Pix4Dcapture - Large site/Multiple flight Missions?

I have been checking out the drone deploy site and they claim their app has the ability to resume a mission and re fly to pick up missing images, Additionally, they claim to be able to fly large site/multiple mission plans to achieve larger sites than the battery will accommodate. Will this type of functionality be addressed in Pix4d Capture?

Good question.

Hi,

It is a feature that we are thinking to add, to be able to resume a mission, this could allow you to perform larger missions or to resume a mission if the battery drained out too quickly.

Currently, what you have to do to perform larger mission is to perform multiple flights with an overlapping area between the flights. Then you have to merge the projects:
https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/202558529

 
Regarding the longer battery autonomy, with the Android version (and soon with the iOS version) there is not limitation in the grid size. However, the grid will change color indicating that the mission might not be fully completed, for example if we estimate that the battery of the drone is not sufficient but it does not prevent you to launch the mission. If the battery is not sufficient for the whole mission it will abort the mission automatically.

More information about the grid size on Android:
https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/203873435#label6

Note that if the grid is not green you have to be prepared that the mission might be aborted, because of connectivity loss or insufficient battery.

Regards,

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I certainly don’t understand why you would allow for a larger grid than the battery can accommodate, until the capture app is capable of resuming and finishing the mission after a battery swap. It is extremely annoying to fly a mission and have the capture app abort the mission, due to the battery being low, and not provide useable results from the mission. As far as merging, that doesn’t appear to work very well either. Last mission I flew with 90 degree flight lines refuses to merge, claiming they are different parameters. Pix4d Mapper will process them as one large mass of images, but lose the ability to use the geo tags from the .p4d files. Flying in one direction, produces results that are missing too much data, and has too many artifacts.

Capture app at the default altitude of 50 meters, results in about 6 acres of topo on one battery. I am trying to fly much lower when possible to achieve better vertical results & much larger sites. since merge has issues, the capture app needs to allow for lowering altitude, increasing grid, flying the mission on 10 batteries if that’s what is required to complete the mission, then creating a single .p4d file or combining a number of them into one, that works with pix4d mapper desktop.

Hi Richard,
Our app does not limit the size of the grid and if the grid is red or yellow you can decrease the size until it is green if you want to ensure that the drone will be able to finish the mission.

As mentioned previously we would like to have the feature of using multiple batteries to cover a larger area but at the moment we are working mostly on integrating the Phantom 3 and the Inspire 1 in our app.

Note that the new version of the iOS app has been released and it is possible to decrease the altitude to 30 meters of the grid mission.

Regarding the merging, in order to use the geolocation written by the app you have to merge the p4d project files that were created by the app since the information about the geolocation is written in the p4d project files.

You can find here general information about merging large projects in Pix4Dmapper:
https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/202558579

Regards,

I am with you there. Get the P3 and Inspire 1 integrated but then multi battery support would be a great feature to have!

It’s not a great feature, but a completely necessary feature! 

Seems like this post has not been update in over a yer, but I too would like to see multiple batteries for the Inspire 1.

Hi Larry,

We have implemented on Android a kind of Resume option that allows to change the battery and finish the mission.
Please find more information here: https://support.pix4d.com/hc/en-us/articles/211826243

Note this feature will be available on iOS later. Our developers also have in their pipeline to implement a more automatic feature to resume large flights that require several batteries.

Regards,

Large project is holding my drone capabilities…by far…certaily flying in remote areas seems to be a hassle (would be nice to simply upload in your device the flight plan and be able to make adjustments in the field without having to worry about wifi or cell coverage)…

 

Hi Ricardo,

I have reported the suggestion about importing the flight plan to our Product Team who will consider it for future development of the app.

Note that it is not needed to have internet connection (mobile data or Wi-Fi) to perform missions. Only the geolocation signal of the mobile device is used to geolocalized the mission and the home point with respect to the drone’s GPS.

If some parts are missing on the background, it is possible on Android to select an alternative provider than Mapbox (default) for the satellite and street base map. To do so in the Home screen, tap Settings. In the Settings menu, go to the section Maps and tap to select from the drop-down list another provider (e.g. Esri). It is also possible to add a provider like Google Maps for instance, if you have a corresponding valid license.

Currently on iOS there is unfortunately no workaround and it is not possible to change the base map provider. However, it is in our pipeline to update the background by allowing the user to select other providers like on Android.

As a general comment, switching from the satellite to the street base map might help since it is sometimes more up to date.

Regards,

Hello,

 

I have used the “Abort” option with a solo several times, but it seems I get an issue when trying to recover the p4d file. Is it strictly needed to tap on the start, once aborted, to let Pix4d Capture building the p4d file? sometimes it doesn´t generate any, making the flight unusable.

Hi Mario,

We are aware of some one-time issues with the Solo: no .p4d file created after synchronizing, video feed no working, resume flight not working… The app can be unstable time to time depending on the mission but our developers will release a new Android version around end of January (rough estimation) and we expect these problems to be fixed.

Meanwhile, we apologize of the inconvenience.

Regards,

Has there been any progress made toward having the ability to resume the flight?  Also, is there a way to use existing terrain data to create a flight plan that would use that data to have a consistent height (AGL) over changing terrain?

When do you expect the Abort / Resume function for battery replacement to be available for iOS? Any roundabout date?

Hi, 

We are already considering to implement Multi-Baterry missions on iOS. As a rough estimation it could be ready by the end of summer. 

To get the latest updates you can follow Technical Release Notes. 

@Chris, we have forwarded your feature request to the project manager in order to evaluate it and possibly include it in future versions. 

Regards,

Site Scan just announced a collaboration with Pix4D (July 17, 2017). Should we interpret this as Pix4D having enabled “Mission Resume” for multi-battery missions? For the record, we’re going on 2 years of talking about it.

Site Scan (July 17, 2017): “Today, we’re excited to introduce one of the biggest improvements to Site Scan yet: we’ve integrated Site Scan with Pix4D, a leading photogrammetry processing engine, to help you create more accurate and detailed data products than ever before.”

Paul,

To clarify the situation, the post you are mentioning does not affect the implementation of the multi battery mission in Pix4Dcapture, our flight planning mobile app. It talks about the integration of the Pix4D desktop software with Site Scan to process the captured images and generate maps / models.

The resume option (multi-battery flight) on iOS is indeed, a hot request. Software development is subjected to many changes and depends on many external factors that make the planning and release process complex. Also there is always a trade-off between integrating new drones, implementing new features (flight, settings, mission management…), improving the current interface, and solving bugs.

I can however, assure you that the developers are currently working on this :).

UPDATE

Multi-battery flights are not implemented on iOS, and there is no resume option like on Android. Our developers have this as a top priority in their pipeline but other features are also currently being developed at the same time besides SDK upgrade and new drone support. As a rough estimation, the multi-battery flight could be available before mid-December.

Julie 

They are working on it … so there must be a schedule … so what is the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) ?

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