First afternoon using this app so I thought I should leave some feedback. I have read through the entire forum so based my testing on what others have found.
background. physical scientist and surveyor that has been playing with UAV’s for the last 8 years. Been flying RC my whole life.
1. I flew three missions out of the box with no problems
2. missions ranged from small to large
3. high and medium overlap
4. Sync worked for the most part. I synched after I completed the 3 mission. its a bit finicky but I never got a complete app crash.
5. Interested in to see how good the products turn out. I am a photscan user so I will be interested in comparing the quality of the final products.
Notes: must be in P mode, take off manually, switch to F mode, hold takeoff for three second and you are off and going. I always manually pointed the gimbal to 90 degrees before starting the mission.
General impression: Great app. If you take your time to read through the forum i believe the app performs as advertised. I understand there may be some specific issues related to hardware (phone or tablet side)…maybe I got lucky who knows.
Requests: Please Please Please allow cached maps. 90% of the places that I want to use this have no data services.
Thanks for all the work putting this together Pix4D team. You definitely have made the workflow easy and attractive. I look forward to comparing the output to products I have produced in photoscan.
I’m using Pix4D Capture Beta since upgrading the firmware P3P. Everything has worked correctly: grid, takeoff and models processed in Pix4DMapper. For all work well. Just follow the application routine.
My complaint is always the same. To obtain more accurate cloud of points, the horizontal overlap should be greater than 80%. In this way, I make two parallel flights on the same site and reach higher overlapping 90%. This allows for designs with errors less than 0.5%.
Orthophotos for this perfect overlap.
Another item that should be improved is the waiting time to enable the advanced mode of application.
Under the model built with 90% overlap and error 0.3%
Andy - both the camera setting & the datum is selected for you, based on what UAV you’re flying. That FC350_blah_blah_blah is for one of the phantoms, I believe, so don’t worry about changing it. Same with the Coordinate System - WGS84 is what the camera locations are stored as. Rarely (if ever) should you need to change either of those settings if you’re flying with a DJI system.
Seems to be a lot of people on here today, so I’ll ask again.
I’m having trouble uploading missions from my NVIDIA tablet to the cloud, so I have to manually load the pictures from the card. Unfortunately those pictures are geotagged by DJI GO, not Pix4D. As we have been told, the DJI GO app doesn’t always tag as accurately or correctly. As a result my projects are messed up up sometimes.
Is there a way to manually load the missions from my NVIDIA to my computer?
Mitchell - accuracy shouldn’t be a concern, whether they’re tagged by DJI Go or Pix4D. They’re both getting information from the same GPS system, so there shouldn’t be a difference.
Are you sure the images aren’t being geotagged? If you want to send one over to me to check, I’d be happy to take a look at it.
Not sure what you mean by loading missions - are you trying to upload them to the Pix4D’s cloud service for processing? If so, you should be able to just connect your tablet to your computer, access the files you need to upload, and save them to your computer. Start a project in Pix4D’s desktop program, and choose “Upload Project Files” from the file menu.
I will try the direct loading from the tablet, thank you.
Accuracy is a concern, in one of the tutorials the rep specifically says not to use the photos from the card because the DJI Go app doesn’t tag as accurately. I am sure the images are being Geotagged because the all load and are tagged correctly and all the photos load into the model fine.
The problem is using multiple flights on multiple batteries. I’m guessing when you take out batteries and do multiple missions there are slight discrepancies in the Geotagging. I’ve done like 5 batteries worth of 600+ pictures and the rendering gets confused and re-renders the building at multiple heights or angles even and completely messes up the project.
in the photo below I circled two different roof structures that are rendered at two separate heights and positions because of the error in geotagging.
@Mark - thanks for your reply. In regards Mitchell’s comment about the geotags not being accurate in DJI Go, there is Pix4D documentation that states that the tags from DJI Go are not accurate and that we should use the capture app, I posted this same question above (Tuesday at 23:14).
I flew the beta version on my P3P for several missions successfully. I went in for another mission, manually took off, pressed start and got an error saying something like it could not execute ground station mission. Let me make the distinction that it isn’t the ground station check mark on the preflight screen. All those settings were good to go, it was just when the missions starts that I got the error and the mission doesn’t execute. Anyone experience this?
I have a suggestion for future improvements. I’m surveying a large project and having to fly multiple missions. I’m trying to keep track of what area I’ve completed. A great addition would be a larger project manager showing the boundaries of multiple missions in a project area. This will help the end user keep track of the areas they’ve flown and help them approach the project in a systematic way.
My grid mission does not work (it always say grid too large no matter what size) so I used the free flight instead. The map showed my Phantom, the path, and image capture locations for each image. After one battery I landed, removed the battery from the Phantom ONLY, kept the app running, inserted the new battery, powered on the Phantom, then placed the Phantom and controller in the back of my car, drove to the edge of the previous flight, got out, put the Phantom on the ground again and took off. It kept the previous path and image capture locations on the screen and started off in the correct location again. There was a green line from where I landed after the first battery to the location I took off with the second battery. So it continued seamlessly to add more path and more image capture location and I could fly relative to the last line from the first battery. My only problem is that I accidently flipped the camera orientation between batteries without noticing and it was a bit windy so straight lines… well what do you call straight anyway. ha ha.
Hello everybody! I just released 2.0.5-beta. I hope it will help at least some of you!
Some things are still not stable, and we have major problems coming directly from the SDK (e.g. DJI Go and Capture interfere because of DJI’s SDK, copying images from the drone is not stable, …).
2.0.6-beta will come in the end of the month, when DJI release the new firmware.
The play store takes a few hours to get up to date, depending on your location etc. You will just receive a normal update.
Everything about DJI is completely closed (protocols, sources, …) so we have no clue about the X5. Since they manufacture everything, I would expect a new camera to be integrated to the SDK in a transparent way, but we will have to see!
Thanks Jonas - I’ll keep an eye on the Play updates. I don’t have Pix4D set to auto-update in case there are issues.
Is there any way to know if or when Pix4D might be able to accommodate the new camera? I have been a Pix4D user for quite a while now, and specifically purchased the new Inspire 1 Pro as a mapping platform. I know I’m an early adopter, but the sooner the two can work together, the better!
As far as Capture is concerned, the first part of the integration must come from DJI, so I cannot answer. I don’t have an X5 myself, so maybe it is already working… Did you try it with Capture?
For the mapper, we already have a model for the 15mm lense made by DJI. Since there are different lenses, we will need to add the new ones. If you have a dataset that you cannot calibrate because the model is not in our database, feel free to contact our support directly (support@pix4d.com)!
I have tried to use Capture with this new Inspire running DJI firmware 1.04. I could not get the craft to take off. Perhaps I was doing something wrong though.
I actually fly her all the way up to my programmed mapping height before I switch to the Capture App and start the mission, 150 ft or whatever I’ve chosen.
Additionally, the Customer Support for Pix4D is awesome. Especially Maria if any of you have had the pleasure of dealing with her.
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