Diappointed in Mavic

[Roamer105]

Will autopilot center the subject in the frame?

Lily has already slid shipping dates several times. I have no confidence in that drone until it ships and I get feedback from the community.

Yes, Autopilot will center the subject by using the subject's reported GPS location relative to the quad and calculating the yaw and pitch of the camera to center the subject. GPS inaccuracies and communication latency sometimes may get it slightly off.
I had my P3P successfully track a working Search Dog with my iPhone attached to his SAR harness. Talking about rapid directional changes. The resulting video is astonishing.



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[Gallacherboy25]

I believe the Litchi or Autopilot app may just solve your problems. Those are more familiar with those apps may want to chime in.


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I saw a video on youtube about a guy who had crashed his Mavic and he had the DJI Care, when he claimed his damaged drone for repairs, DJI refused because it was in flight with a 3rd party app, I have heard of Litchi and it seems cool but if you are using it and something happens, your factory warranty and if you have DJI Care Refresh, will be void because you are not using DJI software.

 

[LakeTravis]

Yes, Autopilot will center the subject by using the subject's reported GPS location relative to the quad and calculating the yaw and pitch of the camera to center the subject. GPS inaccuracies and communication latency sometimes may get it slightly off.
I had my P3P successfully track a working Search Dog with my iPhone attached to his SAR harness. Talking about rapid directional changes. The resulting video is astonishing.



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Lilly is officially CANCELLED, now and forever. Refunds are being sent to those who invested up front.

 

[stratos]

I've had my Mavic for a couple weeks now and I'm a bit disappointed. It is a great quad and its super easy to fly, but the main reason I purchased it was for use with mountain biking and its following capability.

Mavic has two follow modes: active track and follow me.

Active track works ok if you have no obstructions, shadows, descending elevations and you present a strong contrast with your surroundings. But this is not really practical for mountain biking. Problems:

1. Active track can be done in wifi mode, but only in a follow orientation. It doesn't do profile or other following modes. Wifi mode is really the only way to do active track as carrying the transmitter with the phone attached while riding is not practical.
2. When riding a mountain bike, you frequently turn. This presents differing profiles to the Mavic. Mavic frequently gets confused and looses you.
3. Mavic does not adjust altitude to match your elevation when you go downhill. So, the further you go downhill, the farther away you get from Mavic and the smaller you appear. The smaller you appear, the more likely Mavic will loose track of you.
4. Mavic doesn't track you very well when you make quick movements or drastic direction changes.
5. One of the coolest features of Mavic is terrain follow... but it does NOT work in conjunction with active track. WTF?

Bottom line is, active track is marginally reliable at best. Once it looses track, it is a PITA to stop the bike, take manual control and reacquire.

Follow me mode only works with the transmitter connected to a phone or gps device. It's impractical to carry the transmitter and a phone together while riding. Also, follow me mode sucks because it doesn't keep you in frame. It will follow your gps location from your phone, but you may be completely out of frame while it does so.

Summary, if you are getting Mavic for its many other features, you'll find that it is a spectacular aircraft. However, if you are getting it for its following capability... not so much.

Recommendations to DJI:

1. Make terrain follow and active track work together.
2. Update Mavic's flight algorithms to keep the subject in frame during follow me mode.
3. Provide a separate "leash" transmitter that can be purchased that makes Mavic perform like other follow me drones.
4. Allow wifi active track to track profile mode



Love the drone... just not for the reasons I bought it.

Well, I have a couple of suggestions, when engaging active track stay still and make it go around you at least a couple of time. I ve learned that the recognition algorithm "remember" how the object is tracked from multiple angles. So circle around on a couple of elevations. Granted, it will not easy all your issues, but will help you out to get a more solid tracking.

 

[Achilles]

Your 3rd point is a great but reliably hard to implement. Please name other "follow me" drones and don't say Lily - too soon


Mavic - North Bay, CA

 

[mcjoshin]

I would look into the airdog. I have a buddy who has one and he uses it to follow him as he carves canyons on his motorcycle and he absolutely LOVES it. From what I've seen, the airdog would be perfect for you as it follows well, is still foldable (although not quite as small), and is programmed specifically for different action sports.

The obvious challenge is that the air dog is basically ONLY for action sports as I dont believe it even has a controller to fly as a normal drone. I'm planning to get one of the Airdog 2's for ones of my businesses (an adventure tour company in the carribean), but for everyday use I like the Mavic much more (based on how I use it).


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[Andart]

It dose follow you down hill in terrain mode

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[deltalimatango]

Yes, Autopilot will center the subject by using the subject's reported GPS location relative to the quad and calculating the yaw and pitch of the camera to center the subject. GPS inaccuracies and communication latency sometimes may get it slightly off.
I had my P3P successfully track a working Search Dog with my iPhone attached to his SAR harness. Talking about rapid directional changes. The resulting video is astonishing.



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Just read your post again. That is sooooooooooo cool...

 

[dewster]

I think Yuneec Typhoon H has better follow and tracking. It's just such a large aircraft in comparison.


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[houseco]

Like anything else, if there's money in it, they'll deliver. If people are interested in actually resolving any of the follow me issues, start overwhelming DJI with feature requests. If you build it, they will come. Lol.

 

[AyeYo]

Active Track kind of let me down too, but I'm hoping that firmware updates will be the answer. I see no reason they can't make terrain follow and active track work together.

 

[DForbes]

I think Yuneec Typhoon H has better follow and tracking. It's just such a large aircraft in comparison.


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Yeah I had a Blade Chroma and it did a great job of keeping the subject in frame. The issue is height, if you are 50' + than not an issue the Mavic will track very well. Unfortunately I wanted to track at a much lower height say 20' or lower and the Mavic just can't keep up. My Chroma did an awesome job at lower heights which I even tested at 10' and kept in frame very well. The huge downside of the Chroma is the sheer size of the thing. The container I had for it was huge and just not practical for transport.

I hear rumors that the new Breeze V2 will be launched in March so looking forward to see if tracking and camera stabilization has been improved. If engineers can fix this than I suspect it would be a huge hit with the market for selfie / close up tracking drones.

 

[ElGuapo]

I really don't think so. It seems dji put a lot of effort into the active track, which is marginal at best. But they seem to have neglected follow me mode. By including an algorithm that will keep the subject in frame and by providing a puck style transmitter (as an option), this could be easily achievable. That would make the mavic ideal. Unfortunately, dji choose not to invest in follow me mode. I guess they didn't want to compete with their active track.

Jim_bo, what firmware are you currently running in the Mavic?.
For what I understand there are better algorithms in the latest one.

 

[Darryl]

At least they put active track in this drone. Are we all forgetting about how amazing this thing is for it's size. Do we not remember th GoPro karma drone, twice the size and no active track, no sensors, no obstacle avoidance. Give it time. DJI will improve these features.

 

[Motley]

At least they put active track in this drone. Are we all forgetting about how amazing this thing is for it's size. Do we not remember th GoPro karma drone, twice the size and no active track, no sensors, no obstacle avoidance. Give it time. DJI will improve these features.

Not to mention the recall making them useless.

 

[John Locke]

Not to mention the recall making them useless.

At CES the GoPro booth guys were saying they will start shipping again in Feb. They said the battery connector (he made it sound like it was the craft connector, not the battery side connector) was physically engineered wrong and on rare occasions would disengage power midflight, so they had to retool to get it right.

When I saw the Karma in person for the first time, I was shocked how big it was. The camera and gimbal sticking way out front looked really odd and awkward.

 

[woodmnctry]

To the OP -- big thank you!!--- I was ready to pull the trigger but now putting on hold as the tracking feature is something I want --- I will wait till ???

 

[K2D2]

Thanks. Took the Mavic out for it's first MTB ride and now I have a better idea of what I need to learn vs what the limitations are. Lesson #1 is that I need stick protectors. Throwing the controller in the bag almost led to drone disaster! I'll keep watching this and add if I find anything that seems to work to improve being able to film MTB in follow me or Active Track. Great topic.

 

[eezflyer]

Yea this is a great topic. I was hoping to use mine skiing and biking as well. I wonder how much better a software/firmware update could improve the active track and follow me modes? My guess is the next gen Mavic will have much better capabilities in this area. I read an article on the DJI ceo and founder and he is a big fan of Apples business model and wants to be the apple of the drone/gimball world. Apple is notorious for leaving out features and upgrading incremental improvements that may be just enough to get lots of apple fans to upgrade. Now a drone is a little bit more expensive, and I get that, but really for what you get in a mavic, for $1000, it is a pretty amazing piece of technology. At least I can sell mine if they do come out with a new mavic this spring/summer which has been rumored already. I am hoping that software updates and 3rd party solutions can help in the mean time. I live in a desert area so trees on many of the trails aren't a problem terrain however can be.