Orbit Photo Mission --- I'm On The Struggle Bus With This Mission...
Good Afternoon Dronelink Community,
I am having a lot of difficulty with this mission (or any I create like it). The mission is to fly to a destination and fly an orbit with the drone heading 270 degrees to the path and taking a photo once every 5 seconds. The speed of the orbit is 2mph.
The trouble I am experiencing is the Dronelink App will become unresponsive at some point during the mission. The only way to get the app to close is to do a 'Force Quit'. So far with every instance of this happening the drone has come home and landed. I did a screen record of my most recent mission to demonstrate this The link is below...
Share for mission plan below:...
This is a long video (5 min) I didn't chop it up because I wanted the entire mission available just for clarity. Would anyone have any insight or suggestions on how to correct this?
I'm flying the mission with:
Drone = DJI Mavic Air 2
RC = DJI RC-N1
Display = TrippleTek 8 Pro Tablet (Android 10 or 11)
Comments
14 comments
Can you try using a more modern mobile device?
I vouch for what Jim said. I also was using the Tripltek up until a month ago. I picked up a iPad mini and it has been GREAT when flying with my M2P and using the Dronelink modern UI.
Alternatively, you could fly it using the classic UI, and make the mission smaller. But honestly, although I love the display on the Tripltek, the CPU is radically underpowered for automation apps.
I can echo Tony Simek in this regard. I was flying happily with an android tablet for 2 years when it became unusable. I got an ipad mini (Gen 6) and the change was amazing. While I was flying successfully with the Samsung tablet, I didn't realize how big a difference the ipad would make.
While I'm sure there are android tablets out there in the 8 in form factor that would do the job, I had a really hard time trying to determine which ones to try. I'm definitely not an Apple fan, but for this specific purpose I have to admit it does the job extremely well. I always had a hard time with the Samsung in bright light but not so with the ipad.
I got the ipad mini as a refurb from Best buy for a very reasonable price and I expect it to last quite a while.
Goodevening Dronelink Community, Thank you everyone for the responses. Yes, I could purchase another mobile device however spending hundreds of dollars for another device, because of an app crash, isn't the solution in my opinion. I gave up using Apple IOS devices a long time ago because the displays are horrible. The tablets are way too dim in sunlight and the iPhone dims way too much in sunlight, and when it gets too hot and shuts off. I've had far too many missions ruined by IOS device problems. The TrippleTek 8 Pro tablet is military spec, the display is bright at 1200 NITS compared to other mobile devices that are 800 NITS, and the target audience is drone pilots. The TrippleTek 8 pro, when combined with the DJI RCN1, will support OC2, OC3, and OC3+ depending on which drone you connect. Additionally when combined with the DJI RCN1 the video transmission latency is roughly 120ms to 130 ms at 5.5 meg. This transmission rate is very capable of supporting a 1080P video stream. Lastly the battery life in the TrippleTek 8 Pro is huge. It will run twice as long as the battery in the DJI RCN1.
There are other 3rd party apps out there that are using the DJI SDK also that don't have this issue with a photo mission. That's why I posted the question. I very much enjoy the Dronelink app and the user interface is fantastic. It's my go-to app for mission planning and execution. I just don't like having to land kill an app then switch to another app and continue. The lesson learned here is that this is apparently a boundary I need to keep in mind.
Kgaudineer
From what I know about the TrippleTek, it should be powerful enough to run DL without issues. I also agree with you about the screen brightness on Apple devices. I do use an iPad mini when using DL and it can be pretty hard to see what is going on at times. Like you, I have also had them shut down when they get too hot...and too cold.
I have something that might solve it for you though - certainly worth a try.
I have two CrystalSky monitors that both behave very similarly to the problem you are having when I am using the DJI Go4 app (I don't use DL on them because they are not powerful enough). The way to solve it is to turn off location services in the Android device. As soon as I do that it runs fine.
You don't need location services unless you are doing things like follow me or want to have a dynamic home point.
Give that a try and let me know if it solves it for you.
Good luck!
Most other apps don’t have as much functionality and power as Dronelink, so it isn’t really a fair comparison. Having said that, most other apps also have a UI more similar to the classic dashboard and/or upload waypoints, both of which Dronelink supports so you might try those options (granted, your drone doesn’t support uploading but you can switch to classic).
Been down my local park this afternoon, and flew this using my LG V50 (Android 11) without any problems, curious about 1 thing, why the 175 feet RTH command, when the mission is flown at 200 feet, no need for it as the drone will RTH at the 200 feet of the mission
I am going to fly this mission today with both my Tripltek and my ipad mini. I expect both would work for this just fine.
The Tripltek is underpowered. Yes, the rest of the specs are great, but the CPU is next to ancient and lowest cost.
Martin Reading nice catch with the RTH altitude.... There isn't any reason for this other than pure laziness on my part. I first ran into trouble with this mission on location which was 175ft but didn't want to troubleshoot the issue there. So I came home and made like 5 copies of that mission to fly it around here where I am more comfortable troubleshooting. I would make slight changes to each plan to see if one change would have an impact vs another change. I appreciate you running the mission as I am still curious why this one mission is giving me so much trouble. For example, I can plan and run a mapping mission without trouble, and I don't see much of a difference between that and this orbit other than the obvious flight path and angle of the camera. I still can't help but feel like I am missing something simple....
Barry Houldsworth Good suggestion. The weather here has turned against me (Change of seasons) so I might not get a chance to try this until Sunday. I will run the mission with those services disabled and see what happens.
Jim McAndrew Good suggestion. Same situation though.... The weather has turned against me, at least for the next couple of days. I will try that on Sunday as well.
Ok, my weather was bad today too, but now I have clouds and sunshine. Here is what I did....
I copied your mission and ran this: https://app.dronelink.com/southwestern-aerial-studios/tsimek-public/plan/Sy5T8Mf0ForPULEdUsYc
Your mission exactly, just over my area obviously. I flew it with my Mavic 2 Pro, and used first my iPad Mini gen 6 as the controller. It was smooth, and ran great. Captured 64 pictures as it orbited.
Then flew it with my Tripltek 8, same drone, same plan. It ran fine, but UI felt choppy and lagged like the early days of Netflix. : ). Still got the exact same 64 pictures captured. I turned off grid, reticle, position info etc as you will see in the screenshare. Oh yeah, that is another thing, for both the ipad and the Tripltek, I had screen recording turned on. SO... my guess is that the Tripltek would do better if not for the extra workload of the screen capture taking place.
In either event, I would say that for the simple type of mission you provided, I 100% am satisfied that both devices work with Dronelink just fine.
Pictures from each drone here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bQe1-20qNve9UvGGWPOCrw8e_XEvM89m?usp=share_link
I also put the screen share video in this folder as well. The video has the ipad first, then the Tripltek.
Also viewable here: https://youtu.be/rN6T4bmUhKo
So if your DL install on your Tripltek 8 is not working, I wonder what else may be going on for you? Slow SD card on the drone not creating the file fast enough? bad cable? I dunno. But something is up for you.
Good afternoon Dronelink community,
This is an update to my previous video. I used Jim McAndrew suggestion and switched to 'Classic Mode' in Dronelink and the mission ran just fine. The first time I tried to run the mission I did receive an error telling me that the signal was weak which I didn't understand because I was 6 feet behind the drone. I'm not sure if the weak signal was because it was trying to access my home network inside the house or what but after restarting the Dronelink the mission ran fine. I screen captured the mission here https://youtu.be/uFHJh5z0xUM
Tony Simek Nice video reminds me of my parent's place in Chandler AZ. I agree there is a ghost in my setup somewhere. I hadn't thought about a rouge SD card. I'm using a SanDisk Extreme V30 A2 U3 which I think should have a write speed of 90m a second. I could have a bad card. I will swap that out with a new one and try again and see what happens.
Very cool! Yes, I am in Arizona and very familiar with Chandler.
I do intend to fly that quick mission one more time in the new UI but this time won't have the screen recording running. If Tripltek would bump the CPU I would probably buy another from them, but they need to go all out next time on computing power. : )
Sometimes even formatting the card with the SD association formatter can make them perform better in my limited experience. I also don't try to run them forever. I buy smallish ones and then provide to the client as a final backup. Keeps my storage costs low. : )
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