Reach M+

Why camera synchronization is so important?

Usually autopilot triggers the camera and records the coordinate it has at the moment. When the drone is flying at 20m/s and GPS works at 5Hz, that means your autopilot will have position readings only each 4m. While enough for navigation such readings are not suitable for precise georeferencing. Also, there is always a delay between the trigger and the actual moment the photo is taken.

Reach module solves this by directly connecting to the camera hot shoe port which is synced to the shutter. The time of each photo is logged with a resolution of less than a microsecond.

Connect Reach to a hot shoe port on a camera

Every time a photo is taken camera produces a pulse on a flash hot-shoe connector which is synced to a shutter opening.

Fly a drone, Reach will record photo events

Reach captures flash sync pulses with sub-microsecond resolution and stores them in a raw data RINEX log in internal memory.

Download logs from Reach and base station

After the flight get the RINEX logs from your airborne Reach module and a base station (Reach RS, CORS or other receiver).

Process logs and get a file with geotags of photos

Process RINEX files using the free RTKLIB software. Produced file with precise coordinates of the photos can be used for georeferencing.