On March 28th, US time, DJI released two new products in a low-key manner in the general office of the Fire Department in Menlo Park, California. One is the upgraded product of Zenmuse XT, a thermal imaging camera previously developed in cooperation with FLIR, and the other is a new product that Zhong Defu pays more attention to, which will also be introduced slightly in this paper-DJI Payload SDK.
The launch of the new SDK has also triggered discussions among developers:
Payload, or load, means that this SDK is the developer component of the load device (or external device). It allows developers to integrate third-party external devices, such as cameras, sensors, mechanical equipment, etc., in Jingwei M200 series, and build a "bridge" for two-way communication between external devices and drones, thus realizing integrated control of software and hardware.
In order to realize the seamless connection between external equipment and UAV, it is necessary to use DJI Skyport, which is a pan-tilt adapter ring, one end of which is connected to the pan-tilt interface of Jingwei M200 series, and the other end is connected to the external equipment.
Skyport can "open" devices connected at both ends, and its built-in development board also provides API interface, which is convenient for developers to send and receive instructions and data to devices (including drones and external devices) in real time just like controlling DJI's own integrated drones.
I don't know why, but I came up with an idea from the Middle East. ...
From the development point of view, Payload SDK is actually a component developed by developers for Skyport. Two-way communication between UAV and external devices can be understood as bytecode transmission and compilation between mobile SDK and payload SDK. There are two transmission modes:
For other functions, please refer to the introduction screenshot of the official document:
Although the number of functional interfaces provided is small, it is still worth looking forward to if the data transmission is not satisfactory.
Let's take a look at Jan Gasparic, head of DJI industry application marketing department's outlook for Payload SDK:
It can be seen that DJI hopes to connect external devices such as sensors, spectrometers and lasers developed by other hardware manufacturers to its own hardware system through Skyport, so that its UAV business can get involved in more professional fields. Hardware manufacturers can also use Payload SDK to "integrate" their equipment with DJI UAV, so as to command the equipment to obtain the required data more accurately.
In this DJI partner case, Sentera, an American UAV agricultural data analysis company, showed us the potential of "Skyport+Payload SDK": it connected its AGX7 10 sensor to DJI UAV through Skyport, and realized real-time RGB and NDVI analysis of crops with the help of Payload SDK. Synchronize the data to our own FieldAgent mobile app based on DJI Mobile SDK, and finally output the analysis report-complete a software-hardware collaborative workflow.
As mentioned above, the payload SDK only supports the latitude and longitude M200 series (M200, M2 10, M2 10 RTK) for the time being. As for the cost of these devices, I believe everyone knows that they are obviously oriented to industry applications, so the applications of individual developers are not open at present. In addition, in addition to the equipment cost, DJI also charges fees in other names, such as the following (from Q& Payload SDK; A:
Above, my humble opinion.
Finally, more developers are welcome to join the "DJI SDK Developer Exchange Group", exchange and share all kinds of imaginative ideas, and pay attention to the official WeChat account (ID: DroneDev) to learn how to join the group, hehe.