Photos are skewed during image acquisition causing gaps in data collection!

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

When flying missions with Pix4D, all of my photos appear to be skewed or angled to the path the drone is traveling.  When flying nadir this likely isn’t an issue, but when flying with an angled camera, it appears I’m missing a lot of data.  I would have thought the camera would always be facing forward, but this is never the case.

I am flying an Inspire 2 for regular photography and an Inspire 1 for thermal.  (Same issue for both).  All programs and firmware are up to date.  

 

Please advise as this is costing me a lot of time and money generating useless projects.

2

Hi Sean,

Can you precise me:

  • What version of Pix4Dcapture are you using? Android or iOS?
  • What camera are you using with your DJI Inspire 2?

If my understanding is correct when flying, the camera got an undesired Yaw angle, knowing that in a normal process, you can select a tilted angle for the Pitch axis. This unexpected behavior is impacting the results of your missions.

I would have several questions more:

  • Is my understanding of the issue correct?
  • Is the behavior described happening all the time or it is random? Is the undesired angle of the camera always the same?
  • Do you have maybe pictures, screenshots that would be relevant to understand/visualize the issue?

Do you have the chance to try another mobile device or use the other version of Pix4Dcapture? (Android, iOS).

Best,

3

Hello,

  • Version appears to be 3.3.0 (27)

  • Using an X5S with different lenses.  Also seems to happen with Zenmuse XT on my Inspire 1.

 

  • Your understanding is correct.  The camera is pitching to the desired angle, and then instead of facing in the direction of flight it is yawing to some unspecified angle.  My colleague initially thought it had something to do with North, but I don’t believe that to be the case.

  • It does appear to happen all of the time since I have been using the iPad mini.  

  • I don’t have any relevant images I can provide but can try to get some.

 

To your final point, I have since purchased an Android device and will be trying it with that at a job site tomorrow.  I’m hoping this will solve the problem.  I also I have a full sized iPad that I don’t believe had this same issue, but I could be remembering wrong.  I will report back after I confirm that the new tablet works or doesn’t work as expected.  

4

Just completed my test and the capture seemed to work as expected with the Android device.  For some reason I had an issue getting Pix4D Capture to recognize the drone was connected, but once it did recognize, the image capture happened as it should.  The iPad mini, when tested again, takes the images almost directly behind the flight path with a slight yaw.  

5

Hi Sean,

Thank you for the additional tests and explanations.
This issue you are experiencing has already been encountered by other users and was reported in this post.
From previous logs investigation, it seems that the issue originates from DJI SDK or drone firmware. However, it is interesting to notice that the issue does not occur on Android.
Would it be possible for you to send the logs of the flight you did having this yaw angle on iOS? For an efficient investigation, it is important to notify the date and the hour of the flight, and the mission name if possible.

Best,