Ok for some time Ive noticed that the light-bridge system has had problems mostly for my inspire pro... In the beginning its been running perfect and I had no complains...
But now that a year has passed and that DJI has now replaced the drone with the superior inspire 2, I feel a little bit robbed from the whole plan obsolescence, bait and switch...
But looking at the system itself the digital video format has the advantage of making gorgeous video transmissions look so professional... The down side to it is that it requires processor power and a high gain video transmitter...
To begin the light bridge system was sold as a single entity, it was a separate video link for the drone builder who wanted better video transmission... Quad-copter drones was starting to reach commercial success with the early phantom series... it was the later phantom 3 that now included the light bridge system... And was advertised was worth it alone for the video link....
Compared with a analogue system in FPV flying, the older FPV pilots had superior low latency (at around 20- 60ms) at the cost of grainy low resolution video with lots of RF interference with every turn or other movement of the drone... (in the form of picture snow or white and black lines in the camera view) But the lower latency of 30ms or so was the reason why its so good to fly FPV... Imagine you are in the cockpit of a drone reaching in excess of 50mph or more... Couple that with a racing track or a open area to freestyle and you got yourself a exciting afternoon...
But most of it involves building testing modifying drive outputs and stability settings to get the drone to turn or move the way you want... With the other half of the learning curve to understand the flying aspect... Which can’t be easy as you fly with no collision avoidance or GPS stabilizers... DJI took the exciting part of that flying tamed it down and allowed a better video link to connect the pilot to the aircraft... But what’s the magic that makes the video link so much better then the analogue system?...
Without going into too much detail.. the sysem is a streaming digital transmission... This reduces the signal to a simple binary 1 and zeros... Which can be much simpler then varying brightness encoded in a timed scanning signal... Much like the digital information in a CD, the digital information is jumbled so that when information is lost in the link... There is enough information that requires rearranging the video back the right way it sees part of the message...
I would say its very much like a letter missing in a sentence...
The sequence or the picture frame may lose some of the information but because it wasn't transmitted sequentially... The reassembled picture can now be placed in the right order... While a algorithm system or parity checksum can fill in the blanks... The Light-bridge system has a form or error correction which works very well...
The down side is that it requires some process power for it to work... And if the signal weakens further then its likely to pixelate or introduce lag... Further improvements of the digital process could be as simple as making the Clock speed faster for the error correction process or different algorithm or a number of things... Either way the improvements of the Light-bridge of a couple of kilometers to the far improved occusync system of several miles is the envy of any FPV pilot... Grated the Occusync maybe slower at 130ms compared to a FPV system... But for filming in action sports or general stuff the video feed is good enough...
Looking back on my system I see the ipad mini 4 which was perfect for the inspire1 now bogged down with ios11.3.1 firmware... And what seems like the inspire 1 drone having a reduce transmission power, I see that the drones range has only reduced so much of what it used to do...
A recent plan to improve the range, now that DJI have stopped giving a toss about the older inspire 1... I decided to modify the stock antenna of the inspire 1 controller... The looks of things, the wire to the white bunny like sticks on the top of the controller are too thin... I followed a you-tube instruction video and brought a similar but significantly stronger set aerials...
The wire to the new antenna are much thicker ( hoping that will reduce signal loss) And the aerial themselves are longer fatter and remove-able... The results of a boosted aerial has improved things and my Crystal sky allows for a better video... But I feel if I paid for a better antenna system or even a powered antenna... I could perhaps use my Ipad system... and maybe my autopilot app with its GPS device tracking for smoother footage... At the moment Ive tested my system and find my Crystal-sky monitor gives the best results for my inspire and while my camera view is only slightly laggy... My ipad mini4 with its ios 11.3.1 has throttled down the processor in my opinion that it struggles to maintain a decent camera view with the current improvements... It is good enough to fly in kite surfing weather but only for higher altitudes... As the video delay might be too slow and unreliable for semi FPV flying for which I normally use my Mavic Pro for to get closer to the action...
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