So I have been trying the MA's smart capture mode these past few days. I took the MA with me for another bike ride; my third go at it following me in smart capture mode with no remote or phone. All went well, getting it in to the mode was easy, taking off was easy, initiating recording was easy, having it follow me was easy, and it followed me well - even avoiding a few obstacles (low hanging branches here and there on a dirt road). From my previous trials of this mode, I have noticed that it is very easy to loose track of time in this mode and you have no feedback about remaining battery power. So this time I set a timer on my watch - 10 minutes. So the 10 minutes passed and with my watch buzzing me, I dismounted and tried to land it. The last two tries I had with this mode, I had no trouble landing the MA. But today, it just won't land. It would go down to something like 40 or 60 cm above ground and will just hover there. Tried changing landing spots, tried squatting to its level and encouraging it to land - it just won't budge! It was frustrating and I am sure I was quite a sight. It only landed when its battery level reached critical (the front led lights turned red) and it landed where it was. The surface I was trying to land it on was a rough cobble stone pavement, not the smoothest of surfaces but it was fine to land on I thought. Now the only explanation I could think of for this behavior was landing protection - I have it enabled. May be it is a good idea to turn this feature off when in this mode. Just sharing my experience.
I have not tried that yet. I’m a little nervous of it goin wayward on me. I want to take it out with my mountain bike. Or motorbike but not sure how to set it up and do that
I am also not fully confident with this mode but I am finding that I am liking it more the more I try it. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube that explain how to get into the mode with or without your remote controller and phone attached. I suggest you watch a few of them and give it a try and see if it works for you. I first tried it in an open field just to get a feel of how how well the gesture commands work and how the AC behaves in this mode. I suggest you do the same; using it to film your bike ride without first familiarising yourself with the mode works may not be the best idea. If you do take it bike riding; a few pointers from my limited test.
- It doesn't like it when you take sharp turns. It has lost me on corners and turns a few times especially if it was following me from far and high.
- It does not handle sudden deceleration that well. I had one instance where it flew over my head past me and another where it came quite close to colliding with the rear of my bike (I think OA kicked in at the last second in the later case and it did come to an abrupt stop; but it was still too close for comfort)
- Be cautious of elevation gains - I am still not sure if this mode can handle elevation gains and losses. I have seen mine getting ever closer to the ground when riding uphill. I am not quite sure if it would have climbed up if I had let it be but I stopped and pushed it higher just to be safe.
- When recording in this mode, the drone switches to 1080p at 30fps using the camera camera settings set on your last flight to set the exposure. Without a phone attached, you have no means of judging if the exposure is right. So set your camera settings to auto before you head out to use this mode.
- And one more thing: when you are pressing the function button on the rear end of the AC twice to get into this mode without the remote and phone connected, make sure you do the press quickly one after the other - like with in a fraction of a second - press, press. It won't work if you pause even for a second between the first press and the second. When I first tried, I couldn't get the AC to get in to this mode and almost gave up thinking may be there is a compass calibration issue that I am not aware of (I did not have the remote or my phone at the time and had no feedback on what was going on). But I realised later that it was just because I was not doing the second press quickly enough. You will know you have successfully entered the AC into smart capture mode when the AC chimes twice and the front leds turn orange.
I guess that is all I have; have fun with it!
Similar threads
