A few feedback items on Pix4dCapture for iPhone

Hello,

This is about Pix4dCapture 1.4.1 (7) on iPhone 6.  I’ve enjoyed playing with the app with my new Phantom 4.  I’m impressed with the abilities out of the box.  Here’s a few things I found a little awkward though:

  • Need to sync images to my phone before uploading.  What happens if there’s not enough space on my phone for the whole image set?
  • I tried to upload an image set, and got a phone call part way through.  After I finished the call, I went to resume uploading, and it wouldn’t start again - it just said 0 bytes / second.  The last 3 images of the upload wouldn’t transfer.
  • I wondered if deleting the project in the mapper app online and restarting the upload would work, so logged in and deleted the mission.  Now Pix4dCapture crashes when I try to upload that mission.
  • I see a p4d mission file is created, which I can email myself.  It looks like the software that supports this only runs on Windows though?  So I’m out of luck with my Mac.
  • Can I upload the p4d mission files with the photos to the web app to have the information assist putting the mission together? 
  • Finally, being able to map a non-rectangular shape would be awesome - i.e. modify to an L shape or similar.

Thank you for the great software!

Tim

 

 

Hi Tim,

First of all we would like to thank you for your feedback. It is very much appreciated, it helps us continuously improve :-) 

  •  The images should be transferred to the device to be uploaded to the drone. An internet connection is needed to upload to the cloud. However, in case there is not enough storage space in the phone, it is possible to transfer the images from the SD card of the drone to the computer and then upload to the cloud.

  •  Sometimes when the upload it interrupted it is not possible to upload again the same mission. By deleting the project on the cloud and trying to upload it again it crashes. We are aware that the upload to the cloud is not always stable and our developers are working on improving it. In the meantime you can copy the images from the device to the computer and upload to the cloud, as it is described here: https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/214516203#label2

  •  There is a Mac version of Pix4Dmapper software, however it is in a beta version and it can only be downloaded from here: https://community.pix4d.com/t/5672

  •  The .p4d file and the images are the files that can be uploaded to the cloud. However, the flight plan can be seen in the Quality Report and all the files can be copied from the device to the computer.

  •  It is not possible to fly a polygonal mission with the iOS version of the app at the moment. It is however, in our pipeline to implement this possibility but it takes some time (several months). Our developers are currently working on it.

In the meantime, a workaround would be to fly several smaller rectangular missions, to adjust them according to some reference points on the map background, and to process all the images together in Pix4Dmapper. In Android this is facilitated since the grid missions are displayed and so can be adjusted on the same map background. This is not the case on the iOS but will come very soon.

Regards,