I see i can assign waypoints and drone will go off and fly them. Interested to hear from your experiences if anybody has do this? I think i would worry to see it disappear over the horizon and not come back for several minutes.
anybody do waypoint missions?
- Thread starter MajObvious
- Start date
I'm new to this hobby but I recently purchased litchi and tried a waypoint flight. I kept it fairly close, 300m or so in an area clear of obstacles. It worked flawlessly and allowed me to turn the camera in whichever direction I wanted during the flight. Works great!!
dirkclod
Premium Pilot
Sure they have like just flying and having a malfunction . Try doing some searching and ya might see lots on it 
dirkclod
Premium Pilot
Air I've seen lots that have not thought about how it goes from start to the first waypoint and there be that drone eating tree
in the way .I think that's been an issue more than anything else I have ever read .
in the way .I think that's been an issue more than anything else I have ever read .
good point, First rule of waypoints - first waypoint should be set above launch point at the desired altitude.
just to spell it out for the OP - if you set your first waypoint in the distance it will gradually, not immediately climb to the altitude you set.
I haven't used waypoints with my P4 yet , but i believe the "first rule of waypoints" does not necessarily apply since the P4 has object avoidance and shouldn't hit the drone eating tree
but i wouldn't totally depend on OA to save your bacon!
I've experimented with waypoint flight a fair amount. One major advantage I've found is that rotation is much smoother than I've been able to achieve flying it myself. If I set the camera position to "consistent with flight record" then the bird smoothly turns from it's orientation at one waypoint to the orientation at the next waypoint. If you plan your orientations carefully, you can script the whole flight and get very nice results. DJI Go doesn't record camera angle as part of the recording, though, so that can be a challenge. I'm still not as smooth as I'd like at raising and lowering the camera, and it's easy to forget to adjust it as you're flying, or create jerky movements that spoil the flow of the recording.
I did a fly-around of my house with like 15 waypoints (big irregularly shaped house with an attached garage, deck with 2 story arbor on top, and lots of tall trees in the yard, so it was a pretty complex flightpath) and got a very nice video study of our house and yard.
I also did a flyover of our entire cul-de-sac top to bottom. I put the drone at the bottom of the street, drove my car about 1/3 of the way up, recorded waypoints until it was almost out of sight, left it hovering, drove past it to 2/3 of the way up my street, and recorded the remaining waypoints. I then flew a much simpler high altitude return flight with only 1 waypoint where I could see the waypoint position, then drove my car home, and flew the drone home and landed it. At each waypoint I thought about the orientation of the drone so it was facing the way I wanted.
I then "let her rip" with video recording and drove along to follow. It worked flawlessly.
I have done 2 versions of my street flyover. The first time I apparently failed to record one of the waypoints, so when I flew the mission, it flew a straight line instead of following the curve of my street. It came scary-close to a large tree in a neighbor's yard, and I was quite far away when I flew that mission so I didn't realize what was happening until the danger had passed. Had it hit a tree branch it might have destroyed my Phantom since it was probably 20 meters in the air at the time. (This was a really tall tree.)
I'm eager to try one of the third party flight control apps that offer more options for managing waypoints. DJI's app has some huge shortcomings. The worst offenders in my book relate to saving waypoint missions. You can't control when it actually saves a mission. It only saves the mission when you tell it to start flying it after recording it. If you don't do that, the mission is discarded. Also, you can't name your waypoint missions, ever. They get the date and time they were recorded. If you have more than a couple saved on a given day, good luck keeping track of which one is which. both of these things are stupid and inexcusable. They are UI flaws that make the feature really hard to use, and that would be quite easy to fix. (I am a professional iOS developer, so I know of what I speak.)
I did a fly-around of my house with like 15 waypoints (big irregularly shaped house with an attached garage, deck with 2 story arbor on top, and lots of tall trees in the yard, so it was a pretty complex flightpath) and got a very nice video study of our house and yard.
I also did a flyover of our entire cul-de-sac top to bottom. I put the drone at the bottom of the street, drove my car about 1/3 of the way up, recorded waypoints until it was almost out of sight, left it hovering, drove past it to 2/3 of the way up my street, and recorded the remaining waypoints. I then flew a much simpler high altitude return flight with only 1 waypoint where I could see the waypoint position, then drove my car home, and flew the drone home and landed it. At each waypoint I thought about the orientation of the drone so it was facing the way I wanted.
I then "let her rip" with video recording and drove along to follow. It worked flawlessly.
I have done 2 versions of my street flyover. The first time I apparently failed to record one of the waypoints, so when I flew the mission, it flew a straight line instead of following the curve of my street. It came scary-close to a large tree in a neighbor's yard, and I was quite far away when I flew that mission so I didn't realize what was happening until the danger had passed. Had it hit a tree branch it might have destroyed my Phantom since it was probably 20 meters in the air at the time. (This was a really tall tree.)
I'm eager to try one of the third party flight control apps that offer more options for managing waypoints. DJI's app has some huge shortcomings. The worst offenders in my book relate to saving waypoint missions. You can't control when it actually saves a mission. It only saves the mission when you tell it to start flying it after recording it. If you don't do that, the mission is discarded. Also, you can't name your waypoint missions, ever. They get the date and time they were recorded. If you have more than a couple saved on a given day, good luck keeping track of which one is which. both of these things are stupid and inexcusable. They are UI flaws that make the feature really hard to use, and that would be quite easy to fix. (I am a professional iOS developer, so I know of what I speak.)
Duncan, you are clearly an iOS guy, and after reading your post my hunch that is you won't be put off by complexity and a steep learning curve.
Get Auto Flight Logic's Autopilot app.
You will be amazed at what's possible compared to DJI GO. IMO, Autopilot (or Litchi if you are on Android) is the best "accessory" you can buy. If you like an app that you can really sink your teeth into, you will love it.
It will turn your bird into a whole new thing.
Get Auto Flight Logic's Autopilot app.
You will be amazed at what's possible compared to DJI GO. IMO, Autopilot (or Litchi if you are on Android) is the best "accessory" you can buy. If you like an app that you can really sink your teeth into, you will love it.
It will turn your bird into a whole new thing.
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