Mavic air way points work

William Ball · Apr 16, 2018

I just fired up my auto pilot 4.5 and it shows the mavic air listed as supported aircraft in the flight school section. I decided to hook up the MA to it and see what happened. It shows the camera view from the Air but does not show any telemetry from the craft. As a matter of fact, it shows that a phantom 3 is the aircraft connected. So what I gather from all of that is that when they release 4.6 to the public it will include the air and "see" it as the air. Exciting, can't wait. I sent hangar an email asking to get on the beta testing crew. Haven't heard back yet. But with my luck I won't get picked. I once put a ticket in a bag for a chineese auction at a charity event. I was the only one to put a ticket in the bag for this particular item....... I lost... The winner was "inspected by # 47". that was the ticket pulled from the bag. I don't give me much of a chance to be selected by hangar.

Larry Gibson · Apr 16, 2018

Mavic air with waypoints using Litchi ver 2.2
12 waypoints 1 POI
Test

OldBlueHeron · Apr 16, 2018

Oh man, can't wait.

griffinhart · Apr 18, 2018

I just got my Beta invite for Autopilot. Hopefully the weather will cooperate over the next few days!

Lake_Flyer · Apr 21, 2018

djiboi said:
Litchi will support waypoints soon and is better. The alternative is a 2nd hand ipad mini 2

Litchi is not better than AutoPilot. It is different and aimed to a different user segment. AP has a learning curve but the many parameters you can set make it a professional toolkit for using waypoints.
Only a matter of opinion.

dragonmuzz · Apr 21, 2018

Litchi is working perfect now too

dwallersv · Apr 21, 2018

Q: Are these autonomous waypoints being flown by the aircraft (like the Pro), or is this simply the app itself using the SDK to control the aircraft from the device -- such that if it got disconnected it would not continue to fly the mission. Anyone know, definitively? (please, no educated guessing/speculation)

OldBlueHeron · Apr 21, 2018

dwallersv said:
Q: Are these autonomous waypoints being flown by the aircraft (like the Pro), or is this simply the app itself using the SDK to control the aircraft from the device -- such that if it got disconnected it would not continue to fly the mission. Anyone know, definitively? (please, no educated guessing/speculation)

I was disconnected for 5+ minutes and it continued its mission so... you make the call.

17 waypoints, 19000 total feet.

brantel · Apr 21, 2018

dwallersv said:
Q: Are these autonomous waypoints being flown by the aircraft (like the Pro), or is this simply the app itself using the SDK to control the aircraft from the device -- such that if it got disconnected it would not continue to fly the mission. Anyone know, definitively? (please, no educated guessing/speculation)

There have been many reports around the forums where people have turned off their Litchi app/controller mid-flight (with the Air) and have reported that the drone continued the mission. I have not personally done this with Litchi but I can tell you that when I load waypoint missions, it actually tells me that it is uploading the mission to the drone. I suspect the reports are accurate.

As for Autopilot, you have a choice, one mode is where the app creates a custom flight controller with tons more features than the basic waypoint functionality built into the SDK (if you lose connection, the mission stops and then does whatever is configured for it to do in DJI Go 4 (hover, rth, etc.), the second mode is the LCMC mode where the drone will continue the mission as programmed but you are limited to the basic SDK waypoint features.

dwallersv · Apr 21, 2018

@OldBlueHeron @brantel, easy call -- DJI did it right.

With the "feeling" WP were left out by DJI for product positioning reasons, and rumors to that extent, AND living under a rock and being out of the loop, I was afraid the 3rd parties were just going to "emulate" WPs by controlling directly from the app. That would work, and if all goes perfectly would basically meet the needs of the feature, but there are all sorts of issues with that approach.

Speculating here, DJI wasn't the bad actor many of us thought here, but instead needed engineering time. The architecture and flight controller are different on the MA, so I can imagine a fair amount of new development was necessary for many features.

Glad it's there now. Only a few minor reasons left to fly the Pro instead of the Air. My Air's the workhorse now. Just wish they'd enable Cinematic Mode (there's that positioning crap again).

dwallersv · Apr 21, 2018

Oh, would you look at that. I can post CRAP no problem, but if I try to post hell (h e l l), well...

So, over in another post I was unable to post the phrase, "...frustrate the hell out of you", but it seems I could have posted "...frustrate the crap out of you" -- without violating the high community standards protect delicate eyeballs.

I wonder what happens if I type Beelzebub? Lucifer? Satan? Putin?

inquiring minds...

brantel · Apr 21, 2018

dwallersv said:
@OldBlueHeron @brantel, easy call -- DJI did it right.

With the "feeling" WP were left out by DJI for product positioning reasons, and rumors to that extent, AND living under a rock and being out of the loop, I was afraid the 3rd parties were just going to "emulate" WPs by controlling directly from the app. That would work, and if all goes perfectly would basically meet the needs of the feature, but there are all sorts of issues with that approach.

Speculating here, DJI wasn't the bad actor many of us thought here, but instead needed engineering time. The architecture and flight controller are different on the MA, so I can imagine a fair amount of new development was necessary for many features.

Glad it's there now. Only a few minor reasons left to fly the Pro instead of the Air. My Air's the workhorse now. Just wish they'd enable Cinematic Mode (there's that positioning crap again).

Well there is still some reason why DroneDeploy, Pix4D and other dedicated mapping app providers are dragging their feet in supporting the Air even though Litchi and Autopilot released their beta's just hours after the SDK was released. There is some reason why but I have no idea what that reason is.

There is also an issue with the Air and low resolution geo tags. DJI only provides Lat and Long to the nearest second with no decimal places. This leaves a ton of room for errors in position.

dwallersv · Apr 21, 2018

brantel said:
Well there is still some reason why DroneDeploy, Pix4D and other dedicated mapping app providers are dragging their feet in supporting the Air even though Litchi and Autopilot released their beta's just hours after the SDK was released. There is some reason why but I have no idea what that reason is.

There is also an issue with the Air and low resolution geo tags. DJI only provides Lat and Long to the nearest second with no decimal places. This leaves a ton of room for errors in position.

Outrageous. Again, that is "product positioning", not a technical limitation. The Air's location services are being deliberately crippled.

As many others, I expect this to even up quite a bit after the MP2 hits the streets. MP will be discontinued, and MA features will be brought mostly up to par with current MP features.