DJI M600 Pro

No my drone has not been to drones made easy to have the triggering system installed. If the a7 is hooked up to the A3 pro and is recognized by maps made easy wont it trigger off of distance travel via the gps? Please let me know the steps I need to take in order to run the M600 Pro with the A7. I was hoping to install the PCBA board and GCU of the A7 separately and bypass the gimbal so i can hard mount the camera to the drone, because the gimbal adds a horizontal offset which cannot be figured out while moving which would not make this true survey grade mapping standards. Thanks for the help in advance.

The Drones Made Easy triggering module is required to have Map Pilot trigger any external camera.

Just to make sure I understand this right. You say I need the triggering system installed to use an external camera. The A7r is listed in Maps Made Easy app. Is that considered an external camera even though its listed in the App? Does the A7r require the trigger. If you could clarify which camera requires that trigger and what one does not that would help greatly. Also if I contact them are they going to know about this triggering device considering everytime I ask them about the mapping side they dont have any answers. I just want to get this done asap. Thank you

The A7r requires a hardware trigger and the triggering system is there to receive messages from Map Pilot and give the hardware trigger to the external camera otherwise it won't know when to take images.

All cameras require triggering of some sort. DJI camera's get triggered by software since they are tightly integrated. External cameras require a triggering cable and something to provide the triggering signal. Since you are using the Ronin it is possible to hook up an RSS cable but that will be limited to very slow manual imaging and is not compatible with Map Pilot.

This hardware is not sold on its own and needs to be part of a kit that we sell.

Email sales to ask about putting a quote together for a system. Ryan handles all the custom build and integration kits.

Thank you will do!

It seems to me that triggering the camera shouldn't be that difficult if the DJI remote does it.  I added the Remote Start/Stop onto my Ronin-MX on the M600 and I can take manual pictures and video without issue.  Tomorrow I will be out flying with DJI GS Pro and Map Pilot....hoping one of them works with the M600-Sony a7R ii combo since Pix4Dcapture won't.

The RSS is just an IR LED trigger basically and there is no way to tie that in to the SDK. It will work from the remote but no apps will be able to trigger it. 

Well the DJI Ground Station Pro triggers the IR automatically and calculates overlap for custom sensors for the mission planning.  I am sure if DJI can do it then others will as well.  Unfortunately DJI GS Pro doesn't have good logging and doesn't point the camera forward so it isn't perfect either.

The RSS trigger is not SDK compatible at this point. DJI has the capability of doing all sorts of things that they don't give developers access to.

The other drawback of the RSS is that it is SUPER slow. The Ninja OBC will trigger at up to 1 image per half second for high speed high res mapping.

What do you define as SUPER slow, Zane?

One image every 3 seconds or so triggered by the picture button on the remote. 

I see, that is using the Trigger button manually then. Any clue on plausible delays when automatic triggering is done using GS Pro, through the RSS, tho?

GS Pro is flaky software at best and it doesn't record a flight record like the GO app.  I found the auto-triggering to be ok until it sent an odd command to the camera to open the menu...not reliable across multiple missions.  Plus add in the fact that GPS coords are needed and you end up with a very poor mapping solution with GS Pro.  There are work-arounds like using the Time Lapse camera app and stand-alone GPS tracker or flipping back to the GO app, but none of this is really a quality business solution.

Hmm just what I was expecting and frightened after reading endless numners of post on the M600 Sony A7 combo on the web. A month ago you seemed to be quiet satisfied with GS Pro, but not anymore I suppose?

May I ask if you have managed to find a better working alternative in the meantime?

Well for me the M600 with a7R ii is the best thing on the planet and I love it.  Mapping is just a side thing as 3D modeling and structural analysis of towers is the real gig for my company.  GS Pro is the ONLY thing that comes close to working outside the custom onboard triggering here, and it does work but can be flaky and frustrating.  But anybody that really needs the M600's payload should not be expecting simple Phantom or Inspire missions anyway.

Hmm, 'Flaky' and 'Frustrating' are not precisely the type of words that one hopes to come to mind prior to investing in such a costly aircraft. Could you elaborate a bit more on how this flaky and frustrating experience takes shape?

Does it miss out on certain captures? Does it not take any images at all during some missions? Does the application crash? Does it provide the correct trigger-timing and achieve the set forward- and sideward overlap?

I have been benchmarking several flightplanning applications using our Inspire Pro and X5 recently and found that GS Pro was the only application that actually produced the EXACT forward- and sideward overlap that I defined a priori.

The M600 is fine, just GS Pro was inconsistent. I also found with my P3A that it wasn't consistent like Pix4Dcapture in taking pictures at same interval.

I don't plan on using the M600 for mapping, easier and cheaper options out there. My M600 rig gets me 3D modeling down to sub-mm relative accuracy so a different purpose than I think you are looking at.