Some feedback/questions from a user and a response from Eric

Eric Goldstein
Here's a post from Larry and my response below it:
 

Good morning Eric,

Here are my thoughts as a new user of dronelink.

I have watched nearly all of the videos (there are a ton of them) and learned a lot from them but on the most basic level, there were things that as a new user were not clear to me so I will share those thoughts.

First and possibly foremost was that it was not clear that dronelink could replace DJI Fly (I'm a Mavic Mini user) as the controller to manually fly the drone.  I knew it could fly missions on its own, but didn't consider it to be a replacement for DJI Fly. 

As it turns out, dronelink does not fully support all of the DJI functions, so it is important for new users to know that the return to home altitude and possibly other settings should be set in the DJI Fly app first.  This really needs to be stressed since from what I can tell, Return to Home is one of the most frequently asked questions on Facebook.  Programming a pre-flight setup in the repository to include in each mission should be encouraged.

By default, DJI Fly logs your flight and the log files are available on you smartphone or tablet.  I have not been able to find them for dronelink.  I have figured out that they can be linked to Airdata, but due to the encryption change made by DJI, Airdata is not yet able to process them but they are saying they expect to have it fixed soon.

So, if someone should loose their drone, right now they have no way to figure out where it went down.  This gives me a quesy feeling, so I have not been willing to try more aggressive flights.

Setting up a restricted zone was important to me since I have a line of tall trees right behind my house and was worried about accidentally running into them, so how to set this up was very important to me.

The on the fly features are cool.  Maybe not so well known is that you fly manually to where you want to start. 

Which brings me to the other thing that was not clear and maybe still not...  Being able to disconnect from dronelink and switching to DJI Fly while in the air after a mission completes, for example.  I would have thought disconnecting would invoke RTH, but what I saw discussed seemed to say it would not, so I would like to see that clarified for certain.

So those are my thoughts/concerns as a new user. Even though the videos explain much, the shear number of them tends to get lost in my memory bank, so I applaud your efforts to try to simplify that as much as possible.

Thanks for all you are doing to help us learn to use dronelink.  I think it is a fantastic addition to the drones capabilities.  

-- 
Larry Fortna
 
 
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Comments

3 comments

Date Votes
  • Comment author
    Eric Goldstein

    My response back to Larry:

    My response:

    Great feedback and good questions.., thank you..  I’m going to post my responses to the forum so others can see it too.
     
    Few quick comments back
    - You absolutely can fly with Dronelink as a DJI Fly Replacement, although personally, I don’t.   If I’m flying manually, I typically fire up Go or Fly.  
    - On my IOS device, I have never had problems switching from DL to Go and back again.   However, I have heard issues (primarily on Android) with running the two devices together.   Most seem to recommend shutting down Fly when you’re flying DL.
    - There is a good video by a user on the restriction zone s- not sure if you saw that..
    - We do log flight info - working on getting the integration with Airdata working again.
    - I agree with you on the On the Fly functions.  They are VERY powerful and only can get better.   We need to push their value more.
    - On the disconnect.   I posted something recently to the boards about this.  If DL “shuts down” or crashes, the drone will “freeze” in the air.    At that point, if you push the “RTH” button on the controller, you can initiate RTH and if you push RTH again, you can regain control of the drone (at least that was my experience with my IOS device).    I forgot to test to see if I just let it sit there frozen for a while whether it would kick RTH back in.  I’m guessing “no”, because it still has connection to the controller.    If the drone loses connection with the controller due to being out of range, it should stop flying the mission and initiate RTH.  
     
    Lots going on and not a ton of time!  But we’re working on improving the experience, the features, and the documentation on a daily basis for you all.
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  • Comment author
    Reuben M Marcus

    Nice work on these responses Eric!

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  • Comment author
    Roger Harris
    • Edited

    Concerning needing to set RTH altitude in DJI Fly: I haven't tested it, but there is a "Drone Command" to set "Drone Return Home Altitude." Maybe it should be SOP to include an appropriate one in each plan. I did notice, however, that the list of drone commands (which can't be moved) is being cut off on the bottom of the page when it's displayed for an Approach "Achieved Component," and the RTH altitude command isn't displayed so it can't be selected. A few commands aren't shown at the bottom of the list of Marker drone commands, but the RTH altitude command is shown, so you can assign it to a marker. It appears that the full list of commands is only shown if you select New Component at the Plan level. Unfortunately, Command isn't one of the components you can select as the initial component in a plan, which would make it easier to set any necessary limits, but it seems you can create any initial component, then delete it, then add the RTH command as a New Component, then proceed to add whatever flight components you want.

    Edit: The list of camera commands is also cut off on the bottom for Approaches and Markers. I'll post this on the Bug Reports forum.

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