, so basiclly i bought the iris + for action sports filming , mainly DH mountain biking and snowboarding, I am a fan of 3dr vs my previous DJI naza copters I had ,but follow me is not what I expected and does not change altitude, this is very disappointing to me . I called and spoke with the 3DR support engineers and they explained the complex amount of barometer calculations its doing to maintian altitude, understood! Now whats the solution? possibly lower altitude manually by using a pebble app? as a start, or set a decline rate ? others have to be experiencing this and I would think would open up possibilities. any ideas or anyone familiar with this issue?
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So, I was reading the documentation regarding follow me, it states:
"
Considering this, I'm guessing the main issue to get a follow me including altitude is that there should be a barometric input from the ground...smartphones do have barometers nowadays. There should be someone who alread thought about this I guess... does someone knows any advance on this? haven't found anything yet.
This is SUCH A BUMMER!!!! I feel your pain Ian. Just like you Ian my biggest activities are Snowboarding and Downhill Mountain Biking. Bought my IRIS+ in September as soon as it released mainly for on-mountain, follow-me use. Had not had a chance to test it on the mountain and went out today to test it on a very long set of stairs in the park near me, only to discover that as I descended the IRIS maintained its altitude hold. Was hoping it would always stay however many meters above me I set for it in Droid Planner. Will be out of focus so fast with a GoPro going down the mountain on a snowboard that I will be lucky to get maybe 5 seconds of useable snowboard footage. The other concern is the altitude Geo-Fence perimeter which is all of 320 feet or 100 meters. I'm headed to Sundance film festival in three days and had shooting to do there, then straight to Japan then Aspen then Jackson Hole. Unless I stick to a bunny slope with this thing I have to always have somebody waiting at the top of the run as it will inevitable go into failsafe and return to launch as soon as I am 100m or less below the drone. Add onto that the follow-me lag which never allows the IRIS to truly stay however many meters you set the radius away from you (I have problems with it keeping up when I'm jogging let alone doing 40 miles per hour on a snowboard I can only imagine). The Iris maxes out around 32 MPH.
Oh well, maybe the HEXO+ guys will have figured this out by the time they release in May/June particularly since one of the designers is a big-mountain snowboarder but I honestly doubt it. Marketing people will tell you anything to sell a product or leave out pertinent info. Wasn't hoping to have to buy another drone that soon if Hexo+ does solve this problem which is why I rushed to snatch this one in time for the winter season.
Wondering if this is anything that can be adjusted by making an update to the actual DROID PLANNER application or if it is a true FAILSAFE that is programmed into the PIXHAWK and unable to be changed. Let me know if you or anybody else finds a solution to this. I am pretty bummed out about this. Doesn't help that you can't really get a zoom lense for the GoPro over the Gimbal Housing either to try to compensate for the distance that will stretch every mili-second during decent.
Further to my previous post I have attached the correspondence I had with HEXO+ about this. See the email chain below(read from the bottom email up for right chronological order). Hope they work this out:
Valentin (Hexoplus)
Jan 20, 15:06
You're welcome. It's totally normal. there's a big gap between delivering a simple auto-follow drone and a smart flying camera, that's where all our efforts are.
If you have any feedbacks on video we post or update, please contact us again.
Cheers
Your HEXO+ team
Eric Rhea
Jan 20, 14:09
Thanks Valentin for the feedback. Very interested to see how this issue pans out and hope you guys at HEXO work out the kinks. I will stay vigilant in the meantime.
Valentin (Hexoplus)
Jan 20, 11:50
Hi Eric,
You're perfectly right. Our goal is to provide a drone that fits Xavier De Le Rue expectations. If you have already seen one of his movies, you can easily understand that a follow-me that doesn't include altitude changes would be useluss for him.
Currently, we have tested the follow-me and other camera movements in many different situations and it is working in most of them (running in the mountains, skiiing). Yet, in some specific cases, altitude still remain a problem and it's one of the major issue we're working on at the moment. As you understood it, the goal is to ship a drone with a 100% efficient follow-me feature. We've been working with 3dr but we weren't that happy of the pixhawk system so we decided to work with other suppliers than give a more trustworthy software and would enable us to create this bug-free follow-me drone.
I hope I'm being clear enough and I helped you choose the drone you need.
Thanks for your support
Best regards
Your HEXO+ team
Eric Rhea
Jan 19, 20:36
This is a follow-up to your previous request #11845 "Re: Complete your Purchase"
Hi HEXO+ Team,
I have a very specific and pertinent question regarding your drone. As HEXO seems to be taking some extra steps to ensure the best release can you tell me is the following issue addressed in the chat thread below will be resolved with the HEXO+ or if it is going to have the same issue. This will be a huge deciding factor in purchasing one at release date. I am sure that a whole lot of people will have issues with this, however as one of the main designer/spokesmen for the HEXO says he a "big mountain snowboarder" I would think that hopefully the HEXO team accounted for this.
Follow me doesnt follow decending or ascending altitude
Posted by Ian cardoza (http://diydrones.com/profile/Iancardoza) on January 9, 2015 at 7:55pm in PX4 and Pixhawk Hardware (http://diydrones.com/forum/categories/px4-and-pixhawk-hardware-1/li...)
Send Message (http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/follow-me-doesnt-follow-decending... Discussions (http://diydrones.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=1z5shpvkwswig)
, so basiclly i bought the iris + for action sports filming , mainly DH mountain biking and snowboarding, I am a fan of 3dr vs my previous DJI naza copters I had ,but follow me is not what I expected and does not change altitude, this is very disappointing to me . I called and spoke with the 3DR support engineers and they explained the complex amount of barometer calculations its doing to maintian altitude, understood! Now whats the solution? possibly lower altitude manually by using a pebble app? as a start, or set a decline rate ? others have to be experiencing this and I would think would open up possibilities. any ideas or anyone familiar with this issue?
Permalink (http://diydrones.com/xn/detail/705844:Comment:1885493) Reply by ERIC the IRIS+ Dude (http://diydrones.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?user=0uyigcpv97ga9) 1 second agoDelete (http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/follow-me-doesnt-follow-decending...)
This is SUCH A BUMMER!!!! I feel your pain Ian. Just like you Ian my biggest activities are Snowboarding and Downhill Mountain Biking. Bought my IRIS+ in September as soon as it released mainly for on-mountain, follow-me use. Had not had a chance to test it on the mountain and went out today to test it on a very long set of stairs in the park near me, only to discover that as I descended the IRIS maintained its altitude hold. Was hoping it would always stay however many meters above me I set for it in Droid Planner. Will be out of focus so fast with a GoPro going down the mountain on a snowboard that I will be lucky to get maybe 5 seconds of useable snowboard footage. The other concern is the altitude Geo-Fence perimeter which is all of 320 feet or 100 meters. I'm headed to Sundance film festival in three days and had shooting to do there, then straight to Japan then Aspen then Jackson Hole. Unless I stick to a bunny slope with this thing I have to always have somebody waiting at the top of the run as it will inevitable go into failsafe and return to launch as soon as I am 100m or less below the drone. Add onto that the follow-me lag which never allows the IRIS to truly stay however many meters you set the radius away from you (I have problems with it keeping up when I'm jogging let alone doing 40 miles per hour on a snowboard I can only imagine). The Iris maxes out around 32 MPH.
Oh well, maybe the HEXO+ guys will have figured this out by the time they release in May/June particularly since one of the designers is a big-mountain snowboarder but I honestly doubt it. Marketing people will tell you anything to sell a product or leave out pertinent info. Wasn't hoping to have to buy another drone that soon if Hexo+ does solve this problem which is why I rushed to snatch this one in time for the winter season.
Wondering if this is anything that can be adjusted by making an update to the actual DROID PLANNER application or if it is a true FAILSAFE that is programmed into the PIXHAWK and unable to be changed. Let me know if you or anybody else finds a solution to this. I am pretty bummed out about this. Doesn't help that you can't really get a zoom lense for the GoPro over the Gimbal Housing either to try to compensate for the distance that will stretch every mili-second during decent.
Hey Todd , Thanks for the input but after further reading this Not goin to work for me because of the tolerances , 10-20M, they recommend a 100m flight altitude, is there any devolpement going on to tighten those tolerance to more like 10-20 ft for gopro filming, most of the filming Im doing is less than 50ft and more like 20-30ft . I could see this being a big selling point as I thought it already had this capablities before i bought it.
Very unlikely due to the sensors currently being used especially on smaller quads like the Iris.
Follow Me is hyped without much detail given. Many make assumptions without checking details and are then are disappointed that it won't do what they imagined it could.
I think we are 3 or 4 years away from low cost accurate low level collision avoidance, less for expensive versions. Intel and the people that started this elastic multirotor craze demo'd it at CES ASCTEC they are also the folks behind the flying pixels and who everyone is trying to keep up with.
Ian,
I believe this is what your looking for --> Terrain Following
ToddH