Yaw hesitation when releasing gimbal tilt wheel.

[brett8883]

Hey guys a couple weeks back a new member brought up an issue they were having with the Mavic hesitating if the user was yawing the AC and then releasing the gimbal tilt wheel. There was some controversy over how this member brought up the issue and things went south and the thread was closed. The issue was never properly addressed because of the way the member rubbed everybody the wrong way. I tried at the time to replicate the issue, I tried really hard but couldn't. However, today I suddenly started having the issue myself.

Basically as you yaw the aircraft and tilt the camera at the same time if you let go of the gimbal wheel is causes the Mavic to stop in its tracks for a frame and then carry on. I almost thought I might have been seeing things the first time it happed then it did it again and again.

Now one thing is no matter how slowly I yawed or tilted the camera the amount of hesitation was always the same.

I uploaded the video to youtube so you can see what I am talking about. The first 45 secs are there just to show you this wasn't a problem and then it was all of a sudden. The first time it happens is at :45 seconds. The video is completely untouched except for my commentary that I layered on top.

Something I did differently in this video was I turned on gimbal extension +30 degrees because the shot I was doing needed it. However, when I turned that off it continued to do it. I turned off gimbal yaw follow and on again and it did it both ways. This is in 4K 30 FPS

Anybody got any idea what going on? I appreciate any insight!

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[Former Member]

Try downresing to a lower res and see if it happens. I think its just not able to handle all the detail in your shot at 4k.

I asked my best friend the news cameraman about this and he said panning asks alot of a gimbal and camera. The $300 gimbal/camera on the Mavic might not be up to the task. The Air might or M2P or Z might, at a higher FPS.

 

[brett8883]

Try downresing to a lower res and see if it happens. I think its just not able to handle all the detail in your shot at 4k.

I asked my best friend the news cameraman about this and he said panning asks alot of a gimbal and camera. The $300 gimbal/camera on the Mavic might not be up to the task. The Air might or M2P or Z might, at a higher FPS.

I will! Thanks for looking into it for me!

 

[brett8883]

Try downresing to a lower res and see if it happens. I think its just not able to handle all the detail in your shot at 4k.

I asked my best friend the news cameraman about this and he said panning asks alot of a gimbal and camera. The $300 gimbal/camera on the Mavic might not be up to the task. The Air might or M2P or Z might, at a higher FPS.

I tried this today without any luck. Didn’t make any difference but you might be on the right track. One thing I forgot I changed right before the issue started is I changed the recording format from .mov to .mp3. I changed it back and it did seem to help.

Another thing I realized today was that it doesn’t happen in sport mode at all. When I turn on “yaw follow aircraft heading” and I have the aircraft in P-mode or any other mode besides sport, when I yaw the aircraft and then suddenly stop yawing the gimbal also stops in its tracks. This is important I think because if you notice, when you have the Mavic Pro on the ground and have “yaw follow” enabled and left stick right or left the gimbal will immediately yaw in that direction as well. When you return the left sticky to center the gimbal also returns to center. This should show up in the video but it doesn’t so the aircraft must compinsate for this.

When I have yaw follow on in sport mode my issue of the ac hesitating doest happen but the gimbal returning to center IS visable. Does this happen for you guys in sport mode?

I think there has to be a link here.

 

[brett8883]

I have determined the cause of this issue is the iOS version of DJI Go 4 from 4.2.22 all the way to the present iOS version 4.3.12. There may be older affected versions but that’s as far back as I tested. I do not yet know if the android version of DJI Go 4 is affected but I know it is on the iOS version.

This issue has to do with the yaw follow function of the Mavic Pro gimbal. When “synchronized gimbal with aircraft yaw” is enabled the gimbal will yaw in the direction the aircraft is yawing and smooth out the panning of the video. However, when the left stick command to yaw the aircraft stops, the gimbal will remain yawed and slowly drift back to center.

I have discovered that, with or without gimbal sync aircraft heading enabled in the iOS app, it is always enabled in the aircraft firmware when in P-Mode. I can tell this is not the intended behavior because the issue brought up by the @GrizzlyAK doesn’t happen in Sport mode and Sport mode gimbal synchronized follow is NOT always enabled regardless of iOS DJI Go 4 app settings in the firmware. I do not know how the aircraft’s yaw is affected by this error but I know that it is.

I have two solutions:

1. Don’t use DJI Go 4 on your iOS device with the Mavic Pro or Mavic Pro Platinum. Litchi and all other 3rd party apps on iOS do not have this issue WHATSOEVER!

1. If you know how to adjust parameters on your Mavic you can look up g_config_misc_cfg_follow_gimbal_yaw_en=1 change that to a 0 and turn off gimbal synchronized with aircraft yaw in the gimbal settings of DJI Go 4. This stops the the yaw hesitation issue but the gimbal will no longer yaw with the aircraft movement (it stills yaws but only within the yaw dead-band of the gimbal(basically the gimbal smoothing on the yaw axis) this causes the yaw movement to of the camera to seem “lazy” when doing a really slow pan. Almost like it focus on something and then you have to apply more yaw speed to get it to continue to yaw)

This thread was marked solved but due to the bold reason I have removed that indicator to reopened the issue. Using any other app besides DJI Go 4 remains the only 100% solution to this issue.

 

[brett8883]

I can confirm without a doubt this is a DJI Go 4 issue and likely only affects iOS. I have gone back to the earliest releases of DJI Go 4 and the issue is not present. DJI Go 4 4.0.0 for iOS doesn’t have this issue more does 4.0.1 for iOS. I will continue to try the various DJI Go 4 additions to find out the latest release that is not affected.

 

[Kilrah]

Your gimbal is poorly calibrated, the horizon drifts when you yaw. Likely linked.

 

[brett8883]

Your gimbal is poorly calibrated, the horizon drifts when you yaw. Likely linked.

That video is pretty old now but could have been but I’ve calibrated it since and the issue still happens when using newer DJI GO 4 versions. Again it doesn’t happen in Litchi or even the early DJI Go 4 versions for iOS.

@Kilrah you think I could do like a diff file1 file2 command and compare maybe mc json of the new iOS app’s vs old iOS apps to try to pinpoint what the thing that causes it? Is there a better way?