First indoor flight with P4P - ice rink

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Just testing out indoor flying with my P4P for an upcoming shoot.
Next time they will have the Zamboni out on the ice to shoot.

I was in P-Opti mode and the P4P held pretty steady despite very little contrast on the ground for the camera positioning system.

I noticed that there was a lag when letting go of the sticks. The P4P would not stop as fast as it does in GPS mode. It would slowly come to a stop so I had to make sure to use some backward right stick to stop it quickly.

Other than that it performed very well. It was still scary with all the cables and obstacles in the ceiling. Not sure if I will have much clearance to fly between the top of the Zamboni and the cables and lights in the ceiling. We'll see.

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-Darin
 
"I had to make sure to use some backward right stick to stop it quickly."
I guess that would be considered manual braking.
Glad it worked out well. Watch out and be safe.
 
Neat - out of interest, did the height / altitude readings look like they were accurate indoors (I was thinking about how close you could safely fly to that ceiling predictably), as you indicate GPS off only removes positional control. Keep us posted, interested & good luck
 
Neat - out of interest, did the height / altitude readings look like they were accurate indoors (I was thinking about how close you could safely fly to that ceiling predictably), as you indicate GPS off only removes positional control. Keep us posted, interested & good luck
You know, I was SO concentrated on making sure the drone never got close to any obstacle, I barely looked down at the iPad screen. I did briefly to switch into tripod mode, but I honestly never even looked at any of the telemetry data.

The altitude stability wasn't as rock solid as in GPS mode so I had to make small adjustments with the left stick to keep it from drifting up or down. It wasn't drifting a lot, but compared to flying outside, there wasn't a lot of margin for error.
I'll have to take a look next time I fly indoors.
 
No problem - in case you don't know, one can replay past flights from the DJI App (at any speed) & see all the details including stick movements, telemetry info etc.. useful sometimes if you get a message from app mid flight & want to go back review etc
 
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Neat - out of interest, did the height / altitude readings look like they were accurate indoors (I was thinking about how close you could safely fly to that ceiling predictably), as you indicate GPS off only removes positional control. Keep us posted, interested & good luck
Right, I forgot all about that.
I checked the flight and the height looked relatively close. Hard to say how accurate it was, but it seemed pretty close to me.
I also didn't realize that the RC was switching from OPTI to GPS to ATTI mode a few times throughout the flight. Maybe that's why it was drifting and not stopping quickly.
It's strange because I switched it to Tripod mode once and it stayed that way for a while, but then switched out of Tripod mode on its own. Then it resumed switching between OPTI, GPS, and ATTI.
I also showed 0 GPS satellites throughout the entire flight. So I am not sure why it would go into GPS mode at all. I have heard horror stories about picking up GPS satellites while flying indoors and having the drone crash.

Oh well. I didn't even notice the different modes switching. I am pretty comfortable flying regular RC helicopters indoors, so maybe ATTI mode seemed fine to me.
 
Thanks for update. Yes probably good idea to change RTH setting when flying indoors to hover too, avoid the dreaded AC trying to fly up & home if somehow it disconnected. Cheers
 
Great footage. Just wondering: Without GPS, is it possible to perform auto landing, given that that's needed for altitude control?
 
Great footage. Just wondering: Without GPS, is it possible to perform auto landing, given that that's needed for altitude control?
Don't know. I didn't use auto take off or auto landing. However, I don't think the P4P uses GPS for altitude anyway. I think I read somewhere that GPS is really inaccurate for altitude anyway.
The barometer is used for height. The altitude info seemed pretty accurate so I assume auto-landing and takeoff should work. Maybe the other downward sensors also can measure height at low altitude.
 
If the VPS sensors are anything like those on the Inspire, they are extremely accurate.
On the Inspire, they are what stop the transforming motor when changing from landing mode to travel mode.
They measure the distance from the bottom of the aircraft to what is below it.
Accurate to +/- .25".
 
Great footage. Just wondering: Without GPS, is it possible to perform auto landing, given that that's needed for altitude control?

As mentioned, GPS is not needed or used for height at all, indeed generally not accurate for height. Barometer is used for height & VPS assists. I'm not sure about Auto Landing without GPS as I've not tried it but can see absolutely no reason why it should not work just fine. Must try it now [emoji6]
 
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