Hello Everyone,

I've been playing with my Mavic.  Decided today was the day to try the ActiveTrack feature.  Jumped on my mountain bike and made an attempt to get Mavic to track me.  A few  observations:
  
Unless you have Mavic about 30 feet above you when you initiate ActiveTrack. Mavic can lose track of you pretty easy.  I had Mavic about 8 feet above me and moving at about 15 MPH on my mountain bike in an open area Mavic would lose track of me. I was wearing bright colors and plenty of light outside.

Also, if you make a switch back in direction right underneath Mavic it will lose track of you.  In each case it just sits and hovers until you use the controller to reacquire ActiveTrack on the target again.  I wish you could just move back into its field of view and it would start tracking you again.  But, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Mavic did a great job avoiding obstacles as it tracked me such as several large pine trees.

I think the trick might be to start ActiveTrack higher above the object to be tracked.

If anyone has any tips and tricks for ActiveTrack I would appreciate hearing from you.

Wayne

If you're carrying the RC with you, the Follow Me mode will work much better

I've found with active track you should let the drone see every side and angle of the object that your tracking before you click go, I haven't had active track lose track once.

R&L Aerial  Posted at 2016-11-12 13:22
I've found with active track you should let the drone see every side and angle of the object that yo ...

Ok so if I'm having the drone track me on my bike.  Spin around in front of it to let it see all sides of me prior to riding off.  I figured since I was the only big red blob around it would be easy to track me.  I know for sure it got confused when I turned around and passed right underneath it.  It lost me from that point on.

I would expect losing track when you pass underneath it is by design otherwise you would have to have it fly backwards without obstacle avoidance and risk a crash. I don't have my Mavic yet but if I recall there is a "fly backwards" setting somewhere in the manual. I don't know if it is related or if it would override the default hover behaviour in this scenario. Maybe you could take a look and report back. Without backwards flying or rotating it would be physically impossible to continue tracking if you pass underneath it.

Perhaps a solution would be a software initiated 180 degree rotation when the tracked subject passes out of the bottom edge of FOV and auto-resume tracking. Even better would be an in-flight cut/edit of the short period the aircraft rotates before resuming tracking. That would be cool!

EDITJust checked the manual and there is nothing about a "backward flying" setting. I must have seen it on a YouTube menu walkthrough maybe or completely imagined it.

WayneHuntley Posted at 2016-11-12 15:51
Ok so if I'm having the drone track me on my bike.  Spin around in front of it to let it see all s ...

Or fly the drone around you, or like you said spin around so it can see all sides. Doing this for me has caused active track to work flawlessly.

In Visual Navigation Settings you can select "Enable Backward Flying". The feature reads "If activated the aircraft will automatically fly backwards if a subject being tracked is moving towards it. Ensure no obstacles in the direction of flight before activating".
Knew I had seen it somewhere.

sandgrownun Posted at 2016-11-12 17:07
In Visual Navigation Settings you can select "Enable Backward Flying". The feature reads "If activat ...

So many settings to set :-)  Thank you for the information :-)  I know one thing for certain I will initiate the ActiveTrack at a higher altitude than I currently do.  I'm sure the drone is just too close to me when I first activate it.