I'm a new pilot, and I am testing the various functions of the DJI GO app. I tested the POI function this morning, and I got some odd results. I filmed orbiting a restaurant building, with two orbits in the pass. At the same point in both orbits, the video became juddery, as if the gimbal wasn't working correctly. I have uploaded my video of the pass to YouTube.
On one of the orbits, there was some weird artifacting at 00:00:57 into the video--It looks a bit like a bird on the video. But I had the quadcopter in visual range at the time, and there were no birds around it.
I brought the quadcopter down, took it home, and gave it a fairly good going-over. Everything seemed to be okay. I ran another test later with some manual flying and a smaller, slower orbit around a putting green. Both worked well, with the gimbal performing as expected.
So here are my questions: Did I make a mistake when setting up the first shot? Is there a practical limit to the radius of a POI orbit, or the speed at which one can be executed? Any idea what that artifact at 00:00:57 might be? Thanks in advance for your help!
Looking at that footage it seems to show something limiting the movement of the gimbal, it is jumping around and not stabilising the image. Is you aircraft a P3? Do you still have the small foam block fitted behind the main gimbal arm? That needs to be removed if so. The item you see in the bottom right corner is part of the landing legs, this should not be visible if the gimbal is working properly.
Both Geebax and Bond are providing good information. If I might add my two bits, it is that there were significant gusts of wind that contributed to your problems which is why the problem kept occurring at the same quadrant of the circles. The gusts are hard to notice since you were also circling rather fast.
Geebax has pointed out that what you were concerned about as a bird was actually a leg of your P4. It just may be that no one has noted the connection. Seeing the leg of your Phantom is a standard result of a high wind or gust situation. I once could not get my Phantom to give me a level view of the horizon in the middle of my camera view and later I realized that my Phantom was in such a strong wind at height that the camera was not able to look level! Now, that is a wind pocket (or windless pocket)!
Hope his helps! You are doing fine. Keep asking questions.
Just to clarify, do you have any of those landing gear braces on the bottom of your P4? Those can effect the stability of the unit when VPS is enabled.
I think I found my problem, and it appears to have been software. I was running a POI mission on DJI GO at a pretty high speed; that may have had something to do with it. Since I shot the juddery footage, the app has been updated. In addition, the next time I flew after recording the juddery footage, I got a warning in DJI GO that controller firmware was inconsistent with aircraft firmware, so I ran the update to bring them into sync.
So, I can't say for certain what solved the problem, but I went back out today and reran the POI mission at a slower speed, and it executed without any problems. The gimbal was as smooth as one would expect it to be. Maybe it was running the mission at a slower speed; maybe it was the update to the DJI GO app; or, maybe it was resolving a firmware inconsistency. In any event, thanks much for all the helpful comments!
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