Indoor flying.

[sammackay23]

Hi all, Got a wee job coming up this weekend inside an old church. Anything I should no when flying indoors? Setting changes etc

 

[Congoblue]

Flying Mavic Pro indoors is generally considered to be a no-no, due to its unpredictable behaviour switching in/out of ATTI mode if GPS is lost or acquired, which can happen randomly inside a building.
Have a look at the other threads on flying indoors.

If you are really determined to do it, use rotor guards and make sure you are the only person in there.

 

[Pedro.FR2K]

I’d highly recommend propeller guards. Also be always close to your drone.
I’ll tell you my experience flying indoors.

Once gave it a go and decided to record the interior of a salon, everything started up normally, had GPS connection, all good. I enabled tripod mode so I could avoid accidents. I was doing some movements and suddenly the drone just stops responding to my commands, just stays there hovering. It starts going slowly to the left, right into some really tall glass jugs. I completely lost controll of it, didn’t even switch to atti mode or something, so I decided to run after the drone and grab it mid air, tried turning it off with the controller but I got no response so I just turned it off using the button on the battery.
From this moment on, I will never fly my Mavic indoors ever again, it’s very unsafe since you can’t even enable ATTI mode manually.

 

[Top Hat]

Yup! it's a roll of a dice flying indoors.
Maybe i'm just so lucky coz been flying my MP in my living room many times and to this date (k o w) never had any issue.

 

[Congoblue]

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what happened to me except I was in a church.

You can still fly it in ATTI mode but it needs a lot of practice as you have to manually correct for drift, and you can't practice because as said there is no way to manually put it into ATTI mode

 

[Pedro.FR2K]

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what happened to me except I was in a church.

You can still fly it in ATTI mode but it needs a lot of practice as you have to manually correct for drift, and you can't practice because as said there is no way to manually put it into ATTI mode

I don’t know if it causes issues to the controller because the drone didnt respond in my case, otherwise it would respond but without gps positioning

 

[Congoblue]

Not sure, the problem is when it switches to atti the controls respond completely differently, so it feels like you are not in control but in fact you are, it just does different things to what you are used to.

If you had no response from the drone at all, that must have been something else. Not sure what it would do if it lost GPS and also lost the remote signal - probably just attempt to hover in place, since it can't return home?

 

[Pedro.FR2K]

Not sure, the problem is when it switches to atti the controls respond completely differently, so it feels like you are not in control but in fact you are, it just does different things to what you are used to.

If you had no response from the drone at all, that must have been something else. Not sure what it would do if it lost GPS and also lost the remote signal - probably just attempt to hover in place, since it can't return home?

I think I was just lucky that it didn’t have GPS signal otherwise it would just return to home and smash into the ceiling

 

[Top Hat]

Here's a good demo to watch.......
DJI Mavic Pro / Platinum - GPS Signal Loss Test

 

[HNMavic]

Should the OP be able to fly in opti mode? Or is the church too dimly lit?

 

[geevee]

i flew indoors once, with no dramas, I was a total noob and just got lucky? also didn't do anything tricky, just tiny movements. does tripod mode help? or does it make the responses too slow?

 

[Pedro.FR2K]

i flew indoors once, with no dramas, I was a total noob and just got lucky? also didn't do anything tricky, just tiny movements. does tripod mode help? or does it make the responses too slow?

I use tripod mode just for precaution, I must avoid fast movements, Imagine I’m going 20kmh on an interior and suddenly lose GPS signal, the drone won’t be that precise and drift around, and probably I won’t have time to correct it. I’ve flown many times on ATTI mode and it’s hatd to correct the drift sometimes, even the most experienced pilots have difficulties with it. I don’t know if I’m going to fly on interiors again, only if a job comes up and requires me to do it.

 

[geevee]

years ago hubby made me a paint extender pole platform (goes to 12') that i strapped my DSLR to, this is the stuff we did before drones, and when we didn't want to invest $$$ into other devices that elevated your camera, in order to take pics for a $300 real estate shoot. I still have it somewhere, and i'm now wondering if I can just strap my drone to it and gently "fly" it around places. it would be a good solution (or "hack" depending on what generation you hail from) for this situation.

 

[toddellis]

i've done quite a bit of indoor flying - SOMETIMES gps actually works - sometimes not. flying in atti mode is do-able - but does require some nerve. the biggest help i have found is to disable obstacle avoidance. if you are in a (relatively) tight area the MP can sense danger on the right (for example) - overcorrect to the left & you're on the ground.

 

[sammackay23]

UPDATE - Flew in the church at the weekend, No hassles at all, 1 if I was been picky was when I was doing a 360 with litchi, 28 photos it drifted slightly left but barely any. Got some video in, some phoos and a 360 degrees photo so all in all would say it was a success.