HMArnold
Second Officer
Flight distance : 24012 ft
United States
Offline
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I started this post in January, and I thought I would post an update with what I now know
There are two problems at issue, and they have completely different solutions
The first is the ability to view the flight parameters recorded in the IOSD Mk II controller during each flight. This problem was caused by a firmware upgrade to the IOSD in November, 2014 that caused the version of IOSD Assistant software available for download to show a time interval of 0.6 seconds for all flight parameters. If you read the sequences above, you will see that I received an email version of a BETA Test copy of the DataViewer that did in fact display all flight parameters. As you will also see above, some other DJI customers requested the BETA version, and at least some received a copy.
From the posts above, I can not tell who received copies, but it looks like DJI has stopped responding to those requests.
If you need a copy of the IOSD Mk II DataViewer that displays flight info after the V3.02 update, and DJI has not responded to you, please email me at HMArnold@msn.com
The second problem is the inability to export GPS coordinates for images taken using the PC Ground Station Photogrammetry tool. In my opinion this is a much more important problem, because the inability to recover the GPS coordinates makes putting the images taken commercially impossible.
As near as I can tell, there has not been a workable solution for the export of GPS Coordinates publicly available for DJI equipment using an A2 controller since sometime in Mid 2014.
There are posts on other forums that speak of software solutions that piece images back together, but all the ones I have seen require a significant image overlap and identifiable features that can be lined up. "Significant overlap" means image points and rows closer together, which equates to move passes over the same land, which equates to being able to cover less area on a single battery. "Identifiable Features" might be possible for cities and parks, but when using a UAV for agricultural ortho-imagery, every picture looks pretty much the same as every other picture, and without GPS coordinates, you can't create any kind of useful mosaic.
The solution to the GPS Export problem is the new firmware upgrade to the A2 Controller currently being tested by DJI.
For some reason I still don't understand, DJI allowed me to help test the firmware upgrade, and I have had no problems whatsoever with manual flight, autonomous flight, or photogrammetric images. After this upgrade, the files recorded with the IOSD Mk II not only export the GPS coordinates, but also altitude, pitch, roll, and yaw for every location where a PC Ground Station "GP Servo Action Point" was triggered.
In short, after the BETA A2 firmware upgrade, everything works the way we all thought it would when we purchased DJI products with an A2 controller.
Since the firmware upgrade being tested is BETA, and therefore not available from the normal "UPGRADE" screen in the A2 Assistant software, it requires significant preparation by the customer to receive, then individual, online, remote, real-time interaction with a DJI employee to force the upgrade, but only takes about 5 minutes to finish.
After the BETA firmware upgrade, all A2 System parameters are reset to "factory default", so I suggest that anyone that performs the upgrade, either as a BETA Test or when it is publicly released, take screen shots of every definition page of the A2 Assistant so you can easily program everything back the way it was before the upgrade.
Since my system received the A2 firmware upgrade, I have offered several times to work with any A2 owners wishing to upgrade to get everything set up ahead of time so the only requirement by a DJI employee would be the 5 minutes firmware "push", but they have stopped replying to my emails on the subject.
The reason I'm taking the time to record all this is in the hope that someone at DJI will understand that people that trusted them with the purchase of a $10,000 USD item with the understanding that they could export GPS coordinates now have equipment they can't use, but a solution is available for people willing to take the risk of using a BETA level firmware upgrade, if they will just allow it.
The other, more obvious solution, would be to release the A2 firmware upgrade for download using the normal A2 Assistant process, but as near as I can tell, that upgrade has been testing since at least November 2014, and no date that I'm aware of for that release has been discussed.
I own both S1000+ and Phantom V2+ systems, and am a firm believer that DJI products are technological marvels that have tremendous commercial applications, but I hope they will contemplate the ramifications of not supporting existing customers during the understandable evolution of these products.
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