What does the inside of a drone look like? Here’s a dissection of a DJI Phantom

Ever wonder what the inside of a drone looks like?

Southern California-based retailer Dronefly did a virtual drone dissection to show exactly what’s inside (click to expand the image size).

The dissected drone is a DJI Phantom 4, which was released in 2016 and was revolutionary for being the first consumer-grade drone to have a sensor capable of detecting obstacles and making decisions to autonomously fly around them. The DJI Phantom 4 drone only had a forward obstacle avoidance sensor, though most DJI drones today, including the new DJI Mavic Air, have a rear obstacle avoidance sensor as well. Other consumer-grade drones on the market today have evolved to have closer to a dozen obstacle avoidance sensors.

Related read: DJI Phantom 4 review: a drone light years in the future

The dissection was done by Dronefly’s Alex Netto with the help of the drone repair technicians on site.

“They were doing a top and bottom shell replacement on a crashed P4 drone and I used a light box to take pictures of all the components from the same angle in two directions,” Netto said. “I translated these 40 separate pictures into Photoshop where I cut around each individual component and then moved the parts around to have an exploded view. ”

And the dissection is proof of the many recents why DJI seems to reign supreme among other drone manufacturers.  Its design and build is top-notch.

“Compared to other drones the interior of the DJI Phantom is very clean and sleek,” Netto said.  “DJI has water protectant coats (but not waterproof) over its multiple boards (circuit boards, ESC boards, flight controller boards, etc.) to assists in keeping condensation, and humidity away from the actual (micro)solder points.”

Not sure what all these terms mean? Dronefly also included a glossary of terms to expand on everything labeled in the model above. Click to see a larger view: