Orbit Mode - On the Fly - Moving Drone while paused
When flying an On the Fly Orbit, the support article mentions that "Use the right stick to change the drone position within the orbit, move the radius in and out, or adjust the speed and direction."
When the orbit is in action, the right stick controls radius and speed. Thats good.
However when the orbit is paused the right stick just flies the drone sideways....
Is there a way to use the right stick to move the drone around the route of the set orbit manually when paused?
Reason to ask is for inspecting cell towers with guy lines...when a complete circle is not possible and the drone is to be slowly, manually moved.
Thanks
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When the mode is paused Dronelink is no longer sending virtual stick commands but rather you, the pilot, are in direct control.
That helps with understanding - so to follow the orbit path I would have to fly it manually by using yaw also.
Is there any way for DroneLink to manually follow the orbit path? Such as the behaviour in DJI Go4 when a POI is paused the sticks move the drone around the path.
Thanks
Jim, I noticed that, when resuming after the pause, the drone is going back to the initial position (I mean the position where we paused).
In the frame of the "on the fly" orbit, I think that the drone should restart from where we move the drone manually. That's my opinion.
I know the drone is behaving as per the specification. I am just challenging the specification.
Really anything is possible with modes as they are programmed in our own custom scripting environment, and if you are comfortable with Javascript you can even make your own. It sounds like you guys just want a new mode for tower inspection that is similar to Orbit but has a bunch of different options. Of course I could also suggest using Scanlink (sales@dronelink.com), but I realize that not everyone is looking for fully automated solutions.
Thanks for your input good to know what is possible.
I fly with a team of pilots doing national cell tower inspections. Currently researching ideas to modernise our fleet (M3E) and processes (Dronelink) before RemoteID D-Day....
Testing so far shows DroneLink can fly orbits with stick control and using the M3E - so that is promising.
Do any of your customers have custom flight modes for cell towers?
Currently we are flying manual orbits with POI mode in DJI Go4 using older drones. Framing and composition are important, with manual stick inputs required. The bulk of the process is antenna orbits at 3 different gimbal angles, down, up and 0º. Sometimes the heading has to be away from the tower (centre-out). Guyed-towers are a special case where only partial orbits are possible between the guy lines. For monopole and other towers we can orbit a full 360º.
I don't do Javascript, but someone in the company might... What is Scanlink? Interesting to know what could be possible in the future. Thanks.
Jim, I like to use Drone Link in On The Fly Orbit for capturing shots for 3D modeling of small structures. I like to shoot at 3 heights and 3 gimbal angles and maybe 3 radii. I use On The Fly as I want to exactly position the drone in the center of the structures and a mission with coords is just not accurate enough for that purpose.
I would love to make one circle and while the drone is in the air make another pass after manually changing the height and radii and angle. I think I am making those options available in the set-up but when I return to the orbit mode, the drone returns to the original "plan." So, I have to stop the current orbit "program" and start over with new settings.
HooRay! I solved my own problem. How? I followed the instructions! =)
So, all the things I wanted to do (alter radius, height, speed, and gimbal angle) work just fine in the On The Fly Orbit mode. For some reason I thought I should pause the orbit and make the changes with the joysticks and then resume. That did not work as the drone orbit just returned to its last "program."
The correct process is to alter the drone flight with the joysticks while it is executing the original orbit. The center of the orbit remains constant ( a positive thing for my purposes) but I was able to change the other flight variables as long as I did not pause the drone.
Dan McKinney
You really need to follow my five minute Friday series :)
I covered that just a couple of weeks ago!
https://youtu.be/1jFcaTKxuA8
Orbit has been updated to have this functionality.
JIm, that does not happen. If you pause the orbit and use the joysticks then on resume the drone will return to where it was when the orbit was paused. The only way I can make changes is to use the joysticks to reposition while the On The Fly Orbit is in progress. It is kinda like while running the orbit, you want to pause and then fly manually somewhere and then back to resume where you were when the orbit was paused.
Maybe it is the app version I am running. How to know what version.
We just changed it with an automatic, over the air update.
So the change is in the app not the drone, right? I'll fly again tomorrow to verify my statement.
My belief is that I cannot alter the On The Fly orbit unless I make the adjustments while the orbit is running. I think you are saying that I can pause the orbit and make changes and then resume???
Please specify the steps I should take to alter On The Fly and resume flight with new settings.
Great news Jim.
I will give a try asap.
Yes, that was the idea of the update. Pause, move wherever you want, resume. You an also still do it during the Orbit.
After the software update, the On The Fly Orbit does indeed work the way that I envisioned.
Once an On The Fly orbit is set up and in execution, I can:
1.) Change the radius, height, speed, and gimbal angle (but drone keeps flying so overlaps might be impacted)
2.) Most valuable to me is that I can pause the orbit after original execution and then change the radius, height, speed, and gimbal angle for a second and third set of images for input to 3D modeling and then resume the orbit. The pause creates a window of time to set everything correctly before resuming the flight.
And landing to reset for 2nd and 3rd flight setting is no longer necessary
Thank you DroneLink!
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