I design indoor sports lighting and do alot of indoor filming with my drones. Yesterday while fiming indoors in a tennis facility, I was using my mavic and set to tripod mode, which would be fine for a short while then wiith out any commands it would automatically switchout off Tripod mode, again without any commands to do so. Over the corse of 40 minutes of filming it probably did that 12 times.


Is this natural, has anyone else experienced this. I did have obstical avoidence on, however thaty shold not casue that. Is there a sure fire way to prevent this from happening?

I wonder if tripod mode depends on having GPS?  If so, that's probably why it dies.  GPS signals inside a building can be tricky.  I get GPS all over in my house, but not reliably enough that I would ever fly there.

It was showing a weak GPS at times. This was a large enclosed Metal building I was surprised with was showing the Weak GPS message. Still wonder why that would kick it out of Tripod mode.

Google "GPS repeater" and see if you can use one of them for inside flying. May not work for you everywhere but check them out.

lightsout Posted at 2017-11-7 12:18
It was showing a weak GPS at times. This was a large enclosed Metal building I was surprised with was showing the Weak GPS message. Still wonder why that would kick it out of Tripod mode.

I'm Thinking that the GPS signal was lost (even for a few milliseconds ), which may have put it into "Atti" Mode resulting Tripod mode to kick out and then lock on again in GPS Mode? Did you have to manually re-enter Tripod every time it did it?

Pretty sure GPS signal id required to maintain stability & positioning in Tripod.

Yes every time I would have to reactivate Tripod Mode.  While most of our filming is in large open buildings still a bit dicey with this issue especially flying around expensive equipment and people, when you expect the Mavic to ONLY move at a snails pace.  
I assume DJI must have a response to this

The stability of Tripod mode relies on the GPS and vision system to work. If you are in a place with no or weak GPS, Tripod mode will not work properly, and please note the features of the drone when flying with no or weak GPS signal.

May I suggest a software change? I have experienced the same thing far too often - to the point where it makes flying the Mavic Pro indoors useless and impossible to do safely. I have been trying to do indoor shooting using tripod mode and always have an adrenaline rush because I know, without exception, the drone is going to suddenly just take off without warning because it exits tripod mode all by itself.

Why not just simply have a branch / mode in the software that if the drone switches to atti mode because it cannot stay in tripod mode due to lack of GPS signals or other reasons, it will simply carry over the stick responsiveness settings of tripod mode? That way, when I have the sticks set in a certain position in tripod mode, the drone isn't suddenly going to take off at high speed with very little (if any) warning. In my opinion this is a super easy software / firmware change to implement and would make your drones far more usable for indoor shooting.

I was doing a church video and my Mavic Pro just about slammed into the cross on the altar because of this! I was approaching nice and easy in tripod mode - and then it dropped out of tripod mode and took off like a shot!

I think most of us who try to use the drones for indoor shooting use tripod mode because all the movements are very slow. If the drone switches to atti mode and it is slowly drifting I can deal with that with gentle stick inputs. But when the drone reverts to atti mode and has its typical outdoor response settings - that is almost impossible to control safely indoors.