I know DJI states the lower temperature range is 32' F (0' C) but what is the coldest temperature you have flown in? Today I took it out in my back yard to see how it would do in 11' F. There was only a trace of wind and very overcast. I had no battery alarms/issues to speak of. The only noted issue was a slight gimbal jitter/jello effect when I went up in altitude to do a 360' view.....Overall, I am very happy with the performance in such low temperatures.....OH and I did not have the gimbal cover on....
How Cold can it be and still fly?
- Thread starter Heavysledz
- Start date
BD0G
Well-Known Member
have you installed the latest firmware released on 12/26.....it was supposed to improve the gimbal jitters in cold weather..... I can't complain considering I am over 20 degrees below the listed operating temperature of the Mavic Pro.....
BD0G
Well-Known Member
Im about to do that myself as I am still on 1.3.00,but part of me does not want to as my bird flies great so far and with every firmware upgrade there is always the chance (yes its small) that there my be other changes made that might not be that helpful.
I hear ya.....I installed it the day it was released and have 2 hours of flight time on it without any issues.....the good thing is you can always downgrade if you don't like it.
BD0G
Well-Known Member
If you look I have a 2' X 4' piece of pegboard with a big X in the middle. I would think this would be plenty of contrast to pick up against the white snow......I think my issue was that I am in a congested subdivision with lots of signal interference. So when it first records the home position initially it is off once it acquires more satellites and a better lock on it's actual position. I think next time I will hover for about 30 seconds until it locks onto more satellites and then manually register the home position again to see if that works better....
Edit: FWIW I typically manually land but I did a firmware refresh last night so i was testing it out to make sure it works in the event I may actually need it at some point.
Edit: FWIW I typically manually land but I did a firmware refresh last night so i was testing it out to make sure it works in the event I may actually need it at some point.
Jello and vibrations are two different things.
Depending on the subject matter being filmed, Jello can occur on any digital camera (with a CMOS sensor), even if it's locked down on a tripod that is bolted to a concrete slab.
Vibrations can cause Jello, which is why so many people conflate the two. But not all vibrations cause jello. Sometimes you just have the shakes in your video, but no jello effect.
Judder is something else too. That is a skipping effect you'll get if you pan horizontally too quickly for the frame rate you are capturing in.
So the cold weather fix for the gimbal addresses vibrations and glitches, not jello. The fix for jello will be to slow down your shutter speed (not your frame rate). The only way to do that, without getting overexposed shots is to add an ND filter.
Meantime, your higher altitude pan actually looks like judder to me, combined with over sharpening, which exacerbates the problem by creating a flickering effect. Slow down your pan, or up your frame rate. Lower your sharpness. You can always add sharpness back in in post. Final Cut, Premiere, or even iMovie will do a better job sharpening than the realtime algorithms built into your Mavic camera (or any consumer camera).
Also, get a few ND filters. Ideally you want your shutter speed to be twice your frame rate. So if you shoot at 30fps, you want a shutter speed of 1/60. Actually, that is a rule of thumb from the film days. I'm finding I like a slightly faster shutter speed. So if I shoot at 30fps, I try to set the shutter speed to 1/80 or 1/100. Depends on what is being shot. To get slow shutter speeds like that to work in broad daylight (especially with snow) you'll need to use an ND filter. Otherwise your image will be totally blown out.
It might all click together if you google or Wikipedia "jello" and then "judder". Black magic design also has excellent resources on their site which explain a lot.
I just want to add that contrary to my earlier post, you might have to live with the sharpness. Seems the Mavic gets very "smeary" very quickly with lowered sharpness. I haven't tested with the Mavic enough yet to know whether you can really get the detail back in post.
I have had a few flights to shoot new snowfall in the neighbourhood at -10 deg. C without any problem at all. Everything behaves normally and good footage also. Just had to stay low and kept it short because of pretty high winds.
If interested, here is the clip .
- Early morning and stay clear of roadways (=people).
- Quick processing only (shows a bit of vignetting that I did not correct).
If interested, here is the clip .
- Early morning and stay clear of roadways (=people).
- Quick processing only (shows a bit of vignetting that I did not correct).
WolfgangStiller
Well-Known Member
I have flown down to -8 F at 13,000 ft and down to -18F at above 14,000 msl with good video. Each time I kept the batteries warm using 3m heating pads and the camera and gimbal were gradually acclimated to the ambient temperature by virtue of riding in my backpack for several hours.
thanks for all of the feedback everyone....I feel much better about flying in below freezing temps as long as you start with a warm battery and acclimate the magic to the temps before taking flight....Also, a lot of good advice with regards to video settings and the need for ND filters etc...
In follow-up on my above post: Had a nice flight this morning at -16 deg. C (windchill at -20 deg. C).
Rock solid flight and good footage.
At about 5 min. into the flight I received a red "low battery" warning, although it still showed 68%. Didn't hang around for trouble to show up and ended the flight. I had read that this may occur at very low temps and that one should land ASAP when that occurs. Something to do with the cold affecting the functioning of the battery, regardless of the remaining charge.
Rock solid flight and good footage.
At about 5 min. into the flight I received a red "low battery" warning, although it still showed 68%. Didn't hang around for trouble to show up and ended the flight. I had read that this may occur at very low temps and that one should land ASAP when that occurs. Something to do with the cold affecting the functioning of the battery, regardless of the remaining charge.
how hard were you flying it? the harder you fly it, the more heat the battery will have, thus preventing the potential for this alarm to pop up? Also, do you have a Heak=lthy Drones account? If so, you can upload your flight logs and it will show you all of the critical information pertaining to your battery during the flight....I would be interested in seeing what the battery temperature was when the alarm occurred.
I googled 3m heating pads and got a lot of results. Can you snap a picture of your setup, or post a link?
I was flying it pretty softly. Also, I got the low battery warning when near damp raising from a water weir - I imagine the combination of very cold temp plus damp did not help.
I uploaded the flight log to HealthyDrones and I don't see anything alarming anywhere. .02V voltage drop during most of the flight, .04V drop during a climb. In the green all the way. No major deviations in the 3 cells either, green all the way here also. Battery temperature page is flat at 89.6 deg. F all the way (strange that it is so flat during all of the flight...).
Note that in the "General Page" it shows "max batt temp" at 32.0 deg. F.
Let me know if there is anything in particular you'd like to see from the flight log.
WolfgangStiller
Well-Known Member
No particular setup. In really cold weather, I wrap the Mavic, and RC in a down jacket in my pack and put one or two of the 3m gel packs (heated the microwave before leaving). I keep my iPhone warm separately by keeping it in an inside pocket or using either a chemical hand warmer or another gel pack. You can make your own warming packs by putting some gel material in triple zip-lock bags and warming that.
WolfgangStiller
Well-Known Member
These are the 3m packs I use but other brands work well also:
https://smile.amazon.com/3M-Nexcare...F8&qid=1483241416&sr=8-2&keywords=3m+gel+pack
Ah. Ok. For some reason I thought you were affixing the heat pad to the battery and flying that way.
I've done a lot of flying in -10 to -20 degrees Fahrenheit over the years, but never with the Mavic. I have a similar system to what you describe, but I pretty much use hand warmers exclusively. No particular reason other than I have boxes of them around the house. Basically I pack the hand warmers all around each battery in my pack.
I find that the biggest impact of cold weather is on the baraometers. If you just pull your drone out of the car (or a warm pack), and try to fly right away, you run the risk of condensation in the barometer... and barometers don't like moisture of any kind. To prevent this, I leave the drone out in the cold for an extended period of time prior to takeoff (minimum 10 minutes, preferably 30 minutes to an hour). Right before takeoff I pop in a warm battery.
I also find that keeping a battery in your inner jacket pocket isn't good enough, at least not at -10 to -20 F. My hand warmers in a bag approach has worked much better.
Disclaimer: I've never flown a DJI drone in extreme cold. My experience is entirely with drones I've built and a couple 3DR drones (Iris and Solo).
Should be fun to test out this winter.
(Oh and Happy New Year!)
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