not flat. There are many places where you can be hundreds of metres higher than your launch point but still be <120 metres above the ground.
The firmware will allow flight up to 500 metres.

3) Signal range... I see a lot of people posting videos where their P4P is multiple kilometres away from them and ours doesn't seem to have anywhere close to that range, I can't get ours any more than around 700m away before it complains about weak signal strength, and that is with a clear line of sight... If I have any trees around me etc. that range drops to as low as 300m before it loses signal, is there something wrong with our drone or transmitter?

Are you orienting the antennas properly?
You get optimal signal strength when the controller antennas are vertical with the flat sides facing the Phantom and parallel with the legs of the Phantom.
You can swap radio frequency bands too.
If 2.4GHz is subject to interference, 5.8GHz might offer better performance.

5) After flying this thing at work I am very tempted to get my own drone and have been weighing up the cost / features of the P4P and the Mavic 2 Pro as my first personal drone... Just wondering, if I do decide to go towards the Mavic 2, are the controls etc. the same as the P4P? If I am adept at flying the P4P will I have no problems adjusting to the Mavic 2?

They are very similar - the same controls and the same app are used.

6) Lastly, I noticed the Mavic 2 has some cool new features such as the hyperlapse mode... While I know it is possible to manually create a hyperlapse with the P4P, is it possible to get that inbuilt feature on the P4P or is it exclusively available to the Mavic?

Surely if it is just a software feature then DJI should make it available to all their drones that a technologically capable of performing it, which the P4P obviously would be?

But it's not just software.
It requires a lot of hardware processing and unless DJI made major changes to the onboard electronics of the P4 pro V2.0, it will have the same processor as a two year old P4 pro.
If DJI had upgraded processing hardware, you would have expected them to have made a big point about this and you would already have those cool new features.

 

[Zaiforce]

Thank you Meta4 for the detailed responses

The ability to fly over 120m makes sense now, but is that something that could spark alert in my flight logs?

For example, if I was to take off at the bottom of a mountain etc. and fly upward towards its peak and exceed 120m altitude from my takeoff point, will that be highlighted in the DJI flight data and trigger me to be reported or something, even though I was never more than 120m above the actual ground underneath the drone?

Or does DJI not monitor the flight records in that way?

Probably not a situation I'll ever find myself in, but just curious.


Thanks

 

[Meta4]

The ability to fly over 120m makes sense now, but is that something that could spark alert in my flight logs?

For example, if I was to take off at the bottom of a mountain etc. and fly upward towards its peak and exceed 120m altitude from my takeoff point, will that be highlighted in the DJI flight data and trigger me to be reported or something

Or does DJI not monitor the flight records in that way?

It won't "trigger" anything.
The world isn't flat. People fly over higher terrain than their launch point all the time.
DJI aren't the flight data police and they have no idea where/when you flew unless you choose to share the flight data with them.

 

[Zaiforce]

It won't "trigger" anything.
The world isn't flat. People fly over higher terrain than their launch point all the time.
DJI aren't the flight data police and they have no idea where/when you flew unless you choose to share the flight data with them.

Awesome, thanks

Like I said I'm full of dumb questions haha, I just wasn't sure how their systems worked, I thought that every flight may have been automatically synced with the drone's DJI account and that they may have alerts setup for reporting if certain parameters were broken, e.g. the governed height limit in each country.

Thanks again for the help.