active track worked absolutely awful for me. why?

[gerard143]

So I tried follow me mode once when walking and it followed me fine.

This last weekend I took a snowmobiling trip. Was all excited to get out on the open frozen lake and do follow me mode.

I tried about 100x and it worked like complete ****. I would select myself on the snowmobile a box with “go” would pop up, I touch that and then I was selected. I tried all diff heights. Diff angles. All 3 follow me mode. It just plain never worked. I even went as slow as 2mph. The **** thing just wouldn’t follow me. I’d watch myself go out of site and then I would become unselected. I noticed a slow/fast mode too and tried both. Like one time it managed to follow me at about 4mph for 10 seconds then lost me again. For reference on colors: It was a bright green snowmobile on a white snow covered frozen lake. My gear was reflective orange and green with a black helmet.


Is follow me mode really this pathetic? I thought activetrack 2.0 was supposed to be decent. I was sorely disappointed with my experience.

 

[iowahill]

So I tried follow me mode once when walking and it followed me fine.

This last weekend I took a snowmobiling trip. Was all excited to get out on the open frozen lake and do follow me mode.

I tried about 100x and it worked like complete ****. I would select myself on the snowmobile a box with “go” would pop up, I touch that and then I was selected. I tried all diff heights. Diff angles. All 3 follow me mode. It just plain never worked. I even went as slow as 2mph. The **** thing just wouldn’t follow me. I’d watch myself go out of site and then I would become unselected. I noticed a slow/fast mode too and tried both. Like one time it managed to follow me at about 4mph for 10 seconds then lost me again. For reference on colors: It was a bright green snowmobile on a white snow covered frozen lake. My gear was reflective orange and green with a black helmet.


Is follow me mode really this pathetic? I thought activetrack 2.0 was supposed to be decent. I was sorely disappointed with my experience.

Is it possible that all the white around you might have interfered with target acquisition? Just a thought.

 

[gerard143]

No clue. Hoping people on here can help provide better info. I do have a buddy with an older mavic and he said follow me mode worked fine for him when he did it out in Utah in the mountains riding all that deep powder snow.

 

[iowahill]

No clue. Hoping people on here can help provide better info. I do have a buddy with an older mavic and he said follow me mode worked fine for him when he did it out in Utah in the mountains riding all that deep powder snow.

Try it again in a setting where there is more visual background for the signal processor to differentiate with. That might prove a premise anyway. Keep us updated though.

 

[Sirquack]

Were you using an ND filter? If the conditions were very bright, the high key light may have made you not stand out even if you were showing up on the display enough to be able to choose yourself. If you increase your aperture making the scene less bright (effectively) it might make a difference. An ND does the same thing without having to increase your F stop. I have similar issues with Focus in High contrast situations even with my DSLR. Sometimes things are so bright is really causes strange issues.

 

[Speedmeister]

You might want to try darker clothing on a snow background for follow me mode. I think even VPS is also blind with all white background. Did it automatically put the subject in a box or you have to manually draw a box on the subject?

 

[gerard143]

It would see me fine, usually auto selecting me with the small green circle. The sled and me stood out like a sore thumb over the white background.

And yes it was clear skies and sunny. No ND filter.


I can upload some vids tonight and show u conditions and you’ll see it lose me quickly.

 

[Sirquack]

It would see me fine, usually auto selecting me with the small green circle. The sled and me stood out like a sore thumb over the white background.

And yes it was clear skies and sunny. No ND filter.


I can upload some vids tonight and show u conditions and you’ll see it lose me quickly.

Thanks for the confirmation on the ND. I have friends who are pro droners, and they have had similar issues with overly bright scenes so that is where I was coming from. I look forward to the video. If it is like my friends issue, it was a wide open field and only the snow mobile was a different color than white. The snow as too bright and once they put an ND32 on, it worked much more effectively.

 

[gerard143]

I will order filters ASAP and give this a try again soon if the snow doesn’t melt. It’s getting close to the end of the riding season. Hitting 61 thurs.

 

[Sirquack]

I will order filters ASAP and give this a try again soon if the snow doesn’t melt. It’s getting close to the end of the riding season. Hitting 61 thurs.

You can replicate it by stopping down on the F stop. The best feature on the M2P is the variable aperture. But anything over F8 suffers from softening due to diffraction. But ND's can be found for reasonably cheap, just don't go with bottom of the barrel ones as the glass quality will impact image quality.

 

[gerard143]

Polarpros good? Which collection. DJI Mavic 2 Filters and DJI Mavic 2 Accessories by PolarPro Idc about the cost. Just want a good setup. For Video and photos. Know nothing about photography etc but I’d like to learn and get a lot better. Don’t mind making the investment. Cinematographers collection a waste? Many one generally wouldn’t use in that kit?

 

[jwt873]

No clue. Hoping people on here can help provide better info. I do have a buddy with an older mavic and he said follow me mode worked fine for him when he did it out in Utah in the mountains riding all that deep powder snow.

Was the person with the older Mavic using active track, or follow me? Active track uses the camera's 'vision' to track an object. Follow me blindly tracks the GPS location reported by your phone or tablet.

Active track should work.. Especially with the contrast of your sowmobile against the white snow. (Perhaps there's too much contrast, too many shadows?). Hard to say what's happening.

I might be wrong, but I don't believe Follow Me has been incorporated in the M2 yet...

 

[FoxhallGH]

So I tried follow me mode once when walking and it followed me fine.

This last weekend I took a snowmobiling trip. Was all excited to get out on the open frozen lake and do follow me mode.

I tried about 100x and it worked like complete ****. I would select myself on the snowmobile a box with “go” would pop up, I touch that and then I was selected. I tried all diff heights. Diff angles. All 3 follow me mode. It just plain never worked. I even went as slow as 2mph. The **** thing just wouldn’t follow me. I’d watch myself go out of site and then I would become unselected. I noticed a slow/fast mode too and tried both. Like one time it managed to follow me at about 4mph for 10 seconds then lost me again. For reference on colors: It was a bright green snowmobile on a white snow covered frozen lake. My gear was reflective orange and green with a black helmet.


Is follow me mode really this pathetic? I thought activetrack 2.0 was supposed to be decent. I was sorely disappointed with my experience.

Sounds like you are missing out a step ... Once you have gone into the intelligent Flight mode and drawn the box around you, there are the 3 options on the right of the screen which allow you to select which follow mode you want. When I first did this, I missed this due to the day being bright on the screen. If you don't make a selection, it seems to default to 'Spotlight' mode, where the camera points at you, but the drone does not move!

 

[gerard143]

I tried all 3 modes. No luck with any of them.

And as far as active track or follow me mode I thought they were one in the same.

 

[FoxhallGH]

Your original description implied that once you set the green box and touched 'Go' - you were expecting Active Track to work...
However - once you have drawn the green box and it is flashing the word 'Go' - you then need to select one of the three sub-modes on the right (Trace, Profile, or Spotlight) - i.e. you don't touch the Go box!!!
When you touch one of those 3, you'll get a pop-up picture describing the mode with an 'OK' to touch to launch that mode ... Once you have touched OK, then you'll see that the target is selected and you are ready to go back on the Go4 screen.

 

[gerard143]

Yes I was hitting intelligent mode icons. Then I would select the type. For example trace. Then I would trace myself. It would then say go and nothing happened. So then I touched go again and noticed it changed the green around to me something that looked like [•] so I assume I was selected and good to go. I also noticed that it would pop up the fast option so I tried that as well. Like I say once it did track me for a tiny bit. Then I stopped and it overshot me and was so low I had to duck so it didn’t take blast my helmet (I was trying all different heights to see if I could finally get it to work).

Going to watch the video you linked now.

 

[gerard143]

I think that video is too old. It’s not setup like that anymore. On my smart controller those modes don’t show up as a sub tab on the right. To get active track to allow you to even trace you have to select the mode first. I did see those sliders pop up too (although they look diff now then in video) that allow you to have the drone circle you, so that further makes me think I did it properly and it was in tracking mode.

Bummer, as I was hoping I just was doing it wrong and this would have been the solution. :-/

 

[FoxhallGH]

I think that video is too old. It’s not setup like that anymore. On my smart controller those modes don’t show up as a sub tab on the right. To get active track to allow you to even trace you have to select the mode first. I did see those sliders pop up too (although they look diff now then in video) that allow you to have the drone circle you, so that further makes me think I did it properly and it was in tracking mode.

Bummer, as I was hoping I just was doing it wrong and this would have been the solution. :-/

Sorry - my mistake on that one ... just looked at the Forum title and saw this was a 'Mav 2 Pro' posting ... What I put up as the vid' was for Mav Pro - which may be a bit different - yes ...
Here's a good tutorial that should confirm what you need to do for the Mav 2 Pro ...

 

[gerard143]

I did learn a bunch from the videos. Thanks for the share. Looks like my process was correct.

 

[gerard143]

OK I am uploading some of my active track attempts to youtube now. I will post back in the AM with links. I have to get to bed. The footage actually came out pretty disappointing. Me and the sled have way to much shadow for such a bright day with good sunlight on us. Compared to some footage I shot in the summer over that same lake this footage sucks (at least on this 4k tv im watching it on). The footage I took back then was jaw dropping it looked so good.

The sun was very high in the sky but I was heading towards it. Maybe if I was riding away from the sun with the sun behind the drone it would have helped. idk. maybe i needed filters idk. perhaps some tips once you see videos. Here is a still from the drone's video just to get you something for now. I can tell you that even if I had the drone facing 90 degrees to the left of the direction of this image, active track still failed. It failed in the video I am uploading as I was driving away from the sun as well.