Yesterday I did 200ha at 150m AGL using 11 batteries. It was a disaster as I planned to do 300ha using only 10 batteries and would have 2 as a backup.
What caused my planning to fail?
The 300ha mission was devided up to 7 smaller mission with overlap.
To much battery were used for transport to and home from mapping missions. Since some of the missions had lines up to 1km, it was a big problem not being able to decide starting waypoint. This should be possible to choose even when Continuing a large mission, because you Always whant to have the AC working it ways home, not away from you.
To much battery was used fighting against the wind. If I would be able to choose/change inventory direction to be cross the wind, the battery useage would be more stable.
When the AC failing to finish to a waypoint with just some meters because of forced RTH (low battery) I would like to be able to adjust what waypoint the mission would continue with next battery, so AC wont start over with the last inventory line.
and then a lot of problem/bugs Before being able to do propper starts after changeing battery. This is how I āsolvedā it, and tried to minimize unnecesary battery usage.
When changeing battery:
1, Turn of RC
2, Kill DD app.
3, Change battery
4, Turn on AC
5, Start Litchi
6, Take test foto
7, Kill Litchi
8, Force Close Litchi in Android Settings
9, Turn on RC and choose to launch DD app
10, Choose continue mission
11, Switch to āFā
12, Start mission in DD app and AC auto launches.
And with earlier test Iāve been able to do 35-40ha with one battery at 150m AGL. Yesterday with longer inventory lines I was down to ~18ha per battery because of a lot of double inventory linesā¦
Delendam,
I would be interested to see the area you are mapping. Can you post a google map screenshot of your mosaic? Are you flying āline of sightā? I too would like to photograph a large area (200-400ha) with a quadcopter, but Iām beginning to realize it may need to be done with a fixed wing UAV. Thanks!
Iām checking on your flights now to see if we got the proper overlap. We recently made a change because previously we were not calculating the overlap properly. If you want it to fly like before I would lower the frontlap and possibly the sidelap. Iāll check on your flights and let you know for sure.
Could you also let me know which camera youāre using?
I checked out your plans. It looks like you have adjusted the frontlap and sidelap to very high values (90%). This is probably due to a bug in our previous planning. Ideally your frontlap should be closer to 65 or so.
Ok. I want pretty high overlap since Iām mapping homogenous spruce forest with tree heigh of 35m with 90/75% overlap earlier the speed would be 12m/s and I could still mapp about 35ha with one battery.
Yeah, I donāt think it was actually obtaining 90% overlap before is what I am saying. We fixed a bug which was probably setting it to 20-30% lower than it should have been at least.
I feel that 200 ha was about the limit for the quad to be comfortable. Iām planning to get a fixed wing for missions above ~200ha, so that itās also easier to spot on sky and have a more āpropper LOSā.
If you were getting good maps before and were able to cover that amount of area, I would try lowering the frontlap. Keep the sidelap to something 55-60.
Ok I understand you, but this is not the big problem with how much I could mapp with one battery. The largest problem was that the phantom several times wasnāt able to finish to next waypoint before the forced RTH (strangely somehow around 25% battery, even thought setting says 10%). So the phantom spent to much time when continueing mission to do the last inventoryline again to the waypoint it never reached last battery.
If I somehow could just āklickā in the app checking manually a waypoint as reached, that would be great!
Also changeing the starting point makeing the aircraft working towards home would save a lot in total.
All in allā¦ I want to be able to modify the mission between each ācontinueāā¦ (Ah, I need coffe)
Actually I want to choose the program to be less automatic, so I can use it more flexible. I never know in advance what problem I will encounter when out in the forest, as damaged roads, clearcut areas, timber trucks blocking the road, and so on.
Like yesterday I realised that I would save more time if I would walk to the next missionarea as the phantom was finishing the last part of an mission. But I needed to fly it āhomeā manually when it finished the mission since I now was at a new place.
I think Iām feeling handcuffed when I canāt change details in a missionā¦
Maybe Iām dreaming but with large missions I would like to choose flightpath directions, starting points, yeah even would like to numbering the waypoint manually. And to plan mission areas in my favourite GISprogram and the just export/import my missions KML:s to DD app.
I understand. Our first focus up to now has been making it easy for anyone to make maps, so a lot of our power user features arenāt as built out. Over time this could improve but I donāt know if weāll ever have a solution that lets you tweak every single thing. Hopefully we can find a good middle ground.
to be able to choose or at least know where starting point is would be a great info. I mentioned it once in another thread / post.
this way I wonĀ“t end up standing at the wrong side of the map having the AC go to the other end for start
@RedSun
even if you put a 1.000.000 mAh battery on the I1 it would only fly about 30 mins as there is an lectronical lock within the pcb (inspirepilots.com)-forum - has a thrad on battery modsā¦ there is a person who managed 45mins flying time but he custom made a battery to achieve thisā¦
