I want to mount a SIYI A8 mini camera on my drone. I have two questions:
I want to capture images during the mission planning (survey mode). To capture images, do I need to buy a camera trigger, or changing the parameter’s value is enough?
I want a companion computer to send the captured images to another place. Is it possible to connect the camera with the companion computer and capture images during mission planning?
Since we have no idea as to what you are using to control the aircraft we cannot answer your questions with any degree of certainty. Having said that, if you are NOT using an SiYi Mk32, Mk15, Dk32 or VD32 controller or an SiYi HM30 transmitter AND a MK323/Mk15 Dual Air Unit the A8 gimbal camera is basically useless. I tried using this gimbal with an FrSky Tandem X20 radio, a Pixhawk running AC 4.4 and I was totally disatisfied. Using the Storm32 Serial protocol ( I had ben using a Storm32 3xais gimbal) I was able to control the GIMBAL using both RC and MavLink targeting, but I had NO CONTROL whatsoever of the camera. To resolve these issues I purchased an SiYi MK32 Enterprise hand held Ground Control Station (GCS) with a Dual HD Air Unit. Now the system is fully functional. The bottom line is, SiYi is basically a closed ecosystem an even though you can get some functionality using nonSiYi hardware, in my honest opinion the experience is supremely frustrating and the end results are underwhelming. As for the A8 gimbal/camera itself, it is pretty sweet but frustrating to use with non-SiYi hardware. Also to take video or still pictures you must put an SD memeory card into the gimbal. Vidoes and stills are saved to the SD card. I may be wrong here but I do not belive you can off load vidoes or stills to an external comouter/stroage device. However, according to sources at SiYi, with the proper hardware it is possible to stream live video to external devices.
I really appreciate your feedback. Basically, I am building the drone to do autonomous mission planning in survey mode and capture images with an overlap of 20%.
The Raspberry Pi is connected to the autopilot through a serial connection. The base station (QGroundControl) is connected to a Wi-Fi network, and the Raspberry Pi is also connected to the same network. Using mavproxy and SSH, I am (QGC) communicating with the autopilot through the Raspberry Pi. I also have a radio (FS-I6X) to control the drone manually.
From the documentation, I have seen that I can connect the SIYI A8 mini to the telemetry port and capture the images. However, I couldn’t find any info regarding real-time image transfer to another device on the same network. All I have found is I have to use an SD card and manually take out all the images. If somehow I could connect the camera to the Raspberry Pi, I could transfer the images in real time.
As far as I am aware the only thing you might be able to do is stream or even broadcast the video and record it live. Still image/picture transfer is not going to happen. What you might want to think about is joining the SiYi users group on Face Book. SiYi monitors this group… SiYi Users Group
siyi A8 mini is fully supported now in ArduPilot