Autopilot by Hangar - Small improvement needed to use Follow me on variable altitude of the subject

ovisopa · Sep 3, 2018

Hello everyone.

In the past weeks I tested the Autopilot app on my iPhone 5S, I need an app that can follow me on my dirt bike, and so far this one does the best job, but it still does some stupid things, which I tried to eliminate by adjusting the settings, unfortunately no matter what I tried I still did not improved the ALTITUDE CHANGE behaviour of Autopilot. This issue is only observed if the followed subject changes altitude, if you sail on lakes you won't have any problem

Here is the video with my last test, to read all the notes I made in the video pause it, if the note disappears to quick.

Is there anyone here that also made tests with Autopilot, does anyone knows any setting that can be changed to make the flight more smooth, because with so many flight interuptions to increase altitude, the flight is not smooth enough, and also this leads to drone being farther and farther away, behind the subject.

I like the app because it has a lot of options, having the ability to change more settings is good, but I think the developers did not tried the app in an similar terrain, where the altitude changes up and down, because the behaviour of the drone is not as anyone would expect.

ovisopa · Sep 10, 2018

Here is the first usable video (without cutting it alot) made with Autopilot , unfortunately the subject is quite far away, and after all those weeks I've been trying to make it fly smooth in follow me mode while the subject is ascending and descending a lot, it seems only by flying at quite a high altitude (settings ware set to 30m) it does a good job.

In this video I set it to fly at:
30m Altitude
30m Distance
20m Altitude priority

There still are some things I want to improve. The first one is regarding YAW movements, sometimes are very choppy, and I hope/think it's because Mavic Air's gimbal limited movement on that axis and the Autopilot setting to USE YAW IF AVAILABLE, I think autopilot tries to turn the gimbal left and right to frame the subject but it's reaching the limit very fast, as it's only a few degrees, if in the meantime it needs to compensate vibration or wind, there is no more travel on that axis. I want to disable that settings, to force the Autopilot to turn the entire drone to frame the subject. I'm sure the USE YAW IF AVAILABLE option will work great on my Inspire 1, as the gimbal can be rotated 720 degrees

The next thing is regarding the altitude, I really want to try to be followed from a lower altitude , I don't like the view when the drone is pointing down, the drone should have the gimbal pointed straight , as this is when the beautiful landscape is better seen. I will see how well it will fly from 20m altitude, on my next ride.

The other thing to not have the drone flying above, with the gimbal pointing down would be to ride faster, but I'm always concern not to go to fast and lose signal

This is why from time to time I look up, or stop and check the phone if I can't see the drone behind, left , right or above.