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Are EXP settings with Mini 2 really your friend?

vindibona1

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The new addition of EXP setting were heralded upon arrival. Like many I was interested in tweaking my control settings. But in honesty, I didn't know what I was getting into. After all, the Mini 2 has gimbal and yaw speed and smoothness adjustments. I thought those were pretty good already. Winter has been long and I haven't flown my Mini 2 for awhile, so I took it out for some practice runs. I know that flying is a "perishable" skill, and attributed my lack of fine control mostly to my hands. But I also noticed that the Mini 2 wasn't responsive and the sticks seemingly had "dead spots". I didn't understand and did a video yesterday (soon to be posted) illustrating the large stick movements needed to provoke a response. It appeared that the sticks required large movements to provoke minimal response, but when the sticks reached a certain point the Mini 2 would then elicit jerky movements. I thought for a moment that it was all the controller's fault. But then I remembered not only advanced gimbal adjustments (which also controls yaw rate) but the EXP. Was it the EXP settings that caused the difficult control?

So I checked the EXP settings and they had been tweaked a bit. Hmmmm.... What the heck? Could this be the issue. SO I RESET THE EXP SETTINGS AND THEN RE TESTED THE MINI 2'S MOVEMENT RELATIVE TO STICK MOVEMENT. While not as responsive or subtle as my Mavic 2 Pro (which only has EXP settings) It seemed to PROVIDE MORE CONTROL FROM THE STICKS JUST USING THE ADVANCED GIMBAL SETTINGS, INDIVIDUALIZED IN C, M and S modes.

So now I'll go out and test in the open later today(hopefully) and see if I get better general control. Honestly I thought my skills had just died and gone to heaven over the winter. But with this recent finding (moments ago) I thought it important to share my experience. YMMV
 
Where the gradient of the EXP graph is shallow/not-steep, a lot of stick-movement is required to produce any significant change in response from the drone.
Conversely where the gradient of the the EXP grap is steep, a tiny movement of the stick will produce a large change in the response of the drone.
Therefore, where the graph contains curves the response, per degree of stick movement, changes depending on where in the graph the stick is i.e. it is sort of unpredictable, unless you have memorised the curve and know where the stick is on the graph.

For that reason I set the EXP to 0.50, the straight line, so set the change in response per degree of stick movement i.e. the graph's gradient, is constant and the response of the drone to a change in stick position is predictable.
 
Where the gradient of the EXP graph is shallow/not-steep, a lot of stick-movement is required to produce any significant change in response from the drone.
Conversely where the gradient of the the EXP grap is steep, a tiny movement of the stick will produce a large change in the response of the drone.
Therefore, where the graph contains curves the response, per degree of stick movement, changes depending on where in the graph the stick is i.e. it is sort of unpredictable, unless you have memorised the curve and know where the stick is on the graph.

For that reason I set the EXP to 0.50, the straight line, so set the change in response per degree of stick movement i.e. the graph's gradient, is constant and the response of the drone to a change in stick position is predictable.
I get that. I think for my hands/purposes that the advanced gimbal settings are adequate enough and combining EXP just confuses things when directing the drone when inches matter. Interestingly the gimbal settings don’t affect drift L/R or up/down.

Edit: When my phone recharges somewhat I'm going to experiment using ONLY EXP on L/R drift and Up/Down as the response seems to be a bit over-sensitive. I find it interesting that the Mavic 2 only has EXP. I always found it hard to get what I wanted from EXP in the M2P, so I reset it and left it in default. The thing is with the Mavic 2 and its larger size I don't find myself trying to fly through such small spaces or so close to things as I do with the Mini 2.

Stay tuned for the update after messing with the EXP particularly for L/R response.
 
Last edited:
My post was meant to address

"I didn't understand and did a video yesterday (soon to be posted) illustrating the large stick movements needed to provoke a response. It appeared that the sticks required large movements to provoke minimal response, but when the sticks reached a certain point the Mini 2 would then elicit jerky movements"
if you use the straight line graph/0.5 setting you would eliminate the variation.

Besides the title of your thread mention EXP settings, EXP settings are stick settings not gimbal control settings and EXP settings do not change the maximum yaw rate.

My very limited experimentation with the likes of maximum yaw rate setting showed it to be woefully inaccurate in terms of setting a maximum degrees per second I looked no further than that. Using the sticks I have been able to control yaw rate and speed from a snail's pace to greyhound speed.
The only speed that I have difficulty with gimbal pitch with the dial where it is very easy or a finger to wander.
 
I found some interesting things in regard to advanced gimbal settings and EXP. I could post it here, but I think it might be more beneficial to folks if it had it's own thread. I'll come back here later and post the link.
 
Ok... It's done. I did some more testing, took some screen shots and created a new thread based on what I'd never thought of before Here is the link...

New thread for Mini 2 control settings
 
I personally prefer to rely on muscle memory training and leave the exp settings at zero. I have my yaw setting set way down and rarely feel I could have used a quicker yaw.
I'll check out your link but NOT a friend would be my vote :)
 
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