Autel Xstar going from business tool to expensive toy

[promapper]

This is fair warning as this is a RANT and a Warning.

I purchased the Xstar from the ratings and was at first very pleased. The range was said to be 1.2 miles and many folks were getting that and more. The elevation was said to be 2640 and many were getting that. Not that either was required to do the projects I wanted to do.

I am a retired photogrammetrist and remote sensing technician of 40 years so I wanted to use a drone for shooting forestry projects specifically false color Infrared looking for stressed trees and invasive species.

So I bought the xstar along with 4 batteries and a dedicated android screen. initial tests were great and verified what others were saying. Short flight lines were a piece of cake even flying dead reconing. However when flying over trees there was no reference point even when keeping the drone in sight so the drone drifted off course to much.

AH HA, the new upgrade comes with way points. The first mission I tried to plan stopped me at 1600 foot radius from my takeoff point. (&^$%$#*&^% CRAP) I contacted customer support and they said that was added as a safety feature and one which is within the guidelines of the FAA. I didn't like it but I figured I could live with it and started breaking my longer flight lines into 2 and 3 sections and finding access points in the wooded areas to give me the 1600 foot range needed.

now come the part about setting the the elevation for each WAY POINT. way cool I thought as the software will gradually increase or decrease the elevation between way points. So the very first takeoff poinnt was in a valley about 125 feet below the tops. so I went in and tried to set the way point elevation to just under 400 feet above the trees. SORRY, way point elevations limited to 396 feet. Because I started 125 feet below the tops I would have to set the way point to about 500 feet above the home takeoff point. SORRY, cant do that.

even though we (xstar pilots) can fly past 1600 feet in manual mode and higher than 400 feet in manual mode they hard coded the 1600 foot distance limit and the 396 foot elevation limit.

They (Autel) is wrong on the elevation limit. The FAA regs say a pilot may navigate to keep obstacles from below or to the side of his or her aircraft to avoid said obstacles. TREES are a mentioned obstacle. So by law a drone pilot can fly over the Smokey's at 1200 feet as long as he was no more than 400 feet above the trees.

My business investment of $1200.00 plus just went to an expensive toy for the back 40.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

I have been following this closely as I also own the XSP. Autel says the new firmware (supposedly re-wrote from the bottom up), and the height limitation has been fixed. The firmware is supposed to be released by the end of April. Check out our Autel forum here - Autel X-Star Drone Forum as they are currently talking about this topic.

 

[Meta4]

I am a retired photogrammetrist and remote sensing technician of 40 years so I wanted to use a drone for shooting forestry projects specifically false color Infrared looking for stressed trees and invasive species.

That sort of work is quite easy with a Phantom and one of the dedicated mapping apps.
I outlined how this works in this thread: Panorama by shooting straight down and moving P4P?
I'd be interested to know more about how you would do false color Infrared looking for stressed trees and invasive species.
I think I could find some applications for that sort of thing.
Were you using the normal X-star camera?

 

[promapper]

thanks for the comments. I will definitely check out the other forum.

Meta4, False color IR or Suedo IR takes many shapes and colors. One is NDVI where the color bands are shifted around and of course a clipping filter is used. Basically, The spectral reflectance is based on the chlorophyll and water absorption in the leaf. Needles have a darker response than leaves. There will be various shades of vegetation based on type, leaf structure, moisture content and health of the plant.

Our invasive is a tri-foliated orange : Poncirus trifoliata (Sapindales: Rutaceae): Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States that spreads rapidly, is very thorny (BIG thorns) Yellow fruit, and is hard to get rid of once established. The government has identified this plant as a major problem and is stepping in to help control and maybe irradicate it.

even dead it will remain for years until it is pushed over and burned by using a small dozer or larger tractor The purpose of the IR is that vegetation under stress will show a less red color than a healthy one and it will show up in the near IR much faster than in the visible spectrum.

Visibly, this invasion looks green year round and it creates new buds and growth before local native trees and grasses. It is easily identified year round by foot observation. I was hoping to show the following.

1. A higher contrast ir image during leaf off to help delineate the areas infected. This green invasive bush should show different in IR than say conifers.
2. tracking stress levels using various herbicides and application methods. we have one fence row that is solid with these things for 200 plus yards making it an ideal place for setting up test plots.
3. differences in spectral response in the winter vs spring vs summer.

Those are the main items i was hoping to work on. However, the problems with navigating large tracts brought on by xstars hard coded limitations has delayed me to the point of having to wait until next year for the drone use, I have however just sent my Nikon off to a conversion company and can do some of these tests on foot albeit at a smaller scale.