First bad experience with my mavic. Car chasing with activetrack

Kenneyd · May 6, 2017

Ive had zero issue with my mavic over the past few months and 100+ flights. zero issues whatsoever
Most of my use is just filming the kids, house, beach, or other nature things. I really want to film cars however. Track events, drifting, cruising type videos. I have a track rental in a few months and would like to get proficient with car filming before i drop a lot of money on that.

I've only had two opportunities to practice. One with with the wife driving and flying manually from the passenger seat.
And the other one was today. No wife available, so my and my son went out and tried active track on an rural, new construction road.
I encountered two major issues today. first one is mavic was acting up for the first time
I hit record maybe 15 times. out of those 6 were recorded to my ipad and only 4 to the sdcard. I took maybe 5 pictures, none were recorded anywhere.
If i hit either record or photo, i would hear a tone like it was capturing something, but nothing changed on my ipad display. No recording timer or red circle.

Active track only worked twice, the other dozen tries it did this as soon as clicked "ok" on the car. whats going on?:

So i couldn't record most of the time, and active track kept making the mavic go retarded. I even tried landing, turning everything off, then back on and did it again. no change

The second issue is even when i could get active track going, i would start the mavic maybe 30ft away from the car, and 16' high. and after following me for a few minutes the mavic was 200ft away off to the side about to hit a tree
Example: this is 100% activetrack, i made no inputs. at approx 1:18 the mavic was fllying so far away it almost hit the trees
I just want it to follow me lol. I guess if i could complain about one thing from the mavic setup i'll its the lack of explanation on djigo app. maybe someone could provide a link. Ive read all the manuals before i even got the drone, but ive never found a good read or description on the djigo app. They really expect you to learn the autopilot modes simply by trial and error, as well as everything else on the app.

Bunny Too · May 6, 2017

Kenneyd said:
Ive had zero issue with my mavic over the past few months and 100+ flights. zero issues whatsoever
Most of my use is just filming the kids, house, beach, or other nature things. I really want to film cars however. Track events, drifting, cruising type videos. I have a track rental in a few months and would like to get proficient with car filming before i drop a lot of money on that.

I've only had two opportunities to practice. One with with the wife driving and flying manually from the passenger seat.

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And the other one was today. No wife available, so my and my son went out and tried active track on an rural, new construction road.
Seems i have two issues. first one is mavic was acting up for the first time
I hit record maybe 15 times. out of those 6 were recorded to my ipad and only 4 to the sdcard. I took maybe 5 pictures, none were recorded anywhere.
If i hit either record or photo, i would hear a tone like it was capturing something, but nothing changed on my ipad. No recording timer or red circle.

Active track only worked twice, the other dozen tries it did this as soon as clicked "ok" on the car :

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So i couldn't record most of the time, and active track kept making the mavic go retarded. I even tried landing, turning everything off, then back on and did it again. no change

The second issue is even when i could get active track going, i would start the mavic maybe 30ft away from the car, and 16' high. and after following me for a few minutes the mavic was 200ft away off to the side about to hit a tree
Example: this is 100% activetrack, i made no inputs. at approx 1:18 the mavic was fllying so far away it almost hit the trees

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Howdy Kenneyd,
Your car looks fancy, any chance you have wifi or bluetooth in the car that would be generating interference?

Kenneyd · May 6, 2017

Bunny Too said:
Howdy Kenneyd,
Your car looks fancy, any chance you have wifi or bluetooth in the car that would be generating interference?

The car is over 20 years old, no electronics at all. I did however have my phone on as a wireless hotspot. But i almost always do, and like i said before, never had an issue.

Minion Blob · May 6, 2017

I would try a full IMU and gimbal recalibration and see if that helps alleviating this issue. I'm assuming you're running on the latest DJI Go app and .600 firmware.

Robert Mitchell · May 6, 2017

Was this trace or profile?

Anyway, at one point my active track started to misbehave, but it wouldn't even acquire the target, it would just sit there thinking about it.

I cured the problem by reinstalling go4 once and on another occasion by clearing the main (g4 program) cache on my device. Seems active track is very demanding of device resources, as you might expect. Full disclosure, I am on android, and it is an older device, but take nothing for granted.

Just some ideas, good luck and let us know.

RallySoob · May 6, 2017

Did you try restarting everything cuz whenever i encounter sumn funky i just reboot and im golden.

I havent had great success using active track... i like using the follow me mode instead and have controller in the target vehicle obviously... but thats got to be an available option obviously . Try it

Grey Wolf · May 6, 2017

You might want to set the yaw and camera controls to maximum in order for the magic to be able to follow fast moving objects.
Chances are, you have yaw, pitch, and EXP settings set for cinematic mode which would render the Activetrack useless in this situation.

Kenneyd · May 6, 2017

Minion Blob said:
I would try a full IMU and gimbal recalibration and see if that helps alleviating this issue. I'm assuming you're running on the latest DJI Go app and .600 firmware.

Yes all current firmware on both

Kenneyd · May 6, 2017

Robert Mitchell said:
Was this trace or profile?

Anyway, at one point my active traxk started to misbehave, but it wouldn't even acquire the target, it would just sit there thinking about it.

I cured the problem by reinstalling go4 once and on another occasion by clearing the main (g4 program) cache on my device. Seems active track is very demanding of device resources, as you might expect. Full disclosure, I am on android, and it is an older device, but take nothing for granted.

Just some ideas, good luck and let us know.

Im not sure which one the video is off. I was trying both, and while the differences are obvious when im filming my kids on thier bikes or walking, i couldnt tell a difference while in the car.

I have a hunch. This morning my ipad had an IOS update. maybe i will try deleting DJIgo4 and then reinstalling it. do all the calibrations and try again. I hate apples products by the way. took forever to get the flight logs.

dewster · May 6, 2017

You should try Active Track with a different color car. Some scenes match the color of the pavement.

Kenneyd · May 6, 2017

I'm at work so I don't have access to anything but YouTube's editor and their crappy music.
So while in figuring this out

Oyibo VFX · May 7, 2017

I can't see al videos (have posted that issue before).
I have two words... Inspire 2 and Autopilot.
This is higher speed where the Inspire is obviously a better tool
But consider Autopilot where the Follow mode and Focus mode do a better thing then the DJI because they allow you greater distance.
What works best here is Airspace from Autopilot. There you install a free Airspace app on an iOS device, mount it with your own Autopilot app and the bird follows that device. You can use multiple devices if you like and control it from your main device.
That actually works fine

Kenneyd · May 7, 2017

Oyibo VFX said:
I can't see al videos (have posted that issue before).
I have two words... Inspire 2 and Autopilot.
This is higher speed where the Inspire is obviously a better tool
But consider Autopilot where the Follow mode and Focus mode do a better thing then the DJI because they allow you greater distance.
What works best here is Airspace from Autopilot. There you install a free Airspace app on an iOS device, mount it with your own Autopilot app and the bird follows that device. You can use multiple devices if you like and control it from your main device.
That actually works fine

Copy paste the links in a browser?
Basically, in active track. I would click on the car. It would turn to a green box. I click ok and then the gimble would immediately point up at the sky at a 30 degree angle and drift right. Did this dozens of times

Kenneyd · May 7, 2017

Today i deleted and reinstalled djigo4. re-calibrated everything (compass, controller, IMU gimble etc) and flew it around the yard, not issues other than a "battery discharge over current" ?? different battery than yesterday, so unrelated.

I kind of have a feeling this will be an intermittent problem that only shows up when i need the mavic the most.

Judge Dread · Jun 30, 2019

Kenneyd said:
Ive had zero issue with my mavic over the past few months and 100+ flights. zero issues whatsoever
Most of my use is just filming the kids, house, beach, or other nature things. I really want to film cars however. Track events, drifting, cruising type videos. I have a track rental in a few months and would like to get proficient with car filming before i drop a lot of money on that.

I've only had two opportunities to practice. One with with the wife driving and flying manually from the passenger seat.

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

And the other one was today. No wife available, so my and my son went out and tried active track on an rural, new construction road.
I encountered two major issues today. first one is mavic was acting up for the first time
I hit record maybe 15 times. out of those 6 were recorded to my ipad and only 4 to the sdcard. I took maybe 5 pictures, none were recorded anywhere.
If i hit either record or photo, i would hear a tone like it was capturing something, but nothing changed on my ipad display. No recording timer or red circle.

Active track only worked twice, the other dozen tries it did this as soon as clicked "ok" on the car. whats going on?:

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

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So i couldn't record most of the time, and active track kept making the mavic go retarded. I even tried landing, turning everything off, then back on and did it again. no change

The second issue is even when i could get active track going, i would start the mavic maybe 30ft away from the car, and 16' high. and after following me for a few minutes the mavic was 200ft away off to the side about to hit a tree
Example: this is 100% activetrack, i made no inputs. at approx 1:18 the mavic was fllying so far away it almost hit the trees

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

I just want it to follow me lol. I guess if i could complain about one thing from the mavic setup i'll its the lack of explanation on djigo app. maybe someone could provide a link. Ive read all the manuals before i even got the drone, but ive never found a good read or description on the djigo app. They really expect you to learn the autopilot modes simply by trial and error, as well as everything else on the app.

HAd identical problems with my Mavic 2, trying to follow me on a motorbike. It simply doesn't work. What p*sses me off is that DJI advertise it as a working function- which is just wrong. Already lost one drone thanks to this. I'm looking for a new model that actually works. IN the meantime, don't risk it!

Gizmo · Jun 30, 2019

I use activetrack a lot and I do see that boomerang effect often (drone going away and then coming back and then away again), even with this bug I still find active track to be one of the most useful and cinematic flight modes available, it's just that it isn't as hands-off as they (DJI) want you to believe

Oyibo VFX · Jun 30, 2019

I have done some :"tracking" in the past and know that the Mavic is not the best drone for that. When using Autopilot, it works a whole lot better.
Best results are with an Inspire 2 (or 1) because of the much higher speed and independent gimbal

Judge Dread · Jun 30, 2019

Gizmo said:
I use activetrack a lot and I do see that boomerang effect often (drone going away and then coming back and then away again), even with this bug I still find active track to be one of the most useful and cinematic flight modes available, it's just that it isn't as hands-off as they (DJI) want you to believe

It isn't hands off at all- my (deleted)Mavic 2 just went mental earlier and decided to stop following me- which it had been doing well up to this point- and flew right into me and my bike. Could have caused a nasty accident. I'm going to sue the cnts if they don't cough up and supply a new one immediately. Any pointers how to cause a storm on social media so these (people) sit up and listen?