Hi ppl
I am looking at getting a drone with rtk or adding a third party rtk module to an existing drone.
Cant afford a M3E and most definitely can’t afford a M30 etc.
Is the phantom 4 rtk still a good option for this kind of work? Amelia I right in saying that DJI still support the phantom 4?
Thanks
RTK + a low budget aren’t two things that go hand in hand 
The Phantom 4 hasn’t had a firmware update since June 2019 and uses the retired GO4 app.
What kind of work? 
I hear what your saying about the low budget thing, was wondering if it was an option or I need to save more 
Just realised I put Amelia 
I would like to start doing survey work but want to do it properly, I know a budget is not the best thing 
Oh ok I thought that they was still doing updates for the phantom 4, it’s what I read.
No, not for donkeys years now - details on the DJI site here (click on “Release Notes”): https://www.dji.com/uk/downloads/products/phantom-4#doc
Have you had to turn down many jobs due to not having any RTK equipment?
I’d be wary of shelling out for kit, even things like commercial insurance, before you’ve calculated the return on investment for all that gear.
Auto-correct doing it’s usual thing 
Yep bloody thing 
it’s my daughter’s name so it’s in the word bank
I haven’t had any work for rtk work, I just wanted to add it to a list of things I could do. Just me running before I can walk
Thank you for your help with this pingspike 
The P4 with RTK is still a very capable drone, I wouldn’t dismiss it just because the firmware doesn’t get updated anymore. Getting half decent batteries will probably be your biggest issue.
I’ve been providing drone services in South Yorkshire for 4+ years. RTK related services have only come up once for a job in hull, surveying a section of sea wall. This is the only job I have ever turned away. The job would have paid for the equipment, just not the time learning to produce useful data.
RTK and my ears have plucked up.
So… there are a few RTK drones with integril RTK but your problem is one of a few things. just because it uses RTK for gps does not mean that it embeds that information within the images
the “best” mapping drones seem to be those that use a mechanical shutter with their camera and from my research there are only 2x options which are the Mavic 3 Enterprise / 3E or the Matrice 4 enterprise 4E.
The P4 with RTK does not embed the corrected gps data within the images and does not use a mechanical shutter.
yes it does embed the gps data within the images but it is not the corrected gps co-ordinates.
so… why RTK… well same as the Mavic 3 Thermal + Matrice 4 Thermal RTK is to provide the drone with corrected GPS co-ordinates for it’s waypoints so it will fly from 1 waypoint to the next and correct it’s flight to compensate from 1 waypoint to the next, not to embed those corrected co-ordinates within the images. hence the images still have the inherent gps error within them (same as all other images from other drones except the Matice 4E and Mavic 3E).
There is a company that has started to try to sell RTK gps strap on modules for any drone, which will basically record the flight route, I am not sure how they obtain the images for the RTK GPS, but this is then sync’d post flight and the images have their gps cor-ordinates corrected within the exif image data.
They are not expensive modules but they intend to charge a nice sum on subscription… and without the subscription you are flying a paperweight.
So… I’ve got a Matrice 4E (still getting to grips with it), but the RTK has proved a little tricky… I was using NTRIP from RTK2GO (free ntrip service) and the nearest RTK station to me at the time of my initial flights was 60 mile away (basically too far! because of the way the correction data works), so the drone refused to get a fix.
I have since built my own local RTK NTRIP base station and have output the RTK correction data to RTK2GO, and after some initial refusal to get a fix, I finally got it sorted. This is a bit of a work in progress as I was not sure which RTCM messages the Matrice 4 was looking for (I’m going to circle back to this but am presently working on the software side of my own RTK GNSS base + survey rover station).
If you want more info, just ask or if you want links to anything I’ve said above and where it came from (as I thought that if the drone had RTK then the images would automatically embed the RTK GNSS co-ordinates, but that does not seem to be the case from what I’ve read (nope I don’t know but that seems to be well written about on various threads of the DJI forum + DJI responses on the forum [no they are not the best responses])
I used to provide RTK base station site surveys for agricultural machinery back in the day, working with farmers to get the best location for their mast to offer the best coverage based on the local topology.
If you really want to geek out, Radio Mobile was my tool of choice 
The Phantom4Pro certainly has a mechanical shutter so Im surprised the RTK version hasn’t
I stand corrected on both counts it seems, it does have a mechanical shutter and it does seem to use the RTK corrected gnss coordinates in the image exif data
The Phantom 4 Pro uses a mechanical shutter on it’s 20M camera, which is the same on the P4Pro RTK, bit older now obviously, but as nearly everybody at the Big Meets have seen with my P4P, they still work perfectly well as long as you get some spare batteries.
And still lovely to fly (thanks John)
;o)
Thank you to everyone for you information 
Get in quick this year if you want to have a go with the Inspire, I’m retiring the old gel, after the meet, I’ll either sell her off cheap or donate her to a college or uni for surveying or archeology.
I haven’t really looked into the inspire, how good are they?
Really nice to fly, just like flying a Mini but the wind won’t affect it at all. You can change the camera for an x5 then use any Micro 4/3rd lens. I’m biased, but ask anybody from the meets, who have flown mine, everybody loves it.
Never flown one so I wouldn’t have a clue, which one do you have and would you be selling everything with it?
