Feature requests

I used the app a few times and I really like it but there are a few things that I think it can be improved.

It happen to me multiple times that I get an error about the SD Card when I try to upload a mission, today also, I had to switch SD cards or restart the app (and loose the progress)
Beeing able to make shapes that have some narrower zones, now if I place a dot inside , it is ignored

Btw ... you have a weird forum, don't have the options to add a picture or format my text? :) so here it is http://prntscr.com/9jvwrt You can see a point inside the shape made by Map Pilot, if the line on the bottom side of the shape followed that point than I could make my flight shorter, as the fields in that area ware not important.

In settings on the Battery section, what does it mean by Battery Limited ? How low it flies before it returns to homepoint ? Can we see the battery voltage also (been flying DIY hexa's for years and I'm used to see voltages, not percentage)
Can we change the homepoint while flying a mission ? Can it set the homepoint from the remote controller position ? You can see in the picture bellow that the homepoint was set quite far away (1km away), this is because in the previous days I photographed the area between the homepoint and the new path, I started this mission today from exactly the same place I started in previous missions so all the photos will be from 115m above this point (about this altitude I'll have another request but don't think it will be possible, will talk more on #6) it estimated one battery, I set the limit time to 16 minutes. I always take off myself and go up to the set altitude , than press START. While the Inspire was flying to the green dot I also drived the road so I will be closer to the Inspire, all good until the last 2 lines, the Inspire decided to go home to change the pack, I pressed STOP and try to bring it back to me, right in the middle of the area photographed but although the arrow was pointing to me, to my new location when moving the right stick of the controller away from me, the inspire should have come closer , but the oposite happent, it went farther away, going to the initial homepoint, if I was moving the yaw the arrow rotated but somehow it wasnt to good direction. I had to switch to P and fly it down (I had another issue as the DJI GO app didn't reconnect and I didn't had the correct direction, but I managed to land it safely with 19% battery, after driving fast with the car to where the inspire was flying / waiting in the air , spot on at 115m)

http://prntscr.com/9jvyaa

Can you save permanently the progress of the mission? it happent to me that I couldn't continue the mission in the same day, and I had to return the next day or when weather allows, I had to do another mission with the area that was not already photographed . It would be great if the progress was saved and on the next time you load the mission to ask if you want to start over or continue from where you stopped it last time.
Is there a way to set the mission altitude by actual altitude from sea level and not from takeoff point ? Because I had to photograph a quite high area , and I think a set of images sent for processing need to be made from the same altitude (please ignore this request if MME can process the images even if they ware not made from the same altitude and let me know if there are any cons or issues I could have in the processing process) I had to fly for 1 km without making any photo and wasting the battery just to reach the next area to be photographed. It will be great if we can set the flying altitude to the real altitude from sea level, this way I can start a mission from different places to minimize flying without making photos. I know my house is situated at 450m altitude (from sea level) It will be awesome to be able to set the flying altitude to 500m, and be able to take off from the hill next to me , or from the lake a few hundreds meters away which is at a lower level, and send the whole images to be processed at once.
It happen to me twice, don't know why and if because I had the latest firmware files on the SD card, I updated now a week ago and didn't deleted them. So after flying a mission, the first part of the mission returned to home point, swapped battery and I get an error when I try to upload the mission , an error about SD card, I did not changed the sd, just landed and changed packs. After that I restarted Map Pilot, ofcorse the progress was lost and I had to make another mission (another reason to have the option of my 5th request) .. the things went even worse as it started to do the firmware update (everything was already updated a week ago) .. I stopped the updated process (bad , I know) and it didn't link the RC .. came back home and tried again the firmware update, but it failed twice, linking RC didn't worked, I had to downgrade to v01.05.00.30 and than upgrade again and everything was fine.
Long story short: keep the firmware V01.06.00.40 files on SD, upload a mission, fly it partially, return to homepoint, change pack and power up the Inspire, try to upload the mission

Ovidiu Sopa 29 de Dezembro de 2015 15:45

Comentário oficial

Almost everything you have mentioned here has already been addressed and submitted or will be addressed in the next version.

We will not be supporting convex shapes for a variety of reasons. For your case, the area you are trying to map could be covered in two missions. There is basically no way for us to guarantee not flying over an area and we don't want to give people the impression that we would not. Also, flight planning for consistent overlap is nearly impossible.

Battery Limited:
http://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/206104736-Flying-Multi-Battery-Missions

No, the home point can not currently be changed while flying. We are considering adding this to a future version but it has other implications that are hard to deal with.

Above sea level numbers are unreliable since they are derived from the GPS which can be off by up to 50 meters.

Thank you for all the great questions but try to break them up in to individual questions in the future so they can each be addressed better and the results are more searchable.

Tudor 29 de Dezembro de 2015 16:14

iniciar sessão para comentar.

4 comentários

Thank you for your answer.

Now I checked the GPS information saved in EXIF and there is saved the real altitude, from sea level. Please can you confirm, If I make 2 missions but from different altitudes and send all the photos to be processed at once, will MME handle the difference between the batches ? Will the photos be processed correctly ?

Ovidiu Sopa 31 de Dezembro de 2015 06:59 0 votos

The difference between batches will likely cause the elevation map to be tilted. Not ideal...

If you include a ground reference image that was taken at the point of takeoff in your uploaded images we will detect that and back the properly elevation numbers out by using the relative altitude and the NASA data for the point where you took off. That will be the most accurate way to get elevations. Processing the ASL altitude that is included in the EXIF tags now doens't turn out too well if you have multiple runs. The offsets can be pretty big...

Tudor 31 de Dezembro de 2015 17:12 0 votos

We have added a new tool for converting the bad GPS altitude data that gets written into the GPS Altitude EXIF value to a corrected value based on a user provided elevation or ground reference image.

https://www.mapsmadeeasy.com/tag_fixer

This will allow for people not using our Maps Made Easy processing system to process their data elsewhere while taking advantage of the steps that we do behind the scenes.

Jay 12 de Março de 2016 22:32 0 votos