Any app allowing Mini 2 to automatically pan (rotate) drone in place with constant, smooth motion?

[abluab]

Hi! At the moment I have Litchi and Maven lite, on android and Dji Mini 2. As far as I know, neither of those apps allow to just simply pan around as in rotate the drone in place to capture the scenery around? I know you can use ORBIT missions with the least possible radius to somewhat achieve what I'm describing. But I think it will again be not super smooth, because it tries to focus on the orbit center while going around resulting in not constant smooth yaw. What I'm looking for is just simple constant amount of yawn, with drone staying in place.

Maybe this can be done with Litchi waypoints? Just add one waypoint and set it to rotate at the waypoint, does it work like that? I'll have to look more in to the Litchi waypoints, but nevertheless, it would be great to have a simple function like this. Basically it would be a "cruise control" for yaw stick. Heck, I'd so much love to have cruise control for all the control stick motions, but it seems it's not gonna happen :/ I know it's because no sensors in Mini 2 to avoid crashes. But you could use it safely if you have any brains Or is there some other reason, c'mon someone write an app with cruise control for Mini 2 already!

 

[RodPad]

This guy would have your litchi answers, and may show up here.
@DJ Wes

Litchi Mission Utilities

Wes Barris

www.litchiutilities.com

Rod ..

 

[Sam36401]

The only 'work-around' that I know of is by using Namirda's VLM and setting up a Helix mission.
Set a POI
The minimum radius you can set is 16.4 ft. So, its not totally stationary when it orbits the POI.
Choose the Heading Mode of 'Outward' which will point away from your POI.

 

[RodPad]

@Sam36401
Thanks Man!

I will summon you first next time.

Rod ..

 

[DJ Wes]

What I'm looking for is just simple constant amount of yawn, with drone staying in place.

Litchi does not provide this function. There may be ways to achieve this using multiple waypoints but any solution will be a work-around including drone movement and not exactly what you want.

The reason why there is no "contant-yaw" function is because that sort of movement does not typically produce pleasing, cinematic results. A very slow angular rotation will result in a relatively large horizontal movement of the horizon which one normally wants to avoid in cinematic footage.

The best I can suggest is to use the "Expo" settings to slow down the yaw and experiment in "Cine" mode.

 

[abluab]

@DJ Wes

Thanks for your reply. I didn't catch the phrase "A very slow angular rotation will result in a relatively large horizontal movement" Altho, I understand/know that EVEN a rather slow angular rotation will still result in relatively large horizontal movement of the scene, but still, it's what I've been doing sometimes; manually rotating drone around at slow angular rotation to capture the scenery 360 horizontally. With slow enough rotation I find the result OK. It's just such a pain in the a** trying to maintain the constant slight push of the yaw stick. Especially if there's tons of mosquitos around or arctic freeze or some other factor making it difficult. Usually it results in somewhat inconstant push/motion and it is a dull manoeuver holding the stick in place for the somewhat long period of time it takes to slowly rotate the drone full 360'. Therefore I have thought it would be very convenient to have the yaw "locked" to a slight push; I could lift my drone up, just let it rotate by itself and be free to take it easy. Doesn't it make sense? Maybe I need to buy the physical widgets that help with that..


@Sam36401
How would a helix mission with waypoints be better/different than just using ORBIT with the least possible radius? Isn't it much simpler way using orbit? Also, the heading could be either inward or outward, in either way it would result in somewhat the same results, would it not?

 

[Sam36401]

It's just such a pain in the as** trying to maintain the constant slight push of the yaw stick. Usually it results in somewhat unconstant push/motion and it is a dull manouver holding the stick in place for the somewhat long period of time it takes to slowly rotate the drone full 360'.

That's why I used the words 'work-around'. No, its not perfect. Neither is the Orbit session.
The PLUS side of using the Helix mission is: The speed can be adjusted by changing Mission Settings, which takes the 'slight push' difficulty out of the picture.

Everything you are 'wanting to do' makes sense, but unfortunately there isnt an app that will do what you want.

 

[abluab]

That's why I used the words 'work-around'. No, its not perfect. Neither is the Orbit session.
The PLUS side of using the Helix mission is: The speed can be adjusted by changing Mission Settings, which takes the 'slight push' difficulty out of the picture.

Everything you are 'wanting to do' makes sense, but unfortunately there isnt an app that will do what you want.

But with orbit, it also orbits autonomously, you don't need to push the stick(s) constantly, just set the angular speed and let it orbit.

 

[Sam36401]

Then, it sounds like you have 2 potential work-around possibilities.
Let us know how they work out.

 

[abluab]

Then, it sounds like you have 2 potential work-around possibilities.
Let us know how they work out.

Yes, I will try them out some moment, but concidering orbit isn't too smooth even with greater radius, I'd suppose its worse with small radius. Kind of my whole point of this post, that I'm looking for actually smooth automation for the yaw-around, but apparently the only way would be with physical stick-holders. At least for now.

 

[marnat3]

Not an app or work-around but would some kind of stick limiter work? So the left or right would not have to be held in 1 position? I seem to remember seeing a bracket for the Phantom 3s that worked on the controller for beginners that would limit stick input.

 

[Frieda]

Perhaps look into virtual stick commands?

I was quite disappointed by the herky jerky movements Drone Harmony gave me for their free version. I was trying to circle a building always pointing to the center.

As a workaround, I used the strategy of creating an octagon flight path, and flying with the camera perpendicular to the flight direction. Kinda worked for me, but very challenging to setup in DH.

At the same octagon experiment, I was trying to get a comparable tour in Google Earth automation. I thought that would be extremely useful.

In hindsight the experiment was a failure, as the movement of the camera rotation was not consistent from one leg to another. I could dicker around and get it to work in the DH simulator, but not in camera. You can see the glitches in the video below. I did contact DH to give them feedback & to seek support, but they did not respond.

Here's a capture of the layout in DH. Highlighting the rotation of the camera to be at 0 degrees for the bottom leg. So clockwise, I add 45 degrees to the rotation. So, 0, 45, 90, 135, ...

I had the altitude at 120m, and the gimbal tilt at -30. Fun experiment.

 

[abluab]

Not an app or work-around but would some kind of stick limiter work? So the left or right would not have to be held in 1 position? I seem to remember seeing a bracket for the Phantom 3s that worked on the controller for beginners that would limit stick input.

I believe you're talking about physical limiters that would allow the sticks to be pushed only to certain amount, and not the whole way, but still require pilot to push the sticks, helping to keep the push constant? Those might kind of help some in their way, but more efficient would propably be those physical stick holders, which actually physically hold the stick(s) in a set position without pilot holding the sticks. Those can be found at least from aliexpr searching for "Rocker Speed Controller". And in my last reply in this thread I already mentioned these.

 

[Frieda]

Curious, I tracked down an experimenter on youtube that I ran across a few years a go. He may be on mavicpilots to, idk. Basically, he made a flight recorder, that connects to the controller. He shows it doing an amazing job of a flight playback in this vid.