Time-Based Commands, or similar
Hello! I am working as a research assistant for my university, and we are using a Matrice 300 RTK drone to carry a custom GNSS antenna payload. We want to move the drone through linear paths across a field, back and forth in a grid pattern, but we want to do so in a timed manner. Let's call Loc1 and Loc2 the start and end points of one linear path, then Loc3 and Loc4 the start and end points of another path, parallel to the line formed by Loc1 and Loc2, but shifted laterally by some distance. We want to fly to Loc1 coordinates to start, and wait until a certain time occurs (UTC time). Then we want to fly to Loc2 along the linear path, at a specified speed. Then when we get to Loc2, fly directly to Loc3 and again wait until a specific UTC time to start moving to Loc4. What is the best way to program this? If I'm understanding correctly, there is no way to program global time tags, but am I able to specify local times from some reference starting point? Aka, we manually trigger the first motion and the rest is done by reference time from that moment? If not, how can I go about holding at a location, and starting motion from manual trigger, then holding at the next location until my next manual trigger? My apologies for the long question, but TLDR is that timing is important to us and we are looking for advice on the best way to go about incorporating timing, whether manual or automatic (preferred). Thanks! (Note that this is my personal account which I pay for, but we are going to be purchasing an enterprise account for use with the M300 drone)
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8 comments
This isn’t currently possible without a feature update.
Not saying this will be prioritized, but if it was, what is the accuracy required relative to UTC (e.g. 100ms, 1s, 10s, etc)?
Realistically, 1-2 seconds would be fine. Is there any “hold” command functionality? Like, fly to a point and wait until the pilot hits a button to resume?
You could use a disengage command, but resuming eats up time so you would have to test if it is accurate enough.
Gotcha. Thank you very much for your fast replies! I’ll give that a try
Is this at all possible using the "Functions" or "Modes" functionality using custom scripts? Either global timing, or relative timing from the plan start?
Can you be more specific about what you are looking for?
We are performing research on a custom GNSS receiver board, that is mounted to the bottom of a Matrice 300 RTK drone. This receiver board needs to be positioned in specific locations at specific times of day to correspond to GNSS satellites and their current positions, in order to perform calibrations of our receiver technology. Our hope is to move the drone along raster scans above a designated section of land, and to do so with some sort of timing (for positioning alignment). We are hoping for <5 second, or <10 second maximum, discrepancy between where we want the drone to be and where it actually is. Right now I am using disengage to hold the drone at linear "end positions", and then starting its "scan" along a linear path manually (with a set speed along the path). This works to some degree, but due to the "thinking" time after manually hitting start error builds very quickly. This is my only issue, the thinking after hitting start. So I'm looking for a way to mitigate this.
Can you use wait instead of disengage?
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