Hangar Autopilot User's Forum

[jimapp]

no the P4P can use 3rd party apps...my mistake was stepping up to pay more the the "plus" which has an integrated screen(android). My only out is to find another P4P controller without the screen.

 

[darana]

Ahhh, okay, that makes more sense.

After seeing that the Spark came out with a more Mavic-like controller, I'm mostly waiting to see if there is a P5 that has a non-terrible controller! It still amazes me that the P4 controller is what it is - It's the same clunky, annoying controller, basically, as my original P1! At least this justification lets me convince myself not to buy a P4P now. Although I'm sure you'd be happy to tell me how amazing the camera is.

 

[cirrusly]

Not to be snarky but maybe it works well enough there's no need for a lot of user chatter. Usually forums are full of questions about ill conceived/implemented or lacking features. It seems the useful posts about how to use a product effectively are now firmly in the domain of the Vbloggers.
I don't have AP but I'm looking at it - Litchi works well enough but has a few things that bug me like a pause at each waypoint - even if you don't go through it in curves mode.
I'm looking for something that can make the flight recording more fluid with automation to help get the results I want.

After you've purchased Autopilot and used it, please report back and let us know if you still feel that the lack of "user chatter" is because it works so well, or if you then feel, as I do the lack of user participation (chatter as you put it) is because that Autopilot's user base is minuscule compared to Litchi's.

There are reasons that the adoption of Autopilot vs Litchi has been so small despite the fact that Autopilot is FAR more powerful, and I'd personally like to see them address those issues.

And, just for the record, I am one of the "techie" people that can figure out the more complex programs, don't mind spending the time learning the more advance features, and actually prefer them. That's not the issue for me, and I don't believe that's the primary issue for most people when they try to implement Autopilot.

 

[jimapp]

It is my opinion that price is the big reason people prefer the "less than" glitchy app. I know it's only $10 or so difference in price but I am amazed how price conscious many are. I have experienced (G)Litchi, FPV Camera and Autopilot. FPV deserves a mention as it seems to behave flawlessly albeit not at all to be compared to AP in terms of depth. My go to app is Autopilot and I have not found it to be difficult to use at all.

 

[Pablo]

It is my opinion that price is the big reason people prefer the "less than" glitchy app. I know it's only $10 or so difference in price but I am amazed how price conscious many are. I have experienced (G)Litchi, FPV Camera and Autopilot. FPV deserves a mention as it seems to behave flawlessly albeit not at all to be compared to AP in terms of depth. My go to app is Autopilot and I have not found it to be difficult to use at all.

What device do you use?

I am using AP on an iPad Mini 2 and it's been woeful. Crashes constantly. Completely unusable.

 

[jimapp]

Probably the mini 2 is woefully underpowered. I use an iPad Pro 9.7" and it works flawlessly.

 

[darana]

What device do you use?

I am using AP on an iPad Mini 2 and it's been woeful. Crashes constantly. Completely unusable.

Yep, Mini 2 won't work. Mini 2 and iPad Air 1 are the same generation hardware with almost the same specs. I have both and Autopilot was unusable on them. Worked flawlessly on my iPhone 7+. If you look on the Autopilot page they actually call out both the Mini 2 and Air 1 as not being compatible bc if RAM requirements.

I just got an iPad 2017 LTE model last week. And OH my it's a dream now. Not a single crash with Autopilot in ~3+ hours of air time in Autopilot including a bunch of use in cruise mode, which on my old iPad was sure to cause a crash in 3.62 seconds.

Both Litchi and Go 4 worked "on" on the Air but unnoticed the more robust features actually gave me trouble ... ActiveTrack was a recipe for disaster. And I would freeze up video signal a lot. I thought it was just the bird at first. But it only happened on my iPad and not on the iPhone.

 

[cirrusly]

It is my opinion that price is the big reason people prefer the "less than" glitchy app. I know it's only $10 or so difference in price but I am amazed how price conscious many are. I have experienced (G)Litchi, FPV Camera and Autopilot. FPV deserves a mention as it seems to behave flawlessly albeit not at all to be compared to AP in terms of depth. My go to app is Autopilot and I have not found it to be difficult to use at all.

You could be right, but that is an easily "fixable" problem by Hangar if they wanted to fix it. I really, really want Autopilot to succeed as it really is an extremely powerful app (much more powerful than Litchi.) My opinion is it's more that Autopilot is perceived by the "average" user to be much less intuitive to use than Litchi is.

It's easy to say that Autopilot is much more sophisticated and powerful so of course it's harder to use. I don't believe that has to be the case. I know that some here say that they like the user interface and there's nothing wrong with it, that the documentation is easy to follow and the program isn't that hard to learn. Unfortunately that's obviously not the opinion of an awful lot of people that are purchasing this type of app.

Unfortunately if Hangar's Autopilot app isn't purchased by more than just a VERY small percentage of users who are buying this type of app there's not going to be any reason for them to keep supporting and improving it and keep it on the market vs. just using it for their own commercial uses. That's just my opinion and I could be completely wrong. I hope I am.

 

[darana]

I know that sometimes very powerful applications can be made quite simple in some ways. But often I have found that this can come at the expense of the power that made it work so well *cough* macbook "pro" *cough*. I don't know what the answer is. I totally get what you're saying about the adoption rate, etc, but I'm not so sure that it is the fault of the application per se. I think that, in reality, for the vast majority of the people buying these drones they don't really want or care about something like Autopilot. Yeah it's powerful and someone everyone in this thread was wishing we had until we bought Autopilot, but it is by its very nature going to be complicated because of the power of the tool.

What I think they CAN do is to make it more accessible to use without or until you begin using the more powerful features. For example, the new DJI (beta) dashboard is a not only visually closer to what someone might be used to already, I personally find it a lot more aesthetically pleasing and a bit easier to use, too. Having modes like Black Box, for example, but maybe more obvious as to what it is and that it is basically just the "fly now" option is probably also a good option... because even as someone who generally finds most software "easy" it took me a little bit of work to really figure out wtf I was doing at first. But now that I've put the time and work in to learning the more powerful features (and still feel like I'm only scratching the surface) I would trade the power available for simplicity. But I could see continuing to do things to make it more initially accessible.

As far as it surviving, well, hopefully Hangar would see it as good testing/proving ground?

Blah. I don't disagree with the risky economics of the current state of the app, but don't want to see it watered down at the top end. I've also been on live chat with DJI for over 90 minutes trying to tell them that the Mavic I just got back after 4 weeks via DJI Care Refresh Express (express! ugh) is broken --- yep my VIP service is to send me back a broken drone. So forgive me for a slightly rambly and exhausted post.

 

[cirrusly]

I know that sometimes very powerful applications can be made quite simple in some ways. But often I have found that this can come at the expense of the power that made it work so well *cough* macbook "pro" *cough*. I don't know what the answer is. I totally get what you're saying about the adoption rate, etc, but I'm not so sure that it is the fault of the application per se. I think that, in reality, for the vast majority of the people buying these drones they don't really want or care about something like Autopilot. Yeah it's powerful and someone everyone in this thread was wishing we had until we bought Autopilot, but it is by its very nature going to be complicated because of the power of the tool.

What I think they CAN do is to make it more accessible to use without or until you begin using the more powerful features. For example, the new DJI (beta) dashboard is a not only visually closer to what someone might be used to already, I personally find it a lot more aesthetically pleasing and a bit easier to use, too. Having modes like Black Box, for example, but maybe more obvious as to what it is and that it is basically just the "fly now" option is probably also a good option... because even as someone who generally finds most software "easy" it took me a little bit of work to really figure out wtf I was doing at first. But now that I've put the time and work in to learning the more powerful features (and still feel like I'm only scratching the surface) I would trade the power available for simplicity. But I could see continuing to do things to make it more initially accessible.

As far as it surviving, well, hopefully Hangar would see it as good testing/proving ground?

Blah. I don't disagree with the risky economics of the current state of the app, but don't want to see it watered down at the top end. I've also been on live chat with DJI for over 90 minutes trying to tell them that the Mavic I just got back after 4 weeks via DJI Care Refresh Express (express! ugh) is broken --- yep my VIP service is to send me back a broken drone. So forgive me for a slightly rambly and exhausted post.

I completely agree. 100%. A really good starting point would be to have a PDF of the Autopilot documentation that you could search to find answers. The current webpage looks like one gigantic run-on paragraph. Another thing that could be done to make it simpler without touching one line of code would be to standardize on the terminology and describe clearly where they deviate from the "norm."

For example, "focus point" and "POI." The terms are used interchangeably and are sometimes confusingly (as are Vector, Course and Heading.) When I create a focus trigger, why does a "focus point" have to be created automatically? Why can't focus triggers and focus points (POIs to the rest of the world) be created separately. That would be more logical.

Why does the "Focus" function not really Focus? If you really want to Focus on something (Yaw included) you have to use Cruise. Course Lock and Home Lock are very intuitive on both the DJI and Litchi app. With Autopilot, they're hidden deep in the joystick settings of the cruise function. Why can't Course Lock and Home Lock be super simple to activate and use (very common functions) like they are in DJI G04 and Litchi?

Don't get me wrong. I'm a BIG fan of the power of Autopilot. I just think that the "flow" of the program, the UI and the documentation prevent the vast majority of people that even consider it from being customers. That's a shame. And while a very select few may disagree with my opinion, the facts are facts. User acceptance of Autopilot compared to Litchi is abysmal. That's really, really a shame and it's a problem that could be fairly easily fixed if it was recognized as a problem.

 

[darana]

I completely agree. 100%. A really good starting point would be to have a PDF of the Autopilot documentation that you could search to find answers. The current webpage looks like one gigantic run-on paragraph. Another thing that could be done to make it simpler without touching one line of code would be to standardize on the terminology and describe clearly where they deviate from the "norm."

For example, "focus point" and "POI." The terms are used interchangeably and are sometimes confusingly (as are Vector, Course and Heading.) When I create a focus trigger, why does a "focus point" have to be created automatically? Why can't focus triggers and focus points (POIs to the rest of the world) be created separately. That would be more logical.

Why does the "Focus" function not really Focus? If you really want to Focus on something (Yaw included) you have to use Cruise. Course Lock and Home Lock are very intuitive on both the DJI and Litchi app. With Autopilot, they're hidden deep in the joystick settings of the cruise function. Why can't Course Lock and Home Lock be super simple to activate and use (very common functions) like they are in DJI G04 and Litchi?

Don't get me wrong. I'm a BIG fan of the power of Autopilot. I just think that the "flow" of the program, the UI and the documentation prevent the vast majority of people that even consider it from being customers. That's a shame. And while a very select few may disagree with my opinion, the facts are facts. User acceptance of Autopilot compared to Litchi is abysmal. That's really, really a shame and it's a problem that could be fairly easily fixed if it was recognized as a problem.

So thinking about this a bit more. I did notice that Hangar has a forum now, but it's not a great forum software nor is there a dedicated Autopilot section. Perhaps we can either request that they add an autopilot section, or, actually, ask MavicPilots/PhantomPilots/InspirePilots to make a dedicated AutoPilot board and ask AutoPilot to support it as the "official" board. Rather than a dozen places across all of the different fora, if there was one place that we could point people towards, even the smaller community is probably large enough to achieve a critical mass, esp. if AutoPilot would support it as the "official" one.

I'm newer to these forums so I don't know what the mods etc are like or how open they are to ideas such as this, nor which of the various boards are the most active, but that seems like a great first step to me and one that shouldn't be too difficult to make happen. I'd be glad to make some requests - thoughts?

 

[cirrusly]

So thinking about this a bit more. I did notice that Hangar has a forum now, but it's not a great forum software nor is there a dedicated Autopilot section. Perhaps we can either request that they add an autopilot section, or, actually, ask MavicPilots/PhantomPilots/InspirePilots to make a dedicated AutoPilot board and ask AutoPilot to support it as the "official" board. Rather than a dozen places across all of the different fora, if there was one place that we could point people towards, even the smaller community is probably large enough to achieve a critical mass, esp. if AutoPilot would support it as the "official" one.

I'm newer to these forums so I don't know what the mods etc are like or how open they are to ideas such as this, nor which of the various boards are the most active, but that seems like a great first step to me and one that shouldn't be too difficult to make happen. I'd be glad to make some requests - thoughts?

It certainly wouldn't hurt to try. I think the limiting factor in the participation is going to be the actual number of people currently using Autopilot. There's already an Autopilot Users' Support forum on Facebook and it has exactly 3 members. Hangar's Facebook page for Autopilot isn't meant for users' interaction. It's a business page where they put their announcements.

If Hangar is going to actively develop and improve Autopilot an active users' group is the best way to get good feedback, interact with their users and build goodwill and a reputation for responsiveness. Facebook isn't the best platform for this, so if they would get behind a forum here, or of their own I would personally be very pleased. I doubt very seriously if they will though.

 

[jimapp]

Would be nice to have a forum where we could discuss different scenarios, perhaps be that lending hand for newbs thinking about "how would I" etc

 

[cirrusly]

Would be nice to have a forum where we could discuss different scenarios, perhaps be that lending hand for newbs thinking about "how would I" etc

Yep, I agree.

 

[Rainer Schutt]

I also agree. But why not start asking questions and start discussions on there Facebook-page. Remember, the basic-work is already done by setting up the page. Now it is on us Autopilot-users to start using it, right? With regards to myself, I had a few beginners-questions in the past and sent them to their support and I must admit, they always replied with a satisfactory answer. The only problem with support is that they don't seem to be familiar with features that are in "Beta". As long as there are more beta-testers out there we could discuss new features and how they can be used en how we can benefit from them. For me, next time if I have a question about Autopilot I will ask it on the page, also I will keep on following this page. Hopefully you all do the same.

 

[Sidlinger]

I use Autopilot daily with an Inspire 2, Phantom 4, Phantom P3A, and Mavic Pro. I also see the need for an independent discussion group, especially if populated by highly-technical, professional users. I will sometimes fly twenty or more flights just exploring a single feature or behavior of Autopilot. It gets really complex when stacking actions at waypoints and when trying to maximize Δ altitude / Δ distance at a reasonable speed with tight tolerances. I am sure it's deterministic but it often appears otherwise. I also find myself coming up with many heuristics to allow for apparent execution delay of, for example, lens focus actions.

For a professional user, Autopilot is worth vastly more than it costs. Actually, it would be amazing if ported from iOS to OS X and if Autopilot itself exposed its own functionality through an API. I would be scripting like crazy. Right now, since I want utter repeatability and self-documentation, I find it very tedious to be saving a profile to go along with every flight plan, etc. It would be great if I could bypass the GUI other than when actually engaged.