I’m guessing the short answer is ‘no’ since I don’t see any thread about this anywhere on the interwebs. I’d love to be able to “wipe” the DJI factory firmware and install something that allows more customization of systems and functions. What prevents this? Just curious.
Closed hardware, and non existence of FW port prevents it
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Apart from it being closed, and probably having some sort of firmware verification feature, we’ve got heaps of dead or partially working Phantom 4 Pro’s and similar at home - and the amazing thing is they are nearly all different to each other.
Out of a dozen we’d be lucky if we could swaps some parts around to make one fully functional.
It’s like they purposefully keep slightly changing the designs and production runs just so it’s not feasible to produce 3rd party replacement parts or reverse-engineer them.
It wouldnt surprise me if the Mavicks are like that too.
The most feasible project would be to gut the frame, just keeping the battery, motors and props, and throw in a small cheap FC and ESC stack. Assuming you can get the battery to work…
I’m thinking of doing that, and making a phantom 4 pro fly like a phantom 4 pro never has before 
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I thought many times about getting a mini 2 frame to be able to insert an arducopter electronics (20*20 H7), but the costs have become too high and it doesn’t seem convenient to me.
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I’ve had the same thought. The physical hardware is pretty top shelf, just gut the electronics and substitute my own. What is particularly impressive with DJI is the way they integrate RX/controller/ESC/gyro/GPS into the smallest number of boards, particularly on the mini products. This is where I think the challenge lies.
Agree. See my reply to xfacta, above!
Why would you want to wipe the DJI and install another firmware to customization when we could design a system comparable to DJI and run the Ardupilot software instead? The hardware of DJI is good, stabilize?
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I feel like the DJI hardware is good quality and all of the different systems are well integrated. Plus I think the DJI will be lighter since many of the different systems are combined onto a smaller number of boards.
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@Tan_Ph_m @gmovies but of you are correct the HW is nice.
Can you provide a github pull request adding DJI HW support to ardupilot?
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We will be colonizing Mars when that happens 
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I think it could be doable wrt to flying and also the gimbal, the real issue is the camera without which it makes not much sense. Another example is Bebop Parrot, for which the (limited but working) success has been achieved and ArduCopter can be installed, but the cam is closed source and much harder to reverse engineer or substitute with something else. GoPro could give decent quality but is way to heavy…
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Bebop portage was possible because Parrot decide to make the board open.
If you look at the Anafi serie, it got secure firmware that prevent to load another software, that is the same as DJI.
Theorically speaking, if we can get a way to load custom firmware on DJI drone, we could port ArduPilot. But until then, that is not possible.
I’ve always wanted to build an arducopter drone using the frame (or one extremely similar) of one of the larger Mavics, I would obviously also want to be able to use the camera / gimbal in some capacity of possible.
With the recent efforts to support the larger dji gimbals that actually gives me some hope of that happening one day.
Integrating a 4in1 ESC, an H7 flight controller, and a companion computer (CM4 would be my first choice if I could actually buy one) onto one PCB is something I’ve done before in slightly larger custom drones. The hardest part would be the data link / radio system.
I think almost anyone going through the effort to do this would want something at least marginally equivalent to the DJI on the ground, such as the SiYi systems.
Unfortunately I haven’t come across any airside units from SIYI, Skydroid, or Herelink that are particularly suitable to integrating onto another PCB or in extremely compact lightweight situations in general. -you can absolutely do it it would just take up a large part of your mass budget and internal volume.
Unless you get a phenomenal deal on a trashed DJI frame that is somehow mostly physically intact with good motors, you’ll end up spending twice as much or more trying to retrofit open hardware onto the DJI frame than simply buying DJI new and sticking with their ecosystem (or simply using all open hardware on a DIY frame).
This is a fool’s errand unless there’s a way to use all or even most of the DJI hardware, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon (or ever).
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