Is DJI or anyone out there experimenting with Solar Power.

I am thinking along the lines of powering a strobe to enable improved line of sight visability and in the case of "Phantom Lost" it would make finding it alot easier (providing it was right side up and in sunlight!).

Also maybe a little far fetched but Solar providing longer flight times.

If anyone is interested in this and knows of products that work it would be a great help to get me started.

Regards

Guy MacDonald

Given the current draw I don't realistically seeing how adding solar cells to the Phantom body would have any worthwhile benefit.  The cost of the additional weight may even nullify the additional power making is a break-even, net gain of zero.

I make the statement based on theory; I haven't tried adding solar cells to my Phantom.

However, if you where interested in trying I'd start with purchasing single cells; the good ones for outside panels and mounting them appropriately.   The smaller cells, I'd suspect may not product sufficient energy.

I've seen some experiments with multilayer paint that when it dries produces some electricity but it is VERY inefficient as far as output but the thought is that as a paint you can cover much larger surface so it doesn't need to be efficient.

There are flex cells but the one's I am familiar with are also somewhat inefficient.

I suspect you would need something on the high-end of efficiency in order to add sufficient incoming energy before it would add any appreciable time to flight but again, that's my guess.

Hi, Guy
From the view of energy consumption, normally, a 156*156 cm silicon solar cell has a power of around 4 watt.
The power will be even lower for thin-film solar cells which could be softly attached to our upper surface.
The E310 power system has around 150 watt consumption, which is far more than solar panel can provide.
However, nowadays, there's a couple of solar energy driven aircraft competition around the world. Hope there's one day the quadcopter can be one of them.