Dock 4 is a two-box install. The dock holds the aircraft, the batteries and the charger. The DJI O4 Ground Station holds the RTK base, the video link and the network connection, and Dock 4 will not run without one. Most of the planning on a Dock 4 job is about where that second box goes and what it connects to.
This is the order we work through on a site, using DJI's figures from its 13 October 2026 Dock 4 briefing.
Start with the O4, not the dock
The O4 Ground Station mounts high, in an open spot with a clear line of sight to the dock. DJI moved RTK and the radio out of the dock so they sit above fences, sheds and parked vehicles, and quotes up to 40 km of transmission range from an O4. The dock powers it over PoE through one outdoor-rated Cat 6 cable of up to 80 m, so a light pole, a roofline or a mast on the building next to the pad all work.
Put the dock where the aircraft can climb out cleanly. Put the O4 where the signal needs to reach. On a long site those are not the same place.
Add a second O4 for blind spots
One O4 serves the dock. Extra stations fill the gaps. DJI's guidance is to place each one from the signal map, at the weak spots and blind zones, rather than spacing them evenly. Each O4 runs in one of four modes:
| Mode | What it does | Internet at the O4 |
|---|---|---|
| Dock access | The first O4, linked to Dock 4 | Yes |
| Roaming base station | Extends range; the aircraft hops to the nearest O4 | Yes |
| Relay | Extends range at off-grid points | No |
| Simplified dock | For third-party Matrice 400 docks | Yes |
Three ground rules come with it. Every O4 is calibrated from the same Custom Network RTK source as the dock, with identical settings, and manual calibration will not work. One aircraft connects to one O4 at a time. Roaming is switched on before take-off, not in flight.
The network the site needs
The O4 wants Ethernet, ideally gigabit, with more than 20 Mbps up and down (40 Mbps recommended) and latency of 100 ms or less. That is the line that carries live video into FlightHub 2 and your control room.
Where there is no Ethernet, a DJI Cellular Dongle 2 on the O4 covers the gap. The Matrice 5TD also carries two nano-SIM slots, and its two 4G links merge with the O4 link into one stream. Fit SIMs from two different carriers. One weak tower then stops being a lost mission, and the built-in flight termination system needs at least one SIM to work.
The O4 and the aircraft also carry a Sub-2 GHz link, the lower band that holds a signal through trees, walls and terrain. DJI says the frequencies allowed vary by country, so we check what can be used at your site before planning around it.
Power and the pad
Dock 4 runs on 100 to 240 V AC and draws up to 2,000 W, on an LP25 cable. It weighs 66 kg, takes two people to lift and sits on a 0.41 m² footprint. An existing Dock 3 concrete base and its 400 × 400 mm hole pattern can be reused. The Dock 3 power cable and RTK cannot.
What happens on setup day
The sequence is fixed, and it starts before the dock is switched on:
- Survey the O4 position with a Matrice 4 Series or Matrice 4D aircraft.
- Mount the dock and the O4, run the PoE cable and connect the router.
- Converge and calibrate RTK on the O4.
- Bind the Matrice 5TD to the dock and load the batteries.
- Fly the entry and exit route.
That last step matters. The aircraft climbs, flies a square around the dock, builds a SLAM model of the surroundings and records its position against the O4. It lands, and that route guides every take-off and return afterwards. If you fly the AP1 Parachute, take it off before you record the route. The setup runs from the DJI Enterprise App on Android. The iOS app did not support dock deployment at launch.
Training for your team is part of the handover.
Before you order
Two checks save the most time. First, settle the signal question with us before the pad is poured: one O4 or two, and where. Second, sort your CASA path early. A dock that launches on a schedule is still a remotely piloted operation, and remote or beyond-visual-line-of-sight work needs the right approvals in place for your site.
If you are scoping a Dock 4 site, send us an aerial image and the jobs you want it to fly. We will mark up where the dock and the O4 should go. The aircraft side of the system is in our Matrice 5TD comparison.