Mulit-Battery Flight: Change Takeoff Location

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

I have a rather large area I am planning to fly which will require the use of at least 5 batteries. Due to the size, I’d like to change the take off location during battery change. Will Pix4DCapture allow this? Since this flight is a rather long corridor, I would like to fly a section, land, change battery, move to a new location, then resume the flight. Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks!

2

Hello,
The Pix4Dcapture allows multi-battery flight mission. For more information, I would recommend you to follow the steps in our support article; Multi-battery / How to operate multi-battery flights.

3

Hi, Yes I am aware of how multi battery missions work and have successfully done several. What is different about this upcoming mission is that when I change batteries, I may also have to change take-off locations. Here’s my workflow:
-Upload large mission
-Take off
-Perform part of a mission
-Low battery
-Pause
-RTH
-Change battery
-RELOCATE TO A DIFFERENT TAKEOFF LOCATION
-power up
-Resume Mission

As I understand it, the drone should return to where the last picture was taken in the mission. Will this happen if I change the takeoff location? Or, does the mission in it’s entirety need to originate from the same take off location?

Thanks!

4

Hello,

In order to guide you the best, can you tell me if you are using the iOS or Android version of Pix4Dcapture?

Best,

5

I’m using iOS version of Pix4DCapture.

Thanks!

6

Hello,

I don’t see anything that would prevent you to fly with the workflow you described above. A new homepoint should be set after you power up the drone back to the location where you moved so it should work. However, We have never tested this workflow so I would advise you testing it before achieving your mission in an appropriate location.

Best,

7

Thanks for the reply. I’ll test the workflow when weather allows and report back.

8

Hi abowne. How did the test go? Any feedback on this important question? Thanks in advance

9

Hello! We are in winter months here so I haven’t had an opportunity to fly my mission(s). As soon as spring arrives I’ll be able to report back.

Thanks!

10

I routinely fly multiple battery flight plans, anticipating the approximate location where my aircraft will need a battery change and walk there to effect the change with no long-distance transits from the initial home point. This is also necessary to keep the drone within VLOS. For large sites, I walk perpendicular to the flightlines near the middle of the pattern, checking battery consumption for each line given wind conditions in order to estimate when to pause the flight and bring the drone to my new position.

There are a few of issues. First, you can’t update the pattern height, so the general battery change location elevations need to be considered when developing the flight plan in order to keep the ground pixel size within specs. Second, if you run the battery down too far, you will need to flip the switch to manual flight to keep the drone from going back to the previous home point to land. Last, I have found that the checklist will attempt to upload the flight plan to the aircraft on Resume after the battery change, but will fail while waiting for the GPS to update, so you will need to cancel and resume to get the checklist item to change from “…not uploaded…” to “…uploading…” Remember that the homepoint is reset to the new takeoff point with each battery change.