Horizon level

[InspiredOne]

O definitely not saying it is your answer. Just an observation. Some people jerk the sticks around and expect smooth vids just because there is a gimbal. Gimbals can't do ALL the work for us. It does look like the video example seems to linger sideways longer than any I have seen.
I was just making a suggestion since I could not tell the speed you were going.

The video you referred to was not mine, but I understand. I just wanted to make certain there were no misunderstandings as to the possible cause(s). I'm getting the tilting horizon with slow turns, but it does, eventually, straighten back out itself. In the mean time the tilted horizon drives me nuts (yea, I know, that's just a short putt).

 

[Mazz]

na I completely agree. I have noticed similar issueswhere my horizon was not straight across and it is very annoying.

 

[4wd]

Once you start looking for it a great many inspire videos show this effect where on take off things are level but it tends to drift out after a turn or two.
I noticed it quite early on and still seems a common problem.

 

[sdjackaerial]

OK.... Without going too much into the technicalities involved here... ALL gimbals will do this to a degree. The trick is to get the balance right between Gyro trust, acceleration compensation and fusion between gyro and accelerometers.
The more trust the software puts in the gyro, the less accelerometers are used but can lead to horizon drift issues. However a certain amount of gyro trust is needed to cope with curved maneuvers/turns etc.
My guess is DJI are still fine tuning the gyro trust values to find a happy medium.
It would be nice if they gave us the ability in the app to alter this value depending on whether the user was going to be flying like a bat out of hell with fast dynamic movements or whether they wanted to capture images using slow, balanced maneuvers.
Of course the complication there would be that the 'out of the box' flyers would not understand it, set it wrong and then bleat about wonky video . Then I guess, they could always have an 'auto' option which is what it is basically set at now.
This will be a fine tuning/work in progress for DJI.

THANK YOU for explaining this so clearly. Cheers!!

 

[Dr James Ellingford]

OK brand new Inspire connected to IPAD and had the error MC DATA ERROR (in red text top centre of screen) I flew anyway (four flights) and all behaved beautifully - restarted as app instructions suggested and still there. recharged all batteries and its still there? What is the solution? Anyway one know?

 

[crashburn]

OK brand new Inspire connected to IPAD and had the error MC DATA ERROR (in red text top centre of screen) I flew anyway (four flights) and all behaved beautifully - restarted as app instructions suggested and still there. recharged all batteries and its still there? What is the solution? Anyway one know?

I get similar error when using my ipad for flight simulator, but using my android Shield for flying, I haven't seen it there. I think I saw a post somewhere about this problem which a search might find.

Enjoy life and be nice

 

[InspiredOne]

OK.... Without going too much into the technicalities involved here... ALL gimbals will do this to a degree. The trick is to get the balance right between Gyro trust, acceleration compensation and fusion between gyro and accelerometers.
The more trust the software puts in the gyro, the less accelerometers are used but can lead to horizon drift issues. However a certain amount of gyro trust is needed to cope with curved maneuvers/turns etc.
My guess is DJI are still fine tuning the gyro trust values to find a happy medium.
It would be nice if they gave us the ability in the app to alter this value depending on whether the user was going to be flying like a bat out of hell with fast dynamic movements or whether they wanted to capture images using slow, balanced maneuvers.
Of course the complication there would be that the 'out of the box' flyers would not understand it, set it wrong and then bleat about wonky video . Then I guess, they could always have an 'auto' option which is what it is basically set at now.
This will be a fine tuning/work in progress for DJI.

At the risk of sounding argumentative, I'll going to have to disagree. The reason being, I've gone back and looked at some of my earlier footage--when I first got the copter--and the horizon is level.

This problem has only cropped up in the past couple of weeks or so, since the previous update (.17) to yesterday's (the 27th).

 

[infocus]

Are there any announcements of DJI they will fix the horizon drift issues by releasing a new firmware ? I'm surprised that there are not much more complaints about the Inspire 1 horizon level all over the forums...I've seen a lot of horizon drift videos of the Inspire so far. Or do we only have some defective units and the majority of other Inspire 1 deliver perfect level horizon ?

 

[sirnikolas]

Mine does it too but there's no gimbal twitch.

 

[jon b]

Yep, see this as well. Shot this weekend by the lake and set up the aircraft carefully. Horizon locked-on. Travel out, turn, and notice the horizon creeps with the yaw of the craft. Unfortunately there is no control over that axis on the remote like I have on the heavy lift gimbal for the S800 and even so, you'd notice that if you adjusted while shooting. I can also rotate and crop in edit due to the 4K resolution, but again, it's hard to make adjustments mid shot.

Spect we'll see this addressed in future software updates.

Great product overall regardless

 

[The Editor]

..,. I can also rotate and crop in edit due to the 4K resolution, but again, it's hard to make adjustments mid shot.

Keyframes?

And yes, this will be fine tuned out with progressive FW updates and PID adjustments

 

[jon b]

I'll pull a few keyframes for you and post tonight from this video. Shot in 4K 29.97 and edited with horizon corrected to the extent I could, zoomed -in and such. Point being, it's should be a good example since it has lots of slow sweeping pans.

Again, I'll pull original keyframes from the panning shots tonight.

Video posted here (noticed I didn't zoom enough in a few places and you see the cropped corners after the rotation was done. Again, gotta say this is a very nice platform to shoot from.

And since Vimeo adds compression (over an already compressed file), those interested in the 1080p outcome can get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4tgmp8t4hcpfbp/Frozen Harbors 2.mov?dl=0

 

[The Editor]

I'll pull a few keyframes for you and post tonight from this video. Shot in 4K 29.97 and edited with horizon corrected to the extent I could, zoomed -in and such. Point being, it's should be a good example since it has lots of slow sweeping pans.

Again, I'll pull original keyframes from the panning shots tonight.

Video posted here (noticed I didn't zoom enough in a few places and you see the cropped corners after the rotation was done. Again, gotta say this is a very nice platform to shoot from.

And since Vimeo adds compression (over an already compressed file), those interested in the 1080p outcome can get it here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e4tgmp8t4hcpfbp/Frozen Harbors 2.mov?dl=0

No sorry... I meant USE key framing to track your changes in frame rotation and use bezier keyframes rather than linear or spline to smooth out the transitional movement of the horizon.

 

[infocus]

As other users got the horizon problem corrected while doing an automatic gimbal calibration while being in the air:

I just tried several times to do a gimbal auto adjustment while hovering in the air...doesn't work for me...when doing this I get a message: "gimbal calibration failed". It was windy conditions when I tried that, maybe it didn't work because of this ? When I do gimbal calibration while the inspire is on the ground, the gimbal calibration works without error message.

Another question: When doing a gimbal calibration on the ground, is your horizon perfectly leveled after that (while still having the inspire stationary on the ground)...mine is slightly off horizon level even after auto calibration. Is there something wrong with my gimbal or is this normal ?

 

[InspiredOne]

As other users got the horizon problem corrected while doing an automatic gimbal calibration while being in the air:

I just tried several times to do a gimbal auto adjustment while hovering in the air...doesn't work for me...when doing this I get a message: "gimbal calibration failed". It was windy conditions when I tried that, maybe it didn't work because of this ? When I do gimbal calibration while the inspire is on the ground, the gimbal calibration works without error message.

Another question: When doing a gimbal calibration on the ground, is your horizon perfectly leveled after that (while still having the inspire stationary on the ground)...mine is slightly off horizon level even after auto calibration. Is there something wrong with my gimbal or is this normal ?

Same here. I just got back from flying and attempted to do a mid-air gimbal auto calibration. It didn't help. The air was dead calm, too. Tried another on the ground. That didn't work, either.

This problem seems to be getting worse each time I fly. Anyone else...?

 

[GizaDog]

I've been talking about this same issue for weeks now. It hurts my mind to see it not staying level when shooting.

 

[InspiredOne]

I've been talking about this same issue for weeks now. It hurts my mind to see it not staying level when shooting.

It's enough to drive you crazy. The tilting horizon ruins otherwise great footage.

 

[Alessandro Garabaghi]

Getting the same. Solution has been to fix it in post, not ideal but not the worst. Someone on another forum mention it should be fixed in the firmware coming out ... fingers crossed

 

[Verza]

Same problem, i hope dji fix this bug in new firmware.

in order i try to:
recalibrate gimbal
adjust gimbal roll
reset gimbal yaw
re-install firmware
recalibrate imu

nothing seems to work