Autopilot Beta Test
- Thread starter Hangar
- Start date
Once again, thanks!
When the FAQ says to use AP instead of AS if its already on the device, is there an issue using AS in that scenario? I'm thinking if I set it up with a target/person and I want to use the AS app and, perhaps, a "light" password as opposed to my main account in AP. Don't see that as all that common, but there are a couple cases where it might come up.
Also, from what I can see, Airspace is (like AP) iOS only, right? For the AS app, is there a possibility of an Android app since there will be times when the target person has their own phone (and phone security access) and it's an android. Giving someone my iPhone with a touch login or passcode would not allow them to open the app and troubleshoot if they're out away from you and you need to check something out/troubleshoot. Would require them coming back to you which would take time, fuel, maneuvering, etc.
Can always change the passcode temporarily, but hate to provide someone with total access to my iPhone. Also hate to not be able to use it because the chase target only has an android device.
This networked Airspace is a real breakthrough for a lot of us. Just need to figure out all the "hows" and limitations/workarounds.
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2015
- Messages
- 367
- Reaction score
- 66
- Location
- Orange County, California
- Website
- www.youtube.com
Can't wait till DJI fixes this issue! It's the only thing preventing me from flying in/out close on shots while getting smooth transitions. I can't raise the movement parameter too much else I'll crash . Nonetheless, Autopilot still ROCKs!
No issue, other than you have to create a new account, which is just slightly annoying.
We are looking into it right now
When I look in TestFlight under what to test, I see a lot of changes there. I find some of the things a little perplexing without explanation. Is there a more detailed list?
Also, is there an online web based editor for autopilot waypoints?
Also, is there an online web based editor for autopilot waypoints?
I have a waypoint mission loaded that uses joystick for camera operation and when I click to start the preview, the preview icon disappears and there is no Aircrafts icon either. only way to be able to inspect the path is to close and then open AP. And drag it manually. Even though camera direction is undetermined, it would still be nice to be able to use that pth inspector to some extent. At least an error message mentioning subject set to joystick.
Which feature would you like to know more about? If you mean camera triggers, FS has been updated to discuss them.
The path inspector still works when Focus Strategy is joystick in the sense that it shows the tooltip, but the aircraft icon isn't there because the direction is undefined, as you say. What would you rather see?
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2015
- Messages
- 367
- Reaction score
- 66
- Location
- Orange County, California
- Website
- www.youtube.com
@Autoflight Logic it may be a good idea to add gimbal angle and camera status to the waypoint previewer (somewhere on screen not in the small box). I see my flight plans getting real complicated now that we have the camera trigger feature (which I love btw). This will allow the user to check everything before flying. Most of my flight plans now a days are >15mins in length. I would hate to fly and miss turning on the camera and then not have battery power to re-run
Another idea is to create a sample waypoint in flight mode (or just get Eric to do another video ) showing a combination of flying with video and pano photos or something. This is extremely powerful, but scary at the same time for noobs with all the colorful triggers on a flight plan. I like the fact that if you choose to do nothing, the default is as it was (engage=start record video, disengage=stop record video).
Another idea is to create a sample waypoint in flight mode (or just get Eric to do another video ) showing a combination of flying with video and pano photos or something. This is extremely powerful, but scary at the same time for noobs with all the colorful triggers on a flight plan. I like the fact that if you choose to do nothing, the default is as it was (engage=start record video, disengage=stop record video).
I am trying to fly a waypoint mission that focuses from POI to POI and then for a fair bit of the flight the camera points straight down. The only way I can see to point the camera straight down and keep it there is to set the Focus Trigger to Focus Strategy of Direction. the only problem with this is that Interpolation does not work then. Is there some way to do what i want but have it transition smoothly?
I am not sure but I think maybe I am doing something wrong. I set up a simple waypoint route around my neighborhood. I set up about 10 focus triggers (neighbors homes) around a loop. When flying, the gimbal focused over the top of every one of my focus triggers. I was flying at a height 150 feet. I landed, and went back through and dropped the focus trigger altitude to -50 to -60 feet on each trigger and it worked better. I had set up the focus triggers by dragging and dropping onto the map on my ipad the day before the actual test run. Am I doing something wrong?
You can only interpolate between two triggers that have the same strategy at this time. You could guess at what the gimbal angle would be for the subject trigger and then drop a direction trigger at near that angle. Then enable interpolation to the next direction trigger which is at the straight down angle.
It depends on what you calibrated as "ground level". For example, if you engaged in the air and used the current aircraft altitude as ground level, that could explain it.
Soooo....if I set the flight up in the second story of a home, then it would think that second story was ground level? If that is the case, it would help, but it was pretty high over the target.
I know that I am pushing the limits with chase videos. This video shows the Inspire Pro losing its Airspace target. Airspace type was Network. The target was my iPhone 6 running Autopilot which was attached to my Phantom 2. Initially the iPhone was in some wifi, but then got into some weak LTE and probably a little 3G. (Not sure how big a difference that makes). The controller stayed in a strong wifi area. My bird responsiveness is set to 10 seconds and gimbal responsiveness is set to 2 seconds. Dynamic focus is not enabled. The end result was a near collision and heart attack. I could see setting responsiveness to about 5 seconds for this activity. When the Target iPhone is in an Airspace Network, surely that does not mean Wifi only network? Right? Any other suggestions to improve this video?
Yeah I figured out to drop them side by side but that makes it very difficult to make sure there is no jump in the video and also very hard to edit them when they are so close together. If you look at the attached mission link and then start a new one from scratch and recreate the functionality of mine without looking at all my settings you will see all the little complexities to create it and ensure smooth video. Just way to much margin for error this way too. Now imagine someone less techy trying to do it.
Check out this Autopilot Flight Plan:
Flight Plan - Autoflight Logic
On one hand i am happy that it is possible to do it but on the other hand i think it could be a lot easier. To do it i had to tinker a lot and was doing math and i think math should be left to the computer
Perhaps there is an easier way to accomplish what i have with less Focus Triggers and less calculating?
By set the flight up do you mean planned the waypoint mission, or performed the engage sequence with calibration? If the former, it should have no bearing. If the latter, then yes. The only other way to get around this is to fly the aircraft down to ground level (or a few feet off the ground after taking off from the second story) and then engage with the current aircraft altitude as ground level. As for the rest of the discrepancy (assuming the altitude was off even more than the height of your second story), is it possible that you live in a hilly neighborhood and this was just due to topography changes? The aircraft (and thus Autopilot) has no way to measure true altitude above the ground continuously, at least when it is above about 30 feet.
Network means any available internet connection. Were the iPhone and iPad not next to each other for some reason? If they were, can you try to use a peer-to-peer connection? Judging by the behavior in the video it looks like the telemetry from the phantom become delayed and then unavailable for an extended period of time. It is hard to know for sure without seeing the logs, but we would be happy to review them if you email them to [email protected]. Remember to also email the airspace logs in addition to the flight and engagement logs.
As for the settings, adjusting those will only help under regular conditions (i.e. not telemetry latent or denied). However, you might want to consider instant gimbal responsiveness and possibly even instant movement responsiveness. Following another aircraft is the most demanding task to ask of another aircraft from a movement perspective, especially when a human is flying the first aircraft as course changes can be very abrupt. If you want maximum performance from Autopilot you have to take the governors off.
As for the "near miss", it is hard to tell exactly how close they were, but if you had them set at different altitudes and the phantom pilot wasn't changing altitude it was probably just an optical illusion.
Completely agree that this isn't the perfect solution. In fact, allowing interpolation between Direction and Subject has always been on the roadmap, it is just lower priority because it is a pretty rare use case. My suggestion was more about getting you a work-around until we can implement it.On one hand i am happy that it is possible to do it but on the other hand i think it could be a lot easier. To do it i had to tinker a lot and was doing math and i think math should be left to the computer
Perhaps there is an easier way to accomplish what i have with less Focus Triggers and less calculating?
I planned the mission but did not engage it. There is one "low corner" of the neighborhood, but it shot over every target. You know that I am still learning, so let me play with it and be sure it is a consistent problem for me. By the way, I looked at my map on Healthy Drones and it flew EXACTLY the way it was laid out. Woohoo!
I tried peer-to-peer with the intent of staying close enough, but the iPhone exited Airspace within seconds. So that is why I went with Network. Does Peer-peer use bluetooth?
I didn't think that I had a bad connection, never noticed signal strength dropping. So I went to Healthy Drones this morning to take a look. You nailed it! There was poor connection in that part of the flight. I am using DBS mod and I don't remember my orientation at that point. Pretty amazing to me that you diagnosed it from watching the video.
Makes sense...will try this.
I was probably anxious already about the erratic behavior when I unknowingly had a poor signal. Then it raced to catch up with the drone just as my son was flying back toward the inspire. Both of us thought we were about to watch a wreck. It is interesting that Autopilot sort of anticipated the pass and was already swinging the gimbal around prior to the birds actually passing each other.
Thanks for the feedback. I have a few homework assignments now. Your being here is one of the things that makes your program pretty stinking awesome.
Another explanation could be if you engaged while the aircraft was already flying and chose to use the current aircraft altitude as ground level, then all the altitudes would be too high potentially.
It uses a combination of bluetooth and ad-hoc wifi. How far apart were the iPad and iPhone? Did you have the iPhone running a personal hotspot? If so try disabling it. Granted, the Airspace type doesn't sound like the culprit, but even still, it is preferable to use peer-to-peer when you can.
That is actually part of the algorithm - that is it predicts the location based on the current course and velocity and preemptively starts moving the gimbal to attempt to keep it framed. You can actually see this on the map if you look at the blue aircraft indicator of the phantom. There will be a solid blue icon that represents the current location, and a transparent blue icon that represents the predicted location. The algorithm is actually using the predicted location to adjust the gimbal. Pretty proud of that bit of math to be honest...thanks for noticing
Our pleasure. Making our users successful is ultimately why we do this (job satisfaction). Knowing that we just might enable you to capture something that is otherwise humanly impossible is a great feeling.
OK great. I noticed that interpolation also does not seem to work between Focus Strategies: Direction > Yaw Reference: Absolute and Focus Strategies: Direction > Yaw Reference: Course.
in the Focus Strategies: Direction page it would be nice to be able to rotate the craft multiple time like i did in the mission i posted. It was really cumbersome to do it the way i did in that mission example. Perhaps there could be a field where we could enter a number great than 360 and then a direction checkbox (clockwise / counter clockwise).
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2015
- Messages
- 367
- Reaction score
- 66
- Location
- Orange County, California
- Website
- www.youtube.com
Yes this would be nice. Like you I've found a work around by placing back to back directional focus strategies. But it isn't continuous and you can't get steady acceleration.
Hi...not all of my flights are getting automatically uploaded to Healthy Drones. My ipad air 2 is not cellular enabled and I sometimes see a message flash for a second that says upload to Healthy Drones is not successful. Any way to create a button to push flights to Healthy Drones once we are in a wifi area?
