Getting dark, last flight of the day so tried to use Droidplanner for first time - velcroed Samsung S3 and 3DR transceiver to roof of car, launched quad to loiter about 20m above, set follow mode and drove around a little to see what it would do.
Quad insubordinately stayed where it was, but just yawed instead.
I had about 700 lumens of spotlights on it, which are bright from a distance so I could see it turning to face me. Quite spooky!
Power to the transceiver from the phone over usb seems quite weak, so when I got out of the car to check the phone settings, I think it (or I) reconnected and it reset the height of the quad to about 1m, and changed the radius instead of leaving it where it was.
Not good! The default needs to be much higher.
Documentation for the software is pretty basic to say the least, so while trying to adjust the settings, it flew forward and crashed into the car.
I discovered then that there was no way to override it using my Taranis, and no time to find a panic button, so just had to watch.
This would be a very good case for voice commands. Operating a mobile phone while needing hands and eyes for other things at the same time is not a good recipe.
Luckily there was no damage to the quad, and the nice thing about having an old jeep is that scratches just add character
Tried again today (without crashing or breaking anything), and so far used up 4 batteries and about 40 minutes of flight time trying to get this to work.
The follow me icon does turn blue, and the drone will respond to altitude changes and circle radius, but it will absolutely not move even though it obviously knows where the phone is to be able to yaw towards it.
Samsung S3, 3DR 915MHz telemetry and H700 with Pixhawk running AC 3.2.
Signal is fairly low because OTG doesn’t seem to be able to supply much power, but both antennas are vertically orientated, and on the quad it’s below the CF body which should act as a groundplane.
Isn’t there anyone that has any idea of why it would watch and yaw, but not follow?
What criteria are required to follow? Signal strength? HDop?
Samsung S3 doesn’t appear to be able to give much power over the usb to the transceiver, but if there was enough of a connection for it to yaw and watch me, then surely it knew where I was and had enough info to follow me!
I should receive a bluetooth adapter with external battery for the transceiver so will give it another go when it arrives and after I’ve repaired it as a result of another crash due to a suspected brownout on a long mission in high winds! Ouch.
If it’s an hdop issue, then perhaps there could be a setting to relax it for testing?
