DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

So I flew with a motion controller for the 1st time...

VenomXts

Well-Known Member
Premium Pilot
Joined
Apr 25, 2020
Messages
1,549
Reactions
2,745
Age
42
Location
Texas
I have to say that was a hell of a lot of fun and really hope they have that option with the Mavic 3 when it comes out as well... I was watching the good flight podcast and they had a dj guy on it that said the concept of the motion control moving around the camera came from the earlier Mavic and air and Racing goggles.

Takes a little getting used too and have to fly more with your hand vs you wrist... Hell of a lot of fun flying something 62 mph with your hand in sport.

IMG-20210311-WA0001.jpeg
 
I’ve been thinking about the Motion controller, and I doubt that DJI will be bringing it their other drones. However, I don’t see a reason why the community couldn’t do it, sort of. With the SDK being available for most of DJIs drones, and apps like Litchi which can already control the drones for us through the SDK, I don’t see anything stopping someone with the programming skill making an app to allow something like a Wiimote connected through Bluetooth to your phone controlling the drone. Obviously, a Wiimote may not be optimal as it’s very old tech now, but I don’t see any insurmountable obstacles in the way.

Really just thinking out loud here, feel free to shoot me down if I’m wrong!
 
Mine came in on Wednesday, but when all batteries and updates were finally charged, it was already too stormy to fly, so still anxiously awaiting calmer weather!
Having said that, I did do some flying in the simulator with it, and I think the maths behind controlling with the motion controller vs with conventional controlls are so different that it will be difficult to implement on a drone where it hasn’t be programmed into.

Let me elaborate: the motion part in the motion controller is basically 2D only. It controls the direction of flight, relative to the viewpoint of the camera. The trigger controls the speed. Now, let’s say you want to speed up. In that case, the drone has to tilt forward, increase rpm and tilt the gimbal up. This seems quite complicated to me (event though I know a thing or two about programming robots, transformation matrices and inverse kinematics) Now this is only a simple task! If you want to turn a corner, the drone has to calculate the bank angle in order to reach the desired turn rate at the current speed, etc. etc. Now I realize that a lot of these calculations are pre-programmed, but I think a lot of stuff has to be calculated in addition to translate the user input into “conventional” input.

In addition, the motion controller really lacks the capability to steer the drone sideways. “Strafing” is not possible, at least not at speed. (Maybe it can distinguish between yaw and flying sideways when hovering?) This sideways movement is something I use quite often when filming.

Having said that, I would LOVE to be able to control my Mavic 2 pro like this! Hook up the motion controller to the SC (we’ll still need a display, right? Maybe even better, hook uo the fpv goggles AND the motion controller to the Mav) and you’re good to go! ?
 

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,593
Messages
1,554,203
Members
159,598
Latest member
fast54