Parrot ANAFI Pix4DCapture update requests

PIX4Dcapture
1

Dear All

Today I tested a Parrot ANAFI with Pix4D & discovered some really trouble issues, even it flies very straight when in the pattern line

  1. I didn’t see any life video feed, it was only black

  2. Disconnects when drone is not in visual sight, I suppose this is a transmitter issue

  3. Very slow turns at the end of a grid. The drone flies very good along the pattern line with about 6ms/sec, but when it reaches the end, it stops down rellay hard but try to find the GPS position of the waypoint, and that takes something about 5-10 sec wich means a lot of inefficent power consumption. In my opinion it would be better to have something like adaptive bending instead of stop & turn waypoints. This would improve a lot the efficiency.

  4. No camera settings availabe: it is not possible to change camera settings in Pix4D, I think this is crucial to be able to set DNG, JPG or other parameters.Becouse Parrot took JPG wich looks very washed out and not sharp enough

  5. No security settings: I got out of battery flight time, unfortunately Pix4D does not have any setting where you can change the RTH to functions. So I got a emergency landing 50m far away from me. In my opinion if we can set up some parameters in Pix4D, this would be very good.

  6. On first flight drone stopped to shoot pictures after 20 fotos taken. It looks like the intervalometer failed, or Pix4D couldn’t achieve a signal to the drone. But I thought that the drone will do the mission and continue to take fotos even if there would be a connection lost.

2

Hi Igor,

Thank you for all the feedback done about using the Parrot Anafi with Pix4Dcapture.
Can I ask you if you are using the Android or iOS version of Pix4Dcapture?

  1. You normally should be able to get the video feed with the Anafi. In case of unexpected behavior, you can follow the steps of our basic checks and troubleshooting article.

  2. The connection with the drone should be stable and effective during the flight. Depending on the environment where the drone is flown, Interferences may also occur.

  3. I will share this remark with the developer’s team.

  4. I will also share this feedback with the developer’s team.

  5. Pix4Dcapture is a third-party application. It means that it cannot override the fail-safe behavior of the drone. The security settings when flying with the Anafi can be set in FreeFlight 6.

  6. In most of the cases, going through the basic checks and troubleshooting article when unexpected behavior occurs will solve the issue.

Best,

3

Hi Gael!

I have similar troubles with my ANAFI and Pix4DCapture (Android OS) with HUAWEI 20 Lite and HUAWEI 20 as described by Igor. During several flights the app stopped to show that drone take pictures nevertheless that mission continue. After finishing of the flight I can see that furtunatlly all pictures are saved on SD-card of the drone. In result the app did not register all really taken images in the project and when upload the project to the cloud the processing not use all taken images! It is strange that when Pix4DCapture syncing images from the drone sometime the counter shows more images that are registered in the project and confusion is full!!! Please, see screenshot below - it shows more than my many words!

 

In my opinion there is some problem in the app with synchronization of the shooter of the drone camera, because all other data from telemetry were correct during the continuing flights and the connection was stable whole time. But finally the project is not complete (according Pix4DCapture) and results from processing in the cloud are not useful. Ofcourse, I downloaded manually images from the drone and uploaded manually in the cloud and receive results, but it is not expected behavior from stable app for flight planning and control!!!

4

Another serious problem of Pix4DCapture is that it shows the time of flight EXCEPT necessary time to take off from ground to the  elevation of the flight AGL, to go from point of take off to start position on first line of flight plan and go back from END point to the landing position (Home) and land on the ground. The app have all necessary data to calculate correclty the whole time for performing a flight - position of the drone on the HOME, waypoints, height AGL, speed, etc. I am strongly recomend to improve the calculation of the time of flight to allow user to plane in more accurate and efficient way the flights!!! It will be useful to ensure safety flights and more effective use of the batteries.

5

I strongly suggest also to improve the provided telemetry data by Pix4DCapture with useful information of the flight and taken images. For example it will be usefull during the flight to see data for time from the take off (or remaining time to the finish of the flight), number of taken images and total number of planned to take images, total number of lines from the flight plan and number of current line). All these data will be useful for operator to control more accurately the mission and make decisions during the flight.

6

Next trouble, which I discovered several times without any clear reason is shown on the following screenshot:

It is clear that is not possible to take images in one mission on two positions on the oposite coasts of the Black Sea!?! But regarding Pix4DCapture I succeeded! Fortunatelly this mistake does not affect on the results of the mission. But it is not seroius for professional app for plan and control of flights!!!

7

Hello Ivan,

Thank you for all the feedback provided about the use of Pix4Dcapture with the Parrot Anafi. As you did post the same on this thread, for the sake of clarity, I will answer you there.

Best,