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FlightPlan 6 - first reaction

dmbrody

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Tested out the flight plan stuff today on the Anafi. Overall, it’s pretty good. It definitely crushes the mission planner in DJI Go. It’s not as feature complete (or as stable???) as the Litchi app for DJI drones, but it holds its own.

The key “feature” for me is simple. At the very least I want smooth interpolation between way points. Does the drone fly smoothly from point to point, gradually changing altitude, heading, and gimbal tilt along the way? Well, the answer is Yes... Anafi’s mission planner does this well - much better than the DJI Go app (which sucks), and just as well as Litchi for DJI.

The user interface is fine. It’s polished and it makes sense once you figure it out (hint: long press for POIs). I do wish it would let me zoom in on the map a little tighter. Overall, it’s the best UI of all 3.

The mission blocks user interface is a little more difficult to figure out. It’s a bunch of different colored blocks representing each way point, with special actions you can drag into those boxes. For example, there are actions like tilting the gimbal a certain amount, or yawing around in place for a panarama. I spent a lot of trial and error figuring out that:
a) you need to drag those actions onto waypoints (duh), and
b) that those actions take place after the waypoint (for the most part).

Despite liking the app, I still struggled to get it to do a simple shot. I wanted 2 points. First point looking straight down. As it flys to the second point I wanted the gimbal to gradually tilt up until it’s looking straight ahead by the second point. It was easy to set up, but in practice, the angles of the tilt kept getting screwed up. I’m not sure if it’s me or a bug. I think it’s a bug because I seemed to get more consistent (and expected) results if I left the flight planner, flew around in manual for a couple seconds, and then switched back to the flight plan. I also had to set up 2 extra waypoints. One before the start of my shot which would take care of pointing the camera down, and one extra point at the end. I’m not really sure if those were necessary.

The feature I’d most like to see is a button that sets a waypoint with your current heading and gimbal tilt. That way I could create missions by flying to each waypoint myself, framing a subject perfectly, and then clicking the button. Go to the next waypoint, frame that shot and click. Rinse and repeat until satisfied. I have this set up in Litchi (using a programmable button on the controller). It’s the easiest and quickest way to set up high quality cablecam/dolly shots. There is only so much you can do planing ahead of time on a map.
 
I never seen the use of cablecam , if you are going to fly it get your shots and be done with it. All your doing is waisting battery time plus yours. Thats the way Yuneec does it, you go fly it and then run it. Get it over with in one shot and go for a beer. :)
 
I never seen the use of cablecam , if you are going to fly it get your shots and be done with it. All your doing is waisting battery time plus yours. Thats the way Yuneec does it, you go fly it and then run it. Get it over with in one shot and go for a beer. :)
CableCam is just a mission with 2 or 3 waypoints. Sometimes they’re useful. Sometimes not. Either way, building missions (whether 2 points or 25) on site from the air IS faster and gets you better quality than pre-planning on a map unless you get very lucky or know the location (and the best views) very very well.
 
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For understanding the Flight Plan better, I found
Very useful, previously posted by Augustine, it explains in-depth all the little quirks of the Flightplan. I know its for Bebop, but looks the same as what we have with Anafi.
 
CableCam is just a mission with 2 or 3 waypoints. Sometimes they’re useful. Sometimes not. Either way, building missions (whether 2 points or 25) on site from the air IS faster and gets you better quality than pre-planning on a map unless you get very lucky or know the location (and the best views) very very well.

It's pretty stupid to have to use up half or more of a flight battery to set up a CCC mission that may or may not be safely executable because of a reduced power supply. It's even dumber to save a CCC mission that will not be position or altitude accurate when used any time after it's creation.This ia a well documented problem with the Typhoon H. As Parrot and others have well established, it's not necessary to spend $1,800.00 to $4,000.00 obtain waypoint mission planning capability. The ability to construct and execute a flight plan also compliments increased flight safety when accurate maps are employed as the operator can maintain safe separation from objects without having to be standing right next to them.
 
It's pretty stupid to have to use up half or more of a flight battery to set up a CCC mission that may or may not be safely executable because of a reduced power supply. It's even dumber to save a CCC mission that will not be position or altitude accurate when used any time after it's creation.This ia a well documented problem with the Typhoon H. As Parrot and others have well established, it's not necessary to spend $1,800.00 to $4,000.00 obtain waypoint mission planning capability. The ability to construct and execute a flight plan also compliments increased flight safety when accurate maps are employed as the operator can maintain safe separation from objects without having to be standing right next to them.
I’m not really sure why your talking about the Yuneec Typhoon, or what that really has to do with the original post. Lots of drones have had mission planning and been capable of cablecam style shots, for a very very long time. Other drones, since the 3DR Solo had/have dedicated cablecam features. So someone seems to think there is a use for it. I can’t believe you can’t imagine a scenario where it could be useful. If you are really asking, I’ll give you some examples, but really?
 
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The only one that really worked it the 3DR Solo, just saying adding cablecam to the Anafi is not the best option we should be going after. There are a lot of better options to get them to work on.
 
The only one that really worked it the 3DR Solo, just saying adding cablecam to the Anafi is not the best option we should be going after. There are a lot of better options to get them to work on.
Ah. I got you. Don’t think of it as cablecam. Think of it as the ability to one click a button to record a waypoint at your current position, heading, altitude and gimbal tilt. You can build complex missions with scores of waypoints that way... and nail it the first time, which is both fun and incredibly useful. But yeah, it can be used for simple cablecams too.

Also, yes, there never has been a cablecam as good as the Solo’s multipoint cable (with its logarithmic easing between points). I’ve duplicated a lot of the Solo’s simple functionality by using one of the programmable buttons using Litchi on a variety of DJI drones, but it’s just not the same. The transitions are noticeably linear.
 
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Something like that I can see the third party group setting something up like that but from what they have said Parrot never released anything to them this time around. I'm guessing they are waiting for some kind of SDK to start working on third party Apps.
 
FYI, gimbal tilts angles are relative to current gimbal tilt position, NOT absolute. Took me a while to figure that out.
 
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FYI, gimbal tilts angles are relative to current gimbal tilt position, NOT relative. Took me a while to figure that out.
I was starting to suspect that. When I get another chance to test, I’ll keep that in mind and see if I get more consistent behavior.
 
Thank you for the full feature review , it's nice to hear from someone who can compare the apps to each others. Did you get this bug that when you drag actions eg camera-mode, it wil open up navbar?
 
Thank you for the full feature review , it's nice to hear from someone who can compare the apps to each others. Did you get this bug that when you drag actions eg camera-mode, it wil open up navbar?
No. I did not get that bug. I do see an issue when i click on a block in my plan. The dialog boxes that appear to change settings often get cut off or blocked by the keyboard, but not so much that you can’t change what you want to change.
 
I just bought FlightPlan6 and I see major differences with previous version :
When you zoom in a house in the map, you are limited to a small zoom factor that can not allow you to plan a roof inspection or avoid a tree (contrary to the previous version where there seem to feature a higher zoom, a 3D view...)
Maybe I missed something in FlightPlan6 (but a quick look at the end section of the only Anafi user guide available seems to confirm missing items)...
 
I just bought FlightPlan6 and I see major differences with previous version :
When you zoom in a house in the map, you are limited to a small zoom factor that can not allow you to plan a roof inspection or avoid a tree (contrary to the previous version where there seem to feature a higher zoom, a 3D view...)
Maybe I missed something in FlightPlan6 (but a quick look at the end section of the only Anafi user guide available seems to confirm missing items)...
I’m not planning any roof inspections, but I have the same frustration with the level of zoom, especially when combined with the huge waypoint icons. I tried on iPad, but there is no iPad version of the app (yet) so that didn’t really help.

I’m guessing that parrot will either improve freeflight 6, or add Anafi to their flight planner pro (which I’ve never used, but assume is more robust).

The tutorial video linked to in this thread and elsewhere is good, but not really that helpful because it’s shot by a guy who is essentially learning about mission planning for the first time ever. The lack of a more in depth manual or instructional video is mildly frustrating, but it’s early days. Let see where it goes. I’m optimistic.
 
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Thanks for the info.
I fly with an iPad Mini and have the exact same feeling about the size of the Waypoint icons. That’s 1/3rd of the size of the roof I need to inspect (does not help with precision !!).
I didn’t know Parrot had a flight planner Pro. I only wished the FlightPlan6 version would be at least as convenient as the previous version we see on the tutorial video with the bebop !

... let’s see what they propose in the future ...
 
FlightPlan 6 is completely doing my head in. I just can't get it to record or capture anything. The flight paths are perfect, but for the first few flights the video cuts off after 20 seconds; or in picture mode it takes 5 or 6 photos and then packs in. The last few flights, I can't get anything recorded or captured (video or stills). The micro SD card is fine (as it records perfectly in manual mode), just not in FlightPlan mode. Any ideas on how to fix?
 
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FlightPlan 6 is completely doing my head in. I just can't get it to record or capture anything. The flight paths are perfect, but for the first few flights the video cuts off after 20 seconds; or in picture mode it takes 5 or 6 photos and then packs in. The last few flights, I can't get anything recorded or captured (video or stills). The micro SD card is fine (as it records perfectly in manual mode), just not in FlightPlan mode. Any ideas on how to fix?

Can't remember if you are on the Android App or the iOS App? Might be something to do with one or the other operating system. With iOS being kind of new to getting people using it for flight plan it might start to show some problems that never showed up in the android App.
 
I think the edit screen is way too cluttered on iOS. It is essentially the active screen for flight rather than a specific edit screen so on a phone, editing is a complete pain.
 
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How about a "flightplan" for taking the shots necessary for a spherical panorama ... since Parrot says they're not planning on a spherical panorama function ... which is too bad since the Anafi is one of the few drones where you can pan straight up ??
 
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