HMArnold.msn
 Second Officer
Flight distance : 24012 ft
United States
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I have an S1000+/A2/Lightbridge/IOSD MK II/900Mhz Datalink/Zenmuse Z15/Dual Futaba 14SG and use a Sony A6000 camera.
The bottom line is that this configuration can be used with the PC Ground Station Photogammetry system to outline a grid pattern and take orthogammetric images.
The above equipment was purchased in November, 2014 specifically to take commercial orthogammetric images, and it has taken me this long to figure out how to make it work.
Getting the whole show to work for manual flight and image/video operation was relatively straightforward for me because I purchased an entire package from a dealer.
Once you have manual flight and camera control mastered, these are the basic steps needed to get the photogammetric tool to work:
1) You need to be connected to the UAV before you make any changes in parameters. The software doesn’t remember or save anything – it copies and writes everything to the UAV, so you have to be connected.
2) Images are taken for autonomous missions using the “GP SERVO ACTION”, which are a sequence of commands associated with each leg of the flight grid. For missions defined using manually entered waypoints, these commands can either be set up on a time/frequency or distance traveled basis. The Photogammetry tool defines these for you based upon several parameters that relating to the camera and lens that I don’t understand and don’t think work properly, but can be worked around. The way I did it was to pick a mission altitude and speed, then use trial and error with the “FOCAL LENGTH” setting in the tool until the pictures overlap. For me, flying at 100 meters, the “FOCAL LENGTH” setting needs to be 30mm even though I’m using a 70mm lens. To set up the “GP SERVO ACTION” parameters, I used the Lightbridge assistant to see that manually throwing the shutter switch on the camera Futaba caused the signal to go from a negative 1000 to a positive 1000, then releasing the switch caused the setting to go back to negative 1000. On the “GP SERVO ACTION” screen, enable the “ACTION MODE ON/OFF and set the “NATURAL SERVO POSITION” to -1000. Then for the “ACTION STEP 1”, set the “SERVO POSITION” to 1000 and the “STAY TIME” to 1 second. As near as I can tell, the actual command to take an image is generated on the A2, and it goes out the F2 port on and side of the MC, through a 3 wire jumper to the “SHUT” port on the Zenmuse. For me this means that every time I fly manually I have the wire that goes to the Zenmuse “SHUT” port hooked up to me SBUS decoder board set up by the dealer, then when I want to fly an autonomous mission, I swap that wire from the SBUS decoder board and plug it into the F2 port on the A2 MC.
3) You have to make sure the A2 has no other signal mapped for the F2 port. For my system, on the A2 Assistant “ADVANCED/GIMBAL” tab I thought the setting for “GIMBAL SWITCH” needed to be enabled because I use a gimbal, but evidently that is only the case if you have a non-Zenuse gimbal, because the Zenmuse comes with its own controller, and the output for pitch and roll on the A2 is not required. If you DO have the “GIMBAL SWITCH” enabled, evidently the A2 overrides and GP SERVO commands with pitch and roll outputs for the non-existent gimbal. If you research deep enough, you will find that the ROLL command output of the A2 uses the F2 port, and thus be default disables any GP SERVO commands to the camera shutter. This knowledge cost me about a month of trial and error, with absolutely no help from anyone at DJI after repeated support calls, emails, and requests on the DJI Forum. It was finally someone on the forum named David Fuentes that suggested if disable any other mapping to the F2 port.
4) Once you have the signal path from the Ground Station software, through the 900Mhz Datalink, into the A2, you can test it using the “TRIGGER” button on the “GP SERVO ACTION” screen to take a picture. Since I couldn’t get the camera to work in autonomous flight, I kept thinking the “TRIGGER” switch didn’t work, so I would actually pack everything up, go out to a field large enough to define a photogammetry mission, and actually fly the mission to test any changes I thought might help. It would have been much easier if I knew that the “TRIGGER” button really does send a live shutter command to the camera, even if the S1000+ is sitting powered up on a table with the arms folded down.
My only remaining problem is that now that I can take pictures on autonomous missions, I can’t get the GPSEXPORTER program to work. I’m not alone in this, as people on external forums as well as the DJI forum have the same problem.
In November, DJI issued a firmware upgrade for the IOSD MK II to V3.02, which I was dumb enough to load. I still don’t know if that upgrade had any useful effects, but I do know that it made it so the FLY???.DAT files generated on the IOSD and required for the GPSEXPORTER and DATAVIEWER were no longer compatible.
I also learned that once you do a firmware upgrade, there is no going back, so you’re stuck with $15,000 of equipment that can’t report where it was when you took the pictures.
I actually purchased a second IOSD Mk II that didn’t have the upgrade, but still I can’t get the GPSEXPORTER to give me anything but blank TXT files.
Again, my various attempts to get any level of support have gone unanswered, and my only hope at this point to for someone else that has gotten data from a FLY???.DAT file to tell me how they did it.
It was a serious mistake on my part to invest in a DJI S1000+ system for a commercial application. At this point I think that DJI made things like the PC Ground Station, DataViewer, and GPS Exporter to get people like me to purchase their equipment, but now that they show the videos on their marketing web pages, they are either unable or unwilling to either document them or get them to work.
My email address is HMArnold@msn.com, and if you send me an email I'll send you screen shots of anything you have questions about
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