Maps Made Easy Question

[jvhooser]

I tried Maps Made Easy for the first time today, and had a problem with the Phantom 4 not following the planned grid.

I was only trying to do about 4 acres as a test.

The drone went from home to point one, then travelled at less than one mph, for about a third of the first leg, and the altitude was steady climbing. Altitude was set for 120 ft, and by the time it had flown 75 feet of the first leg, it was at 430 ft, and I brought it down manually.

I tried this 3 times, with a fresh map each time and the results were consistently bad.

I am flying a Phantom 4, latest firmware, and using an iPad mini2 with the controller. Flying in P mode.

Appreciate any advise, or help.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[jack1144]

Wow thats wild. I have no problem with map pilot however I am on old firmware , a P3P and an older Map Pilot version.
I have a P4 but not used it for Map Pilot.
Does your aircraft fly fine with the Go app?
Does the mission upload normally?
Have you tried a mission estimate to see if the mission is normal?
Are you using the new terrain follow version? ( jan 2017)
Just trying to see what might be an issue.
They do have a community at MME( under Help Center) that may have experience with this problem.

 

[jack1144]

I tried Maps Made Easy for the first time today, and had a problem with the Phantom 4 not following the planned grid.

I was only trying to do about 4 acres as a test.

The drone went from home to point one, then travelled at less than one mph, for about a third of the first leg, and the altitude was steady climbing. Altitude was set for 120 ft, and by the time it had flown 75 feet of the first leg, it was at 430 ft, and I brought it down manually.

I tried this 3 times, with a fresh map each time and the results were consistently bad.

I am flying a Phantom 4, latest firmware, and using an iPad mini2 with the controller. Flying in P mode.

Appreciate any advise, or help.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

forgot to click "reply" for above response

 

[jvhooser]

No problems with the Go app. Mission seems to upload normally, but like I say, I am new to the app. I don't know what you mean by Mission Estimate. The version of Maps Made Easy I am using is 2.4.2 build 01072017.

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[jack1144]

No problems with the Go app. Mission seems to upload normally, but like I say, I am new to the app. I don't know what you mean by Mission Estimate. The version of Maps Made Easy I am using is 2.4.2 build 01072017.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

The Mission Estimate is available when create the mission. You get the report of number of pics to be taken , flight info such as time to complete, altitude, speed, etc.
Ok your on version 2.4 so I believe that has terrain following. I don't have that version so not sure if you can turn it off. You may have an issue with that.
Seems if the aircraft maintains altitude with the Go app, the baro and GPS of the P4 should be ok.
Hum... did you save the mission prior to flight? Maybe some info there.

 

[jvhooser]

I do have a couple of the missions saved. I went back and looked and the altitude was 120ft on each flight. I still can't figure out why it stopped horizontal movement, and climbed to over 400 ft. Been too windy this weekend to try it again, but I will, and post results first chance I can.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[jack1144]

I do have a couple of the missions saved. I went back and looked and the altitude was 120ft on each flight. I still can't figure out why it stopped horizontal movement, and climbed to over 400 ft. Been too windy this weekend to try it again, but I will, and post results first chance I can.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

Boy, it would be nice to find the cause. Maybe the logfiles would help.
Goodluck, let us know. thx

 

[jvhooser]

I flew 4 missions today without an issue. Flew all 4 at 250ft. I wonder if trying to fly at 120ft was the problem. All 4 maps today flew perfectly, uploaded and stitched well.

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[jack1144]

I flew 4 missions today without an issue. Flew all 4 at 250ft. I wonder if trying to fly at 120ft was the problem. All 4 maps today flew perfectly, uploaded and stitched well.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

cool. I have flown at 100ft AGL with no problem but it's an older version app without the " terrain following". Did you check the logs for an issue?
Glad it's working now, just am concerned what caused the problem.
If you find anything would appreciate the info. thx

 

[jvhooser]

Checked the log files, and didn't see anything unusual. Mapped 62 acres and a couple of small fields yesterday with no issues.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[axelz]

I've had issues using an ipad 2 mini also, found it simply wasn't fast enough anymore to work reliably - moving to an iPad Air 2 sorted it as a fair bit more powerful, at least for me. One thing worth doing is setting up a healthydrones (now airdata) account and uploading the logs from map pilot app to that to analyse the flight logs (once linked in settings, you select the CSV file under the log window to upload). Despite seemingly flying OK reviewing these showed numerous data link errors with the ipad mini 2 which I believe was a result of performance issues. Would be interested to see if you see the same.

 

[Richard R]

I do have a couple of the missions saved. I went back and looked and the altitude was 120ft on each flight. I still can't figure out why it stopped horizontal movement, and climbed to over 400 ft. Been too windy this weekend to try it again, but I will, and post results first chance I can.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

Not trying to be a smart@##$, but are you sure you are using g English units and not metric?

 

[DefiantChild]

I tried Maps Made Easy for the first time today, and had a problem with the Phantom 4 not following the planned grid.

I was only trying to do about 4 acres as a test.

The drone went from home to point one, then travelled at less than one mph, for about a third of the first leg, and the altitude was steady climbing. Altitude was set for 120 ft, and by the time it had flown 75 feet of the first leg, it was at 430 ft, and I brought it down manually.

I tried this 3 times, with a fresh map each time and the results were consistently bad.

I am flying a Phantom 4, latest firmware, and using an iPad mini2 with the controller. Flying in P mode.

Appreciate any advise, or help.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

I've experienced significant erratic behavior using Map Pilot back in March to run P4P missions on a 10 acre parcel. Was using a 2nd gen iPad for mission planning and operation. Map Pilot repeatedly crashed during the mission, with and without terrain follow enabled. It also failed to follow and deviated from the expected mission parameters, but I in my case I don't recall it increasing the AC's altitude (then again, it was a fairly flat piece of mostly open raw land so I really didn't expect to see much in the way of altitude fluctuations.)

I finally gave up and went to a different app.

At the time I suspected it was part of the same firmware incompatibility issues that prevented Litchi and other 3rd party apps from playing nicely with DJI Go 4 and the hardware.

I'll try again now that firmware has recently been released. If I experience the same erratic behavior as before and have time I'll also run it on the Mavic just to rule out the possibility it could be AC specific rather than generically erratic.

 

[Richard R]

I'm flying a P3A with a Mini 4 and my MME mission are usually spot on (within a fraction of a foot throughout the entire flight) both as being reported in the app and as recorded in the exif data. I'm pretty sure of this because I was having another issue and pulled the exif altitude from the ground reference photo (the first one recorded at the start of the mission) and used the difference between that and altitude on various images taken during the mission. After a dozen or so mission on 3 different Phantom, never saw any meaningful deviation from programmed flight altitude. The last 3 missions, I have noticed another issue. Flying the same mission that I had flown several times before, the last 3 out of 4 missions the aircraft would suddenly appear to loose its mind. It would stop taking pictures and slowly drift like it has lost GPS even though I was still showing 15-17 satellites. On the last mission, flown yesterday, it captured all of the images and then started acting the same way on the return home. Always seems to be over the same portion of an abandoned building in the area being mapped! Maybe I should ask Skully and Mulner to check it out