"Insert Waypoint" Action Has Consistency Problem
I am on an assignment where I have to build scores (maybe hundreds?) of Waypoint Plans. Each Plan may have up to 200 to 250 Waypoints. The Problem is that when I use the Insert Waypoint action on Waypoint "N", Waypoint "N+1" is created but with different settings from the previous Waypoints. Specifically the New Waypoint gets an Interpolation assigned to it (Linear) that I do not want an is different than the previous "N" Waypoints. In addition the Previous "N" Waypoints have Camera Action "Photo" assigned, but the N+1 Waypoint does not remember this and does not copy that over. After setting up 200 or so Waypoints in a single plan, I then have to go back through all 200 Waypoints and corrrect them manually one by one. This is extremely frustrating SINCE all other settings are copied over from the previous Waypoint. Altitude copies over to the N+1 Waypoint as expected. Speed Copies over, Heading Copies Over, Gimbal Pitch copies over. Literally everything else consistently copies over. Not it seems like an oversight and an inconsistency that Interpolation and Camera Action are the only 2 that do not copy over from the Insert Waypoint function. This surely is an inconsistency and a oversight. If this is not, please explain why this deliberately designed this way and what benefit it adds to force a mission planner to have to individually go back and update hindreds of waypoints manually for 2 of the parameters in all the waypoints. If this can possibly be corrected can I get some idea when? I really do not want to switch to a different mission planner since I have built my business and workflow around Dronelink and have even recently upgraded professional plans and am paying double now.
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I’m not sure I understand what is going on here. When I add a waypoint at the end, nothing copies over. Not saying that is what you want either, but at least it is consistent.
Like I said in the other thread, if you could describe the high level mission goal, maybe I can make some better suggestions, for example, using path actions instead.
Hi Jim. I am pleased you are engaged on this one. Here is the use case. I need to take a photo over a large number of irregularly spaced / irregularly positioned buildings. There may be hundreds of these buildings in a mission. I have this fancy new Enterprise drone now with a fast mechanical shutter that can take a picture up to every 0.7 seconds (so I don't want "Photo" components that stops and wastes 4 seconds over each building before moving on the the next one). I need a fast, efficient flying solution that screams for flying Waypoints! The problem is when I add or insert a next Waypoint, most of the settings come over (like Altitude, Speed, Gimbal Pitch, Heading, etc.) but Camera Action does not come over. This is a big deal since there are hundreds of Waypoint in a mission and I have to build hundreds of missions. And there is no mass update function for this so I have to go back to each individual waypoint and make a manual update. Second issue is when I insert or add a new Waypoint, an unexpected Interpolation gets assigned contrary to all previous Waypoints. Its like DL assumes what I want is a Linear Interpolation on the new Waypoint, which I absolutely do not want. I want the next Waypoint to carry over the settings for the last 200 I created. Below below is an example of the missing Camera Action and the assignment of the Linear Interpolation unexpectedly. I created Waypoint D with these inconsistent settings differing from previous Waypoints A, B and C till then. Zoom out to see the scope of what would eventually need to be updated manually and individually. Imagine my effort to update this inconsistency on the sum of all Waypoints. And multiply this by all the missions I need to build. Can the Camera Action and Interpolation behavior be made consistent with all the other settings that carry over to new Waypoints?
The Plan is shared here: https://app.dronelink.com/daniel-snyder-rctunesv0hub0224z9yz/paypixl-naples/plan/splKOD00GQ1fx6JZBh6w/Oeh9H4IbL3G9GrhzNWw7
Can we just ditch all the waypoints (or only add as many as you need to get the motion that you want) and use path actions instead for the photos? https://app.dronelink.com/dronelink/support/plan/aKqT4vLefwdANmD1jK8m/UCWUbzLeHmAlt38y0VDU
Jim,
Waypoints are a completely different animal than Path Actions. Or a chess analogy. The Waypoint can be dragged or moved in any direction - like a Queen. The Path Action is a mere Pawn by comparison - a one dimensional movement along a pre-existing "path". So no, Path Actions cannot replace the tremendous functionality of Waypoints that can easily be paced anywhere needed.
Also the Waypoint has a handy little "+" button that is an absolute gem of a timesaver.
Please can we get this made consistent instead?
The idea of my proposed workflow is you lay out your path with as few waypoints as you need to get the path you want, and then you go back and right click and add path actions anywhere you want.
As for the inconsistency, I am still not quite sure I understand. When I tried it, no settings came over, which seems to be consistent, but not what you want.
To be clear, the only thing the path actions are responsible for is the photos.
Also, moved this to feature requests. We are happy to consider anything, but as always, the prioritization is weighed against everything else, and it may take a while, or never happen depending on the result of our prioritization.
Thanks for the suggestion, however doing both a Waypoint for each of the 300 buildings - AND - a Path Action would double (or more) my workload. Did you try out my shared plan - adding a Waypoint to see what does duplicate and what doesn't? If it doesn't work for you but behaves differently for me is another inconsistency then. Its concerning you say nothing comes over in a new Waypoint, but other folks experience something different. Are you on a different code base than the rest of us? Note - I still have no practical work around for my issue. Maybe I should use Litchi or Drone Deploy and export / import KML files or something? Its getting complicated now. Any other help or urgency (even empathy?) would be appreciated. Thanks.
I tried your plan and my plan, and the behavior is the same, nothing comes over. I think maybe the misunderstanding is that the speed and the altitude are shown (for convenience), but these values aren't actually "on" that waypoint, at least not until you click the edit pencil, at which point it actually adds them to the object (at the code level). The values that are shown to start with are just indicating what the speed and altitude will be if you don't customize it since it just automatically uses whatever the nearest previous waypoint has set, whichever waypoint that might be. You can prove this to yourself by going back and changing the value on that previous waypoint, and then clicking the new waypoint again to see that the value has changed.
It sounds like what you really want is just a duplicate button on the last waypoint, similar to what the path action editor allows.
The hope behind my suggestion was that you could use far fewer waypoints than path actions, but if the buildings really are that irregularly placed, or your location over the buildings has to be that exact, then obviously that won't work for you.
If you do have some sort of file that has all the locations, and there are hundreds of them, it is going to be painful even if we add a duplicate last waypoint button. For hard core situations like this, being a developer, I would lean towards scripting something to parse the input file and automatically generate the flight plan. If that is a service you a interested in paying for, we may have a few resources that might be willing to do it for you.
Thanks Jim. To satisfy the need of managing missions with a very large number of Waypoints, updating each one manually is not a practical option. It would be sufficient to add a "Select Range" and/or "Select All" waypoint option as shown, Then allow the "Camera Action" to be one of the choices to override the implicit and assigned values on the selected Waypoints. This would help immensely on planning large jobs. See screen shot;
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