You know the saying: the early Christians get the hungry lions? Well the lions must have been well fed because I flew the 1.4 firmware without any significant issues. Normally I hold off on testing new upgrades, but I was really interested in the waypoint feature. Here is my assessment:
I tested both the home lock and waypoint features. In both cases the Inspire flew in a really jerky fashion with overly quick stops and abrupt turns. I checked the gain controls and found everything had been reset to 100%. So I lowered them and things got a bit better, but there is still room for improvement there. The home lock worked just like the P2 but the startup is different. It’s not just a simple switch setting but rather a switch setting followed by some on-screen tapping. But I am sure we will get used to it after using the feature more often. Canceling home lock is like the P2 in that you just return the switch to the P setting.
I put the waypoint feature through its paces and found it works quite well. I know there are a lot of Inspire users that are complaining about the fact that you have to fly the mission in order to record it. Everyone is different with different needs, but this man’s opinion is, it works very smoothly. Yes, you have to fly the route to record it, but all you do is press the C1 button every time you want to record a waypoint. It couldn’t be much simpler in my opinion. Furthermore, I like the idea that I need to fly the mission first because it lets me focus on the flying as I would under normal flying conditions. It then records the altitude you are currently flying, or you can change it if you desire. Once the initial route is recorded, the mission is flown. The Inspire automatically saves the 3 most current missions, but you can force it to save any mission for the future.
There are two features of this implementation of the waypoints that are superior to the P2. First, you can record the mission and re-fly it any time in the future. Second, you can now control the camera pan and tilt as the mission is flown. There are a couple things I did not like about it: First, if you select a waypoint, then yaw, then fly to the next waypoint, that yaw doesn’t happen like it did on the initial flight. It uses the length of the new leg of the mission to make that yaw. So, if you yaw 90 degrees hovering in one spot, that 90 degree yaw happens over the length of the next leg during playback. And like the P2, altitude changes work the same way. So, if I change my altitude by 100 feet while hovering in one spot, that 100 feet is actually changed over the course of the next waypoint leg. Perhaps in the future, DJI will have an option to do either operation while in a hover or in transit. Meanwhile, it’s the kind of thing you can easily adjust to when you make your filming pass. The second thing I did not like is the fact that the mission just recorded automatically started replay as soon as I completed recording the mission. Now, I would rather have it record as a finite step and playback as another finite step. That said, it could have been something I did without knowing it that caused the instant replay.
Bottom line is I like it. When I flew the P2, the waypoint function was just a toy. Nice to have to show off the capability of the craft. With the Inspire, it will become very useful for those that see a need to replay a mission over and over.
I tested both the home lock and waypoint features. In both cases the Inspire flew in a really jerky fashion with overly quick stops and abrupt turns. I checked the gain controls and found everything had been reset to 100%. So I lowered them and things got a bit better, but there is still room for improvement there. The home lock worked just like the P2 but the startup is different. It’s not just a simple switch setting but rather a switch setting followed by some on-screen tapping. But I am sure we will get used to it after using the feature more often. Canceling home lock is like the P2 in that you just return the switch to the P setting.
I put the waypoint feature through its paces and found it works quite well. I know there are a lot of Inspire users that are complaining about the fact that you have to fly the mission in order to record it. Everyone is different with different needs, but this man’s opinion is, it works very smoothly. Yes, you have to fly the route to record it, but all you do is press the C1 button every time you want to record a waypoint. It couldn’t be much simpler in my opinion. Furthermore, I like the idea that I need to fly the mission first because it lets me focus on the flying as I would under normal flying conditions. It then records the altitude you are currently flying, or you can change it if you desire. Once the initial route is recorded, the mission is flown. The Inspire automatically saves the 3 most current missions, but you can force it to save any mission for the future.
There are two features of this implementation of the waypoints that are superior to the P2. First, you can record the mission and re-fly it any time in the future. Second, you can now control the camera pan and tilt as the mission is flown. There are a couple things I did not like about it: First, if you select a waypoint, then yaw, then fly to the next waypoint, that yaw doesn’t happen like it did on the initial flight. It uses the length of the new leg of the mission to make that yaw. So, if you yaw 90 degrees hovering in one spot, that 90 degree yaw happens over the length of the next leg during playback. And like the P2, altitude changes work the same way. So, if I change my altitude by 100 feet while hovering in one spot, that 100 feet is actually changed over the course of the next waypoint leg. Perhaps in the future, DJI will have an option to do either operation while in a hover or in transit. Meanwhile, it’s the kind of thing you can easily adjust to when you make your filming pass. The second thing I did not like is the fact that the mission just recorded automatically started replay as soon as I completed recording the mission. Now, I would rather have it record as a finite step and playback as another finite step. That said, it could have been something I did without knowing it that caused the instant replay.
Bottom line is I like it. When I flew the P2, the waypoint function was just a toy. Nice to have to show off the capability of the craft. With the Inspire, it will become very useful for those that see a need to replay a mission over and over.
