Hi,
I am using the Pix4DCapture app with my Phantom 3 Advanced drone. I flew a grid mission and the flight plan (and flight settings) show that 37 images were acquired. During the flight it appeared that 37 images were taken. However, during synchronization, only eight images were successfully copied to my device (and found on the drone’s SD card). The images cover almost all of the mission area, however, there was little to no overlap between images, rendering them useless for modeling purposes. Is there a setting/function I can use to ensure the entire set of imagery is acquired, and is able to be synchronized to my device?
Thank you,
Ryan
The app is great. Surely there are improvements such as variety of polygons or even a circle. An idea is to draw a large (e.g 5 square km) area and then have the Pix4D divide that area into flyable missions so you don’t spend time adding different missions within a project (It can be time consuming and not accurate enough when you deal with large areas).
The only big drawback is that the app is unpredictable. It’s a hit or miss if you gonna end up with all the images or not. I get the correct images 1 out of 4 times. Not sure if i am doing something wrong. Anyone else has such issues?
Dear all,
Thank you for using our app and for the interest in our products!
@ Ryan, Panayiotis: Which version of the app are you using and which operating system, Android or iOS? Are the latest firmware of the drone’s installed? Which camera was used?
There are different triggering modes for the grid mission. In Android the action to shoot a picture is based on a time lapse. In this case the app requires to be connected to the drone time to time to get feedback about its position. In iOS there is the Safe and the Fast mode. In the Safe mode the waypoints where the images are taken are uploaded to the drone before starting the mission. The drone will stop to take the picture, increasing the flight time. This means the drone can fly the mission without requiring connection with the app. In the Fast mode the app sends a signal when to shoot. This mode does not make the drone stop but the connection with the drone should be maintained without interruption.
Depending on the picture triggering mode, if connection with the app is required, it might happen that images are missing in the end of the flight. However, this should be an one-time problem meaning that we do not expect this to happen for every mission. Sometimes the images are captured but the camera icon on the flight track does not show up. Therefore, we always recommend checking whether the images are saved in the SD card of the drone.
@ Panayiotis, We understand that the ability to perform polygonal flights is a very important feature, therefore it is one of our top priorities for future versions of Pix4Dcapture.
Regards,
Thanks for the input. I personally use the Android version 5.1. I encountered a similar issue in litchi app. Not sure if this method is the only one to capture pictures on the android platform but is very unreliable so far. It would be nice to upload the triggering of the camera along with the flight plan (same in iOS) if i understand correctly to make it more reliable. Not sure if the android SDK from DJIis the limiting factor though here.
Also it would be nice to integrate camera options within the PIX4D. I think it’s something that is missing. It saves time to be able to access these settings from your app.
Last but not least it’s it would be very efficient for the user to choose the flight plan starting position. The only way to do this is by rotating the surface area but the starting position of the mission can’t be customized further.
Again thanks for the input keep up the great work.