The one thing that is missing from DJI is a tiny handhelt device sending its GPS position to the aircraft constantly.
Just imagine how cool that would be, you equip a biker or whatever with a small device, and now you can fly freely around him but the camera points to him all the time. He does quick turns, jumps but you have to fokus on your flight path only as the camera keeps the rider in the center all the time. It is like a second remote camera operator but automated.

A second use case is the follow mode of course, so the tracker controls the position of the bird as well.
Either a real follow mode for cases where you do not make radical manouvers. Or you draw a flight path, say a line between two points, and the bird is moving along while the tracker is moving - trying to be nearby. With height adjustments so you can finally film downhill actions.


Would love to know your opinion...


3rd party apps try to solve that and partly such functionality is present in the Go App but this is not sufficient.

Current solution 1: Use the smartphone - precision not high, a new position information is sent once per second, drains phone battery, phone sends the information via bluetooth (range limited) or via LTE to the RC sender - high latency.

Current solution 2: Use the GPS of the RC sender or its connected tablet - precision not high, a new position information is sent once per second, not partable (Do you want to carry the second remote in you backpack, active, so it tracks you? Certainly not.)


The ultimate solution would be if you have a small GPS device in you pocket, that sends the GPS coordinates as if it is a second RC sender or like the DJI Googles do send the head tracking information. The GPS chip used has a refresh rate of 10Hz, meaning it sends 10 positions per second. Is backed by an Inertial Navigation System for even higher precision) and a barometric sensor for precise height information.

The market is not big enough to make this commercially viable. Also, given the  demands of extreme sports persons, collision avoidance would need to be at a level they aren't at now and DJI already probably has the best consumer grade tech around.

Much cheaper and practicable to get your buddy to fly and record.

Not sure. The follow mode I see critical as well but the automated camera operator would be a good feature, I think.
Airdog for example raised more than a million USD on Kickstarter and all it can do is follow you. No live feed from the camera, no free flying - just follow.
If this feature would be expensive, agree, then it is of limited success. But as an add-on, my guess is it could be a great accessory. For Inspire as this is made for dual operators but for all others as well. You do not film the landscape always, often you film "objects". And this is either difficult, not safe as you watch at the live feed instead of your drone or you need two people.

https://www.kickstarter.com/proj ... -action-sports-dron

I believe you can do some of this without the GPS on the subject , on the P4 for example you can Lock the subject and it will keep them in frame all the time .  I could be wrong but I think I am correct on this .

donnie

Donnie * Posted at 2017-7-14 06:24
I believe you can do some of this without the GPS on the subject , on the P4 for example you can Lock the subject and it will keep them in frame all the time .  I could be wrong but I think I am correct on this .

donnie

Hi Donnie

Active Track is a fun feature but does not track that well. It requires the subject to move slowly or it will loose it. If you go behind something it will loose you under trees etc...  

Like I said, this is a fun feature but not that great for fast action
Rich

The active track (optical) has two major issues that renders it practically useless. The one is, as Rich said, that it does not work reliable enough. But worse is, once it loses the object, it cannot reacquire it (almost always).
There are many situations where it might lose your target object, maybe even for a good reason like the camera can not move as fast as it has to. With a GPS based  tracker it knows where the object is always and if the connection is lost, it can reacquire  the object as soon as the connection is established again.

There doesn't seem  to be many opinions out there, given the number of responses ;-)

Litchi Magic Leash

The comments there prove my point, e.g. "Follows me but very inaccurate".

Just imagine you are going downhill on skies or a bike, 10m/s is pretty much no speed at all. But yet with a refresh rate of 1Hz from the GPS, that means the system has an error of 10m just because of that. Add the GPS error, transmission latency etc and it gets useless quickly.
If you have camera operator that keeps pointing the camera 10m behind your subject always, you would fire him on the spot, wouldn't you?

Hmm, expected more excitement  or participation at least ;-)