Hey all. I would like to share my experience and also teach you some tips regarding "How to fly indoors in not so flight friendly conditions" with my DJI Phantom 4 Pro.
As you all may already know flying indoors is risky in its own, things get much more complicated when you're filming in a large facility where huge metal objects are found at almost every inch. Yes I'm talking about magnetic interference.
First check out the video and we'll be back with the info later on.
Hope you enjoyed the video, so let's get back to the tips.
First of all be sure that filming indoors in a facility/factory with a drone is useful. For good shots you need space, flying in places where's no room is irrelevant, only if you need some stabilized moving shots I guess.
In my case, I had a huge space and had the opportunity to show things from a different angle.
First step: Explore the location, take a tour and analyze your surroundings. Choose and mark your take-off spots, a portable landing pad is a nice addition to your gear, I have a PGYTECH branded one.
Say goodbye to GPS...you'll need to control your drone manually, thankfully Phantom 4 Pro's vision positioning system works like a charm in good lighting conditions. During my flight I encountered situations when I had to controll my drone manually. If you want to bring out the best out of a location turn off obstacle avoidance sensing! Flight between structures will be impossible with obstacle avoidance turned on.
Take-off from a location with no metal structure present. Look for plastic or wood structure where you get off to avoid magnetic interference. You'll need to recalibrate the compass of your drone.
Battery: There's no such thing as "enough" batteries. The more you have the better it is. For this job I had only 3 batteries at my disposal. And to be sincere it's was not enough. Believe me flying indoors is the most difficult task, take in consideration that you'll need to retake the shots several times to obtain the result you have imagined.
After a fligth I thought that I grab the charger and let a battery recharge during recording with my spare batteries. Be aware that you can't recharge your battery till it's "hot" you'll need to wait for it to cool down.
Storage : Same thing like with the batteries, the more you have the better it is. For 4K filming always use SD cards with fast writing speeds. For a project like this you'll need at least a 128gb micro SD card. I also recommend using 32/64gb cards instead of using a single 128gb one. Corrupted SD card problem can happen, better to lose less than data than more.
As a final word, if you feel unsafe flying indoors I recommend using propeller guards. They're a bit time consuming to be put on but they give you a little more safety and confidence.
Let me know if you're interested in other aspects of this particular flight! Hope you enjoyed my post!
DJI Stephen Posted at 12-12 12:02
Hi and good day TheDon. Thank you for posting this cool pictures today from a welding factory in Romania. Great work and two thumbs up.
Hi Stephen! I wish you a good day too! It was my pleasure! Happy you like it!
Yeah those are pretty well done . A real eye opener, into that trade.
Awesome that you had ability and tools to complete the task. Nicely done.
Brings back memories of working in the exchanger industry, steel, overhead cranes, cutting, welding, grinding, noise, sparks, hot metal, heavy lifting, dusty, metal bits flying, slivers...
I miss that, not. Haha
What a great series of captures in what appears to be a very difficult and dangerous environment. I really enjoyed seeing steel construction on such a grand scale.
Thanks for your contribution
Spacetrakker Posted at 12-15 00:45
What a great series of captures in what appears to be a very difficult and dangerous environment. I really enjoyed seeing steel construction on such a grand scale.
Thanks for your contribution
Thank you for your comment. Yes indeed, I had several warning messages popping up during the flight. Glad you found it interesting. ;)
It was actually a good time, learning some of the boiler making trade and meeting several new friends. http://www.albertaexchanger.com/index.html
It was a family run business. Joining the union, during my employment there.
Hard work, for decent money.. ;-)