I am new to drones and still learning how to fly them … liking the Mavic Air 2 so far.
Posting my recent experience with ActiveTrack in an attempt to understand what went amiss, hopefully this will also help out other new folks like me.
I talked my wife into riding her bike up and down a trail next to a field covered in tall grass (the grass will be important later).
If you look at the trail you can see that it climbs up a small hill with no obstacles taller than about 5 feet.:
What I did:
Interesting that the manual also says the following for trace mode: ‘The aircraft cannot avoid obstacles when there are roll and throttle sticks movements’. Wonder if this might also somehow apply to parallel mode as I had a constant roll input.
Looking at the mobile flight log the altitude remained constant at 11.5 feet (even after it met the grass). I guess this means altitude is relative to the home position and the drone has no concept of ‘above ground level’ altitude.
Questions:
Any help understanding this would be greatly appreciated!
Posting my recent experience with ActiveTrack in an attempt to understand what went amiss, hopefully this will also help out other new folks like me.
I talked my wife into riding her bike up and down a trail next to a field covered in tall grass (the grass will be important later).
If you look at the trail you can see that it climbs up a small hill with no obstacles taller than about 5 feet.:
What I did:
- Got the drone up in the air at the desired altitude (11-12ft)
- Verified I was in ‘Normal’ mode, recording using 4k at 24fps
- Selected my wife as the subject, started ActiveTrack (parallel), and off she rode with the drone in tow
- I started out somewhat behind her but wanted to move around to just in front
- Held the roll stick hard over to circle the subject (kept it held)
- The drone moved around, but never reached the desired position
- Noticed that as the trail climbed the drone did not climb or stop, decided to see what would happen
- Eventually the drone met the grass, no harm done
- I expected the drone to either climb or simply stop based on its downward obstacle sensors. Clearly my expectations were wrong, I need to understand this to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Interesting that the manual also says the following for trace mode: ‘The aircraft cannot avoid obstacles when there are roll and throttle sticks movements’. Wonder if this might also somehow apply to parallel mode as I had a constant roll input.
Looking at the mobile flight log the altitude remained constant at 11.5 feet (even after it met the grass). I guess this means altitude is relative to the home position and the drone has no concept of ‘above ground level’ altitude.
Questions:
- Should the drone have adjusted it’s altitude or stopped to avoid hitting the grass?
- Why couldn’t the drone circle my wife based on my roll input? At the time of the crash it was going 13mph, I thought parallel in Normal mode was capable of 26mph.
Any help understanding this would be greatly appreciated!
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