Haha, yes obviously a bit dangerous, and maybe GPS is not accurate enough if the trees are too close. But I like it:
Lost in spring
Autopilot - tips?
- Thread starter joe21
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Haha, yes obviously a bit dangerous, and maybe GPS is not accurate enough if the trees are too close. But I like it:
Lost in spring
@autoflightlogic
This is what you give me to work with when creating waypoint missions...low resolution images from the wintertime...?
You could try to excuse yourself and place the blame on Google because it's their satellite imagery - but Google is not the only game in town for satellite imagery....there is also Apple, and there is MapBox which lets users upload their own background imagery, and I'm sure there are others - or with a little work, you could let users create their own and overlay user tiles over the Google tiles....
Since you only give me one choice to use for background imagery, I see this as an Autopilot problem and not a Google problem. Here is the same area as provided by Apple...
I submitted an enhancement request a couple of months ago - but I haven't heard whether you have accepted the request and are working on something or if it's just been added to the backlog...
This is an area in which I do a lot of my flying and it's really getting frustrating working with your product because of the poor quality maps.
So....how about a choice please? In the near future? I spent a good chunk of money on your product and I don't really want to have to abandon it and spend more money on something else just because you are for some reason exclusive with Google...
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The issue is Google's, and you are right, there are competing services out there, but as always, the technical details are never that easy on the back end. In fact, Autopilot originally used Apple Maps, and we caught much flak from many a user for that decision, so we eventually decided to switch to Google, not only because the imagery was generally better in most locations, but also because the layer support (markers, pins, polylines, etc) was so much more robust than the Apple Maps SDK. Mapbox is even more limited from a layer robustness standpoint, and all of that translates into one of two options:
- Offer users the choice of multiple providers but provide a different layering experience depending on the selected provider or
- Do a bunch of additional work to offer the provider choice and allow for a consistent user experience
Having said that, we do appreciate your point and the feature is on the backlog, but you might want to consider taking a less hostile tone when making assumptions about how we approach our development process. We are trying to do the best we can in the fairest way possible, all without ever charging any existing user for a single upgrade or new feature.
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What you interpreted as hostility, was in fact frustration and I'm sorry if that wasn't apparent.
But if you look at the sample images I provided and then imagine spending several dozen hours trying to do anything productive with them, I would hope you could empathize. The fact that I know suitable imagery is available amplified the frustration.
If you look at my posts in this thread and others, you'll see that I was a fan, a proponent and almost even a champion of the Autopilot software - but after trying to create usable missions with that horrible Google imagery as a backdrop, I've found that all of those advanced Autopilot features that work so well in some areas are useless to me in an area I do 50% of my flying in.
Because of that, and now knowing that any possible improvement is in the backlog, I'm disappointed that I'm going to have to spend money on an alternate product that is most likely less-capable than Autopilot.
Since Autopilot is apparently only useful to me for 50% of my flying, I think the fair thing to do would be to provide a 50% refund - and I'll contact your support people to see what they think about that - although my definite preference would be to have you keep my money and even give you a little bit more in exchange for the ability to generate my own background imagery.
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Of course:
We remember you
and we very much appreciate your support!Interestingly, when Autopilot was first released, we used a different pricing structure to reflect an idea similar to this. That is, we charged less for the base product and then included the option to pay for additional features as in-app purchases. The reasoning was that not all people needed all features in Autopilot, so why charge people for things they weren't using?
Unfortunately, people misinterpreted this as nickel-and-diming and so we moved away from that approach to the current approach which is a one-time purchase of all existing functionality, and all future updates for an indefinite period of time. Furthermore, the current price is less than the combined base price + all in app purchases, and we are able to do this because our users spread the word so well that new users continue to fund the future development. In other words, we are offering a product at a price that is already below what it is actually worth to our existing users as a way of saying thank you for spreading the word (you receive the updates for free).
As you might guess where this is going, your request to receive a partial refund for some percentage of perceived lack of usefulness is rather subjective and sets the wrong precedent / sends the wrong message in light of how the product is currently offered. For example, anyone who buys the app but only wants to use Waypoint Mode might make the argument that they should be refunded from X% because they don't care about the other modes. This, of course, would essentially be going back to the original pricing structure, which so many people were unsatisfied with in the first place.
Having said all of that, have you considered taking an alternate flight planning approach on the missions where imagery is degraded? For example, you could do one of the follow:
- Fly to the desired waypoints with the aircraft and use the current aircraft position as the waypoint (similar to planning in DJI GO)
- Plan the waypoints in a different software package (perhaps on a laptop) which has access to better map layers. Then export the points to KML and import the KML file in to Autopilot and finish adding the focus and camera triggers.
Of course:
We remember you
...your request to receive a partial refund for some percentage of perceived lack of usefulness is rather subjective and sets the wrong precedent / sends the wrong message in light of how the product is currently offered. For example, anyone who buys the app but only wants to use Waypoint Mode might make the argument that they should be refunded from X% because they don't care about the other modes.
Having said all of that, have you considered taking an alternate flight planning approach on the missions where imagery is degraded? For example, you could do one of the follow:
- Fly to the desired waypoints with the aircraft and use the current aircraft position as the waypoint (similar to planning in DJI GO)
- Plan the waypoints in a different software package (perhaps on a laptop) which has access to better map layers. Then export the points to KML and import the KML file in to Autopilot and finish adding the focus and camera triggers.
Than you for your reply and your suggestions.
I can appreciate the challenges you have with pricing and with user expectations however I do think my situation is different from those examples that you provided. As you suggested, I am only using part of the product but I don't feel entitled to a discount because of that. It's because I am finding that the one part of the product that I really want to use is nearly unusable (for my purposes) 50% of the time and that because of that I may be forced to purchase another product to have usable access to the functionality I already paid you for. I think a good analogy from the travel industry would be this: Suppose I paid United Airlines for a ticket to transport me from New York to Los Angeles, but because of mechanical problems the plane had to land in Kansas. In Kansas - United apologized and said I would have to find my own way, at my own expense from Kansas to L.A. As you know - that doesn't happen. If that situation occurred, United would arrange a way at THEIR expense to get me to my destination - even if that meant buying me a ticket on a competing airline.
In any case - as I said - I will contact support via email and make my case to them, in private so that anything they agree to do or not do for me does not end up setting a precedent that others will twist to try and apply to their own situations.
In parallel with that I'm happy to discuss alternative solutions that would not force me to buy another product.
Your first suggestion might be okay for some of my flying - but not the most important part. I have to design flyovers for that golf course - for individual holes and for a course overview. The actual flying time on the course has to be minimized so as not to distract/annoy golfers who have paid to be there. This means that my missions need to be designed in advance.
Your second solution might work - but I don't know of any such fee software packages that would let me do what you are suggesting. Can you recommend something for me to try?
On another note - it seems like Googles API supports the ability to retrieve tiles (if they exist) from an alternate URL. It seems like it would be a very easy modification to your existing code to check and see if updated tiles exist. The complexity in turning this into a feature you can offer to everyone would come from designing a way for users to capture imagery at the correct resolution - you'd have to design an automatic flight path, taking photos at appropriate intervals, then allow the user to upload those files and have a process that extracts the exif location data and creates multiple files with specific naming syntax at multiple zoom levels, etc....and I can see how that would be a LOT of work.
However...if your developers could just build in the call to check a specific server, for updates to the Google base tiles on a specific server - I would be willing to find a way to capture and upload all of the required tiles with the correct naming syntax for all of the zoom levels to both solve my current problem and test the feasibility of extending the product to make these capabilities part of your core product.
Can you at least float this idea past your principle software architect...? My plan would be to use a service like Pix4DMapper to collect the images and generate the individual tiles. I do think it would be very little work from your team, and it could be added in such a way that the new lines of code are only executed for authorized testers that specifically enable the feature (meaning that there would be no chance of it interfering with the mainstream product).
Could you at least take this to them and ask them what they think? Here's the link with the code snippets they'll need... (which I'm sure they already have...)
Thanks...
Tile Layers
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It sounds like we may have to agree to disagree on this one. This analogy is flawed because in this case, the airline is selling you a specific product: a trip from point a to point b, and then not delivering. Autopilot, as a product, makes no guarantee (at the point of sale) that all locations on earth will have satellite imagery that is updated recently enough to support all use cases. The fact that Autopilot uses Google Maps is freely available information that customers can determine before purchasing, and if you have a very specific use case for mission planning, you can verify if Google has accurate enough tiles for your use case before the purchase of Autopilot (for free via maps.google.com). A more accurate analogy would be the airline selling you a ticket with the caveat that there may or may not be turbulence during the flight. The customer has access to freely available weather forecasts before the flight, and can decide if they want to purchase the ticket, which may or may not be for a smooth flight. Then when the flight is turbulent, they ask for a discount.
Happy to continue the conversation over email (our same support team handles forums and emails).
Maybe Mapbox Editor? (disclaimer: we haven't actually used this before, we typically just use Google Earth, but obviously that doesn't solve your problem since its google still)
The team has already thoroughly investigated this feature (including the link you sent) and while it is a very compelling feature, and one that will most likely be implemented at some point, other features are higher priority due to volume of user demand (several orders of magnitude more demand).
Sure. We can agree to disagree - and don't get me wrong - I'm fully aware I have no legal right or entitlement to any kind of refund and I am aware that you are under no obligation to offer any remedy whatsoever. But I did think that perhaps your customer relations department, after understanding my situation, might be willing to offer some sort of compromise rather than just saying "you should have made sure it was going to meet your needs before you bought it"...so if/when I determine that I need to spend more money on another product, I'll make my case to your management and see what they say to the idea of a partial refund. At the end of the day, it's not going to make or break either one of us - but it would be a nice gesture from a customer relations perspective.
Thanks. I'll take a look at it and see if it helps.
So, perhaps you didn't understand what I'm asking. I'm not assign for the full feature that I can see would take a very long time to create and deliver. I'm asking for a hidden, advanced mode in which I or perhaps other advanced users take care of all the difficult, time consuming tasks of creating the update imagery. All I'm asking your team to do is to add a couple lines of code that will LOOK to see if updated imagery exists and if it does, to use it.
What I'm asking for is something that would likely take a couple of hours or less to add to the code (testing included!). So, I'm asking you to take the request/suggestion to your development team and see if they agree that this is something that could be safely added in less than an hour or two...and if so - to consider providing it immediately.
I'm certain this is not an approach that you would have already discussed with them since collecting and uploading the imagery manually is not something you'd ever expect your users to do.
Please just ask them to comment on this and see what they say it would take in terms of effort before deciding that there is no time to do it.
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New Feature Request
@autoflightlogic - Can you please add the following new feature requests to the list?
We currently have another thread going called:
How much ground can I see?. It shows there is a lot of interest in how much of the ground will actually be contained within a picture/video.
1. It would be nice if we could have a new layer in Waypoint creation mode that overlayed a thin yellow box on the ground showing the actual ground area that will be captured by the camera based on the drones current altitude, yaw and gimbal angle. It would make it easier during mission planning - for us to confirm that our focus points are in the right place and that we are capturing what we intended to.
2. I'd also like to be able to create a waypoint by entering the GPS co-ordinates.
3. And perhaps a new map-capture mode that will plot a route for us similar to what DroneDeploy or Pix4DCapture will do - just select an area, an altitude and an overlap - (between 0 and 90) - and then have the waypoint mission automatically created.
If I were assigning priority to these based on my personal needs - I'd make the first 2 "High" and the third one "Low".
Thanks....
@autoflightlogic - Can you please add the following new feature requests to the list?
We currently have another thread going called:
How much ground can I see?. It shows there is a lot of interest in how much of the ground will actually be contained within a picture/video.
1. It would be nice if we could have a new layer in Waypoint creation mode that overlayed a thin yellow box on the ground showing the actual ground area that will be captured by the camera based on the drones current altitude, yaw and gimbal angle. It would make it easier during mission planning - for us to confirm that our focus points are in the right place and that we are capturing what we intended to.
2. I'd also like to be able to create a waypoint by entering the GPS co-ordinates.
3. And perhaps a new map-capture mode that will plot a route for us similar to what DroneDeploy or Pix4DCapture will do - just select an area, an altitude and an overlap - (between 0 and 90) - and then have the waypoint mission automatically created.
If I were assigning priority to these based on my personal needs - I'd make the first 2 "High" and the third one "Low".
Thanks....
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This feature is already on the backlog.
This is already possible. Tap the search button on the map, and then select Input from the resulting menu. Type in the GPS coordinates, and it will give you the option to use it as a new waypoint after centering the map on that location.
This is already partially available via the waypoint drawing tool. Circle the area you want to create a grid for, and then select grid from the resulting menu. Then you can rotate and resize to achieve the overlap you need.
That's awesome - thanks for the reply.
As for the last one - how can I tell if I have any overlap or not? When it first creates the grid, is there any overlap? Are there any gaps? Does the grid path change based on a selected altitude?
For example - if I wanted to fly above an area at 30m and make sure my flight path allowed me to record a video such that I had all of the ground area covered with no gaps and a no overlaps - is that possible with today's product?
So - I guess the features I want would expand the current capabilities to allow that - and also an option to create waypoints at every spot on that grid in which I'd have to take a picture in order to create a map without missing anything....
But as I said in my first post - low priority. There are other apps available that can do this. Having the capabilities in AutoPilot would just be a "nice to have".
Thanks again...
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It just creates the flight path for you, it does no calculations for overlap or pixel density - there are plenty of other apps that go to that level.
Right - I acknowledged the availability in other apps in my previous post - but I wasn't sure if there might not be some kind of non-obvious way to do it with the existing product.
It's availability in other apps is the reason that I labeled this as a low-priority request - but it is still a feature that l'd like to see in a future release of AutoPilot! Will you submit my request to the queue so that product management knows that there is interest in having this capability in Autopilot and can prioritize it accordingly?
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Of course, is it higher or lower priority than the custom map tiles?
Ha ha! You're so funny!!!
Nothing is higher priority than my GPS tiles!
This grid options are very low. I don't even care if you put it on the very bottom - as long as it gets on the list!
@autoflightlogic
I was going to add these questions to my current support ticket but then I thought it would be better to post them here so that your answers might benefit other people instead of just me.
On the flight Dashboard there are 2 concentric circles - red and purple. What do they represent? I'm guessing that the red circle is the Smart Go Home distance? But I don't have a guess for the purple one.
Also - I've attempted to record my screen (with audio) from the app for 4 flights now over the past 2-3 days. In all 4 of them, the video was recorded successfully for the entire flight. In 2 of them, the audio was also successfully recorded for the entire flight. In the other 2 flights though, the audio was only recorded for the first 1 minute and 12 seconds of an 8 minute flight, and for 27 seconds of a 9 minute flight. Is that a known issue? Is there something I can do on my iPhone 6s+ (with the latest iOS updates) to make this work better? Also - as an FYI - when playing back the video on VLC on OSX, the audio is not audible by default. For some reason it seems to have been recorded on Track 2 and by default, VLC only enables Track 1 audio. You have to manually tell VLC to play the Track 2 audio. With QuickTime, the audio is heard without having to make any changes.
I was going to add these questions to my current support ticket but then I thought it would be better to post them here so that your answers might benefit other people instead of just me.
On the flight Dashboard there are 2 concentric circles - red and purple. What do they represent? I'm guessing that the red circle is the Smart Go Home distance? But I don't have a guess for the purple one.
Also - I've attempted to record my screen (with audio) from the app for 4 flights now over the past 2-3 days. In all 4 of them, the video was recorded successfully for the entire flight. In 2 of them, the audio was also successfully recorded for the entire flight. In the other 2 flights though, the audio was only recorded for the first 1 minute and 12 seconds of an 8 minute flight, and for 27 seconds of a 9 minute flight. Is that a known issue? Is there something I can do on my iPhone 6s+ (with the latest iOS updates) to make this work better? Also - as an FYI - when playing back the video on VLC on OSX, the audio is not audible by default. For some reason it seems to have been recorded on Track 2 and by default, VLC only enables Track 1 audio. You have to manually tell VLC to play the Track 2 audio. With QuickTime, the audio is heard without having to make any changes.
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Tap the circle icon with the exclamation point on each ring to see (hint: they relate to distance settings).
Are you doing a screen recording with audio while simultaneously enabling audio recording in the settings? If so, that will probably conflict.
Are you referring to the audio track on the screen recording file? If so, this behavior is out of our control - we are just calling an iOS API to record the screen and the system handles the rest.
Just purchased Autopilot today. Using a P4 but looking forward to using this on my m600.
My question is if anyone can describe the steps to recreate the Solo cable cam?
I get that you assign a button to record waypoint at current location. Based on a post above in this thread, it sounds like you will be prompted about gimbal tilt and get a chance to set interpolate... but I'm still kind of fuzzy on all that. No doubt because I'm a new user.
Anyway, any advice on the best way to set things up to create a Solo like cable cam?
My question is if anyone can describe the steps to recreate the Solo cable cam?
I get that you assign a button to record waypoint at current location. Based on a post above in this thread, it sounds like you will be prompted about gimbal tilt and get a chance to set interpolate... but I'm still kind of fuzzy on all that. No doubt because I'm a new user.
Anyway, any advice on the best way to set things up to create a Solo like cable cam?
Just set up two waypoints and play around with the different options. They're endless. I personally like using the joystick to control the movement. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems joystick movement control would be a nice feature on zipline missions, too.
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