AirData, who's using it and is it worth it?

[DSGDSG]

As the title says. Just heard about this and looked into it. Not sure I want to subscribe to yet another monthly service fee. However, my drone gives me nothing but problems and I'm curious what may be discovered by using this service.

 

[sar104]

As the title says. Just heard about this and looked into it. Not sure I want to subscribe to yet another monthly service fee. However, my drone gives me nothing but problems and I'm curious what may be discovered by using this service.

If you are having continuing problems then your best bet is to look at the DAT files, which are far more detailed than the device logs. AirData has some useful algorithms to compute winds aloft during a flight based on pitch and roll data, but other than that it is just a device txt log converter and flight record storage site.

 

[DSGDSG]

Will it report on the temperature of the drone? My mavic camera becomes useless and unable to focus after it gets hot and after just one flight it's almost too hot to even touch. If I try flying again the camera won't focus unless I delete the DJI Go app, restart my ipad, then reinstall DJI Go. This thing is becoming increasing frustrating the longer I have it. I'm curious to see what temps it's reaching and at what temp I lose my camera.

 

[Mr. Salty]

AirData has a very good free version of its service. Why not sign up and use it for awhile to see if it is of any value to you? Then you can look at what the pay plans have to offer. You literally have nothing to lose by just trying it.

And you can sync your existing flights to it so you examine past flights.

 

[Advexure]

Try out the free version. We don't see it used all that often with consumer lines but many of our users in the professional and commercial lines use AirData. We also use it for our entire fleet in-house. Great program and it's really progressed over the years.

 

[msinger]

We also use it for our entire fleet in-house.

Why do you use it? What's so great about it? (Just curious)

 

[sar104]

Will it report on the temperature of the drone? My mavic camera becomes useless and unable to focus after it gets hot and after just one flight it's almost too hot to even touch. If I try flying again the camera won't focus unless I delete the DJI Go app, restart my ipad, then reinstall DJI Go. This thing is becoming increasing frustrating the longer I have it. I'm curious to see what temps it's reaching and at what temp I lose my camera.

The only temperature sensors are on the IMU, ESCs and the battery, and the only one that is in the device log that AirData analyzes is the battery temperature. If your camera is getting too hot, why do you think that restarting the iPad and reinstalling the Go app is having an effect, beyond giving it time to cool down? I hesitate to ask, but are you removing the gimbal lock and plastic camera dome?

 

[Advexure]

Why do you use it? What's so great about it? (Just curious)

Our primary use is aircraft management, with aircrafts being demoed and flown on a daily basis between CX demos, rentals and our own pilots operating commercially we're able to manage and monitor aircraft and battery usage. On a commercial basis we've used data from AirData to confirm timekeeping for billing. We've billed projects on total airtime and records from AirData are great supporting documents for these clients. On that specific project that was for a highly publicized piece of work they took our data on total flight distance in hundreds of miles to put some very interesting facts on the production into their marketing pieces (total distance flown, total time, total batteries, etc).

One of the most beneficial features operationally to us over the last 1.5 years has been battery management to monitor average flight times and operating temps amongst batteries. Also very interesting to observe temps and times on shoot days where weather was a factor in the production. 8 minute flight times on a 90 degree day with 88% humidity requires some additional flight planning and battery management to ensure continuous uptime during limited availability to the subject, weather, light, actors, etc. Data from AirData has provided great support for our pilots from beginning to end of a production.

Definitely a lot more benefits to commercial users which only come in their upper tiers of plans.

 

[DSGDSG]

The only temperature sensors are on the IMU, ESCs and the battery, and the only one that is in the device log that AirData analyzes is the battery temperature. If your camera is getting too hot, why do you think that restarting the iPad and reinstalling the Go app is having an effect, beyond giving it time to cool down? I hesitate to ask, but are you removing the gimbal lock and plastic camera dome?

Come on....a little credit here please? I know that the DJI mo is that everything is the fault of the operator however there are legitimately faulty drones out there and I don't need blame assigned to me by my peers. Or course the dome and gimbal lock is off. I didn't say the camera gets too hot, I said when the drone gets too hot the camera is useless. I also said that the drone gets so hot after just one flight that it's almost too hot to touch. I allow the drone to cool down to see if it has any impact on the camera after it's gone bad which is why I "think" allowing it to cool down has no effect. That deleting and reinstalling the app corrects the problem suggests that the issue is a software problem and not a hardware one. I only wanted to begin collecting evidence at what temp threshold the camera goes bad so that when I approach DJI I can bypass all the time wasting finger pointing that the problem is borne from my actions and get to work on actually possessing a product that works as it was advertised to do.

 

[sar104]

Come on....a little credit here please? I know that the DJI mo is that everything is the fault of the operator however there are legitimately faulty drones out there and I don't need blame assigned to me by my peers. Or course the dome and gimbal lock is off. I didn't say the camera gets too hot, I said when the drone gets too hot the camera is useless. I also said that the drone gets so hot after just one flight that it's almost too hot to touch. I allow the drone to cool down to see if it has any impact on the camera after it's gone bad which is why I "think" allowing it to cool down has no effect. That deleting and reinstalling the app corrects the problem suggests that the issue is a software problem and not a hardware one. I only wanted to begin collecting evidence at what temp threshold the camera goes bad so that when I approach DJI I can bypass all the time wasting finger pointing that the problem is borne from my actions and get to work on actually possessing a product that works as it was advertised to do.

Apologies if it looked like I was assigning blame - not my intent. I was simply asking some obvious questions because previous occurences of overheating gimbals has turned out to be due to the locks or domes being left in place. Your post did imply that it was specifically the camera getting hot ("mavic camera" was the subject of the sentence).

It sounds like you are experiencing both a software and hardware problem if the aircraft is overheating (hardware) and the app has to be deleted and reinstalled (software). I suggest taking a look at the three temperatures sensors and posting the data so that they can be compared to nominally normal Mavic flights (if you don't have any).