So, I set up my first waypoint mission on my Mavic 3 the other day and it seems it had a problem with flying to one waypoint that I set 6 feet off the ground. I tried it again with obstacle avoidance off. Still no luck. Scrapped the waypoint mission and made a new one and this time the lowest altitude waypoint was about 15 feet. The Mavic 3 had no problem performing that. I’ve got a Skydio 2+ drone that uses key frames (which are basically the same thing as waypoints for DJI) and it has no problem being programmed down to 1 foot in altitude. Is there some kind of low altitude limit with Mavic 3 when using waypoints?
When I tested that last winter on fairly level ground, it seems like I was able to use 8 feet. The problem is the bottom sensor will detect the ground and the drone will brake and suspend the waypoint mission and hover. The drone only has “brake” when an obstacle is detected by sensors. In this case, the obstacle is the ground. I don’t think you can disable it. And that’s probably for good reason. There would be a record number of crashes if DJI allowed people to disable it. There's a lot of people that don't have any concept of elevation or elevation changes.
i think skydio has a floor limit that you can turn ON and OFF (so the drone will not go below a certain number of feet) so maybe consider the dji with a permanent floor ON?
The Saint Posted at 5-16 10:32
i think skydio has a floor limit that you can turn ON and OFF (so the drone will not go below a certain number of feet) so maybe consider the dji with a permanent floor ON?
That’s probably fair.
But if you set it to 8 feet and you’re flying out in the (fairly level) desert southwest and it flies over a 4 foot tall cactus…it’s probably going to “brake” and hover. In my brief tests, I programmed a short waypoint mission at super slow speed. I tried it at 6 feet but the ground triggered the brake. At 8 feet, it seems like I could get it to work. But 8 feet would be an absolute bare minimum and I wouldn’t recommend it because the ground would be on verge of triggering brake within inches. 12-15 feet would be a safer bet…unless you had 5 foot cactus. ;)
DroneApe Posted at 5-16 11:04
That’s probably fair.
But if you set it to 8 feet and you’re flying out in the desert southwest and it flies over a 4 foot tall cactus…it’s probably going to “brake” and hover. In my brief tests, I programmed a short waypoint mission at super slow speed. I tried it at 6 feet but the ground triggered the brake. At 8 feet, it seems like I could get it to work. But 8 feet would be an absolute bare minimum and I wouldn’t recommend it because the ground would be on verge of triggering brake within inches. 12-15 feet would be a safer bet…unless you had 5 foot cactus. ;)
Hi, Darkstonecastle. Thank you for reaching out. Technically, the waypoint minimum altitude can be set to 0m offline but if the altitude is too low, the aircraft will trigger obstacle avoidance.
DroneApe Posted at 5-16 11:04
That’s probably fair.
But if you set it to 8 feet and you’re flying out in the desert southwest and it flies over a 4 foot tall cactus…it’s probably going to “brake” and hover. In my brief tests, I programmed a short waypoint mission at super slow speed. I tried it at 6 feet but the ground triggered the brake. At 8 feet, it seems like I could get it to work. But 8 feet would be an absolute bare minimum and I wouldn’t recommend it because the ground would be on verge of triggering brake within inches. 12-15 feet would be a safer bet…unless you had 5 foot cactus. ;)
I didn't test it yet since the new firmware, but in the first version of te waypoints-missions there was another problem with height. The AC is set to make - sometimes rather wide- 'curves' around the waypoints, which, rightly so makes the waypointflight smooth. This does mean also though that you eed to take into account when planning offline that the AC will actually fly further than the point you just set. So far, no problem. The problem was that the same kind of algorithm was used for the height: when waypoint X was at 30 feet and waypoint Y was set at say 20 feet, then the AC often descended to fifteen feet and lower before finally going up again to the 20 feet it was supposed to go at.
That was what made my M3 almost drop in the water in the flight shown in the video below:
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