DJI Mavic Active Tracking My 4Runner

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At the end did you take manual control to back and lower it?

I want one some day, for now I keep spending money on my 4Runner.
 
Yeah. Slammed on the brakes to keep it from following me any further, then stopped the active tracker and flew it down manually. There's a 31ft height limit on AT which you can't reduce, making it almost impossible to fly lower than the trees which cover the road.
 
I took the Mavic out again this weekend to AT a friend of mine in his H1, complete with automatic orbits for that 'kick ass' rotational view.

This time I went full on into the trees by accident as the orbit feature has no side sensors, so it couldn't avoid the obstacles and I couldn't shut it down fast enough. The resulting footage was pretty awesome (I'll post the out take some time this week.)

Basically, it hit some branches, tumbled down (in a roll) and somehow recovered 3 feet from the ground in a cattle corral and went into a hover. The drone survived with no damage and I was able to fly it out of the corral just fine.

Now, I'm not saying this fortunate situation would happen to you if you decide to trim some trees with it, but I was impressed with the durability of this little guy. I'm sure if my P3 had done something similar, it would have been a different story (mostly due to the size than anything else).
 
Cool. I'm hoping to get one of those drones before my big trip this summer. How long did it take you to learn to use it?
 
I owned a Phantom 3 for about a year before the Mavic came out, so I was pretty familiar with flying drones. It took maybe an afternoon to get comfortable with the controls/features of both.

The biggest thing is getting past the idea that you're flying a $1000+ device that, if crashed, could be an expensive waste of funds. Once you move past this fear, you'll find the whole experience much more enjoyable and willing to take more risks to get 'the shot'.
 
Well, I finally bit the bullet and ordered one today! Kind of scary to shell out that much cash for a "toy", especially one that might crash. But I also got their insurance, so that helps.

Really looking forward to getting some awesome aerial shots when I'm exploring old mines and ghost towns this summer!
 
Mine just arrived today. It'll probably be a few days before I can get to a grassy, open area for a test flight. Until then, I've got a lot of studying to do.
 
Ray Dunakin said:
Mine just arrived today. It'll probably be a few days before I can get to a grassy, open area for a test flight. Until then, I've got a lot of studying to do.
Click to expand...

You can put it in Tripod mode which slows everything down and is a good way to get comfortable with the controls. If you also set it to beginner mode, you can limit the altitude/distance and get familiar with it in your own backyard.

About the scariest part of this whole thing with the Mavic is the periodic application crashes you'll experience on phones such as the S7. This seems to happen when you have collision avoidance on, in advanced mode (like active track) and have alot of sensory input to process (lots of trees or windy conditions). Once the app crashes, the drone continues on whatever path you had it on (if in orbit mode, for example), but you'll lose any visual you had from your phone until you relaunch the app. I haven't quite figured out how to interrupt one of the advanced modes from the controller itself, but I'm sure there's a way to do this to bring it into a hover to avoid autonomous uncontrolled flight.

As you can imagine, if you were right in the middle of something that required precise control, you might end up crashing into something during the brief period the app is down.

I've since reinstalled the DJI GO app after the last crash and haven't given it a full test to see if this remedies the issues, but it's something to be aware of.
 
Thanks for the tip and the warning. I have an iPhone, so maybe I won't have the same app crashing problems.

I just went out to the desert Monday and returned the next day, had lots of flights and shot some awesome video. I hope to have some of the best clips posted soon.

It didn't take very long to figure out how to fly it, but I'm still working on getting all the details down. For instance, I completely forgot about the dial to work the gimbal! I also need to remember things like using Cinematic Mode for smoother camera moves, setting the white balance, etc.

And I still haven't figured out how to do some of the tracking stuff. I got it to follow me, but never could get it to profile track, orbit, or track from the front.
 
Ray Dunakin said:
It didn't take very long to figure out how to fly it, but I'm still working on getting all the details down. For instance, I completely forgot about the dial to work the gimbal! I also need to remember things like using Cinematic Mode for smoother camera moves, setting the white balance, etc.

And I still haven't figured out how to do some of the tracking stuff. I got it to follow me, but never could get it to profile track, orbit, or track from the front.
Click to expand...


  1. When in cinematic mode, the thing to remember is the drone will not stop on a dime like it does in normal mode. This means if you're racing along to get the shot and let go of the controls to get it into a hover because you're about to smack something, it will glide another 10-30 feet before coming to a stop. This can be a bit unnerving if you're not ready for it.
  2. When you are in active track, there is a slider bar at the bottom of the view. If you press anywhere on this slider bar left or right it will begin an orbit and keep this orbit until you return the dot back into the middle or hit the stop button. Keep in mind there are no side sensors on the Mavic, so if you're orbiting around near trees, it won't use collision avoidance to detect them and you'll end up smacking into them like my second video shows.
  3. By default, AT likes to track from behind due to the vision sensors being on the front rather than the back of the drone and is a 'look down' feature only. It won't track things above it (as evidenced when I was trying to track another drone).
 
Again, thanks!

Here's the first video from my recent trip. It's a really nice tracking shot through a winding, desert canyon:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y-AP5vOOsy4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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