pedzsan
lvl.3
Flight distance : 153625 ft
United States
Offline
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I have an Inspire 1 that I bought several years ago, used it maybe a half dozen times and now it sits in the closet. I mention this only to say that I've had a small amount of drone experience.
I bought the Mavic 2 Pro with the Googles Racing Edition package. The packaged arrived yesterday and I slowly unpacked and read the variuos manuals.
What follows are a list of things that I found. Not exactly complaints but areas that could be improved.
Some of the manuals have a link to the current version. This is really good. Apple and now it seems DJI like to print the manuals in very small print but what is ultra frustrating is they are not black on white but rather brown on grey making the print much lower contrast than books printed 20 years ago. I get that its "fancy" but it makes reading those documents much harder than it needs to be. Long story short, DJI does seem to have a page for each product and on that page is a "downloads" link and that will get you to all the manuals and other items depending upon the product. Short recap: good that the books have links on the back page, good that the links go to useful pages, bad that the print is small and low contrast.
When first bringing up the Go 4 app, it wants to connect to the drone and controller. What is odd is the sequence suggested is not the usual sequence of turning on the controller before the drone. I'm always a bit afraid that a drone with no controller may do something funky.
The click once and then hold to turn on and off sequence is a nice idea but I tend to click too fast. I was thinking of it as a double click with hold so the time between my clicks was very short. This doesn't work. It must be a rather relaxed cllick once, wait a half a second or so, then press and hold.
I had the googles charged up and was playing with them when they mysteriously turned off. Hitting the power button showed one led. I put it back on the charger but it was acting weird. It would charge briefly blicking just one led and then stop charging within a minute or so. I could not turn the googles back on. They seemed to be bricked. I finally removed the head band and reseated it. This mostly fixed it. I still had to monkey around a bit by putting it on the charger and taking it off, powering it on and off once or twice and it finally seemed to get its sanity back. I think I ended up disconnecting the head band and reconnecting it one more time in the process. TL;DR if your goggles freak out, try reseating the head band.
There wasn't anything that mentioned updating the firmware for the googles. I stumbled upon a YouTube video because it wasn't clear at all how to "link" the goggles to the drone. The YouTube video mentioned Assistent 2. By the way, on the Mac, the icon still says "Assistent". I downloaded it. On the Mac, it wants to install some weird driver and it talks about an Android phone. I went ahead and allowed it to install even though I don't have an Android. If this driver is needed all the time, then I would clean up the text messages. If it is not needed except if you have an Android, then I would clarify that.
The usual process in my experience is to start the app and then connect the device and then turn the device on. This didn't work and the Assistent keeps asking to hook up an Inspire 2. Rather, turn on the googles, then connect it to the computer, then launch Assistent 2. It finds the goggles and you can then update the firmware.
This is not 2000... everyone is very concerned about computer privacy and security at this point. Its just not a good feeling to have the app ask you if it is ok to gather seven different items. It appears as if the person has a choice but that wasn't clear to me. Would it have worked if I had not agreed to let the application into all of those different areas? Why does it need access to all of those places?
On a side topic... its not cool to force people to install Adobe Flash now days. Flash continues to be extremely weak on security. Fortunately Safari allows me to grant Flash access just once and then it shuts it down for me... TL;DR -- stop using flash on the web site. Its been obsolete for five years now.
The one pop up in the process of linking the goggles to the drone says at the top that it is for only two drones but the list has all three with Mavic 2 at the bottom. The text at the top of that particular dialog box needs to be updated.
I did not find the process of linking the goggles to the drone described in the quick start guide or the guide. As I mentioned, I found a YouTube video. That video (fortunately) mentioned how to update the firmware as well as how to link.
On the topic of linking, there is one diaglog box that confused me. The top said something like "Connect drone and goggles" (or something like that). I first took this as a command and started searching for the proper cable to hook the goggles to the drone (via usb to usb I assumed). But its not a command. So, the text should be changed to "How to Connect ..." or perhaps "Connecting ..." . Make the text clearer that it isn't a command but just the title of the dialog box.
There is a very brief mention in the Guide on page 7 of two fingers down on the track pad enters the "short cut menu". The quick start guide doesn't mention two fingers swipes. Well... that menu is very key and its not a "short cut" since there is no other way to get to those items any other way. For those looking to figure out how to turn on tracking, this is the magic path... Two fingers down on the track pad brings up choices for various things -- two of them are the two types of head tracking -- plus other items. This path and menu items needs to be documented.
Speaking of documentation ... I personally would like to see the Go 4 app documented where I can read about it. The "intro" is good... keep it, but a good solid complete reference manual would be a terrific addition.
This is my first full day. I feel like I still have tons and tons left to explore which is ok I suppose but it would seem safer and better without needing to find all the Easter eggs that the developers have hidden around.
There are also various links in the PDFs that are broken such as the link to the tutorial videos for the Goggles.
To be clear... I'm not disgruntled or upset. These are not simple devices. I'm hoping this post will help DJI document things better, clean up a few items, and provide a better new user experience in the future. I'm also hoping this will help other users find their way a little easier.
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