DJI Pilot Flight Planning

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed this but what is the solution to DJI Pilot being an absolute joke for flight planning? It’s sending the m300 all over the site for no clear reason instead of a simple grid pattern. I’m getting started on UGCS but the terrain follow in map pilot is much easier to manage for my new pilots but it’s wasting like 10-15% battery just criss crossing the site. Anyone have a fix?

Yes! Well, its more like coming to “terms” with the shittiest flight planning software EVER.
Sigh… enough of that, we need to focus on how to make it sing!

  1. I create a mission and then I check it, re-check it. I have experienced this “waste of time” and the logic behind the programming, well, defies my logic (I’ve only been a RPAS pilot for 6 years with hundreds of hours of flight time and many many survey missions)
  2. Turning the mission around, clicking on the map to make extra grip points and constantly playing with the settings prevents the problem you speak of… but your “start” points become fixed… this could be an issue on very large sites if you are unable to set your LZ to something reasonably close to the start… or middle.
  3. Depending on your pilot savvy (my crews are all FPV pilots from the start), hand fly your missions. We hand fly sites that are 120 acres or less… it is easier AND smoother to fly by hand. If you have not noticed, the M300 autopilot has NO SKILL and will stop violently, turn violently and otherwise has NO grace in the sky. Pay really close attention to your silicon vibration dampers… they are under insane amounts of stress during autopilot missions and I’ve seen several reports on pilot/aircraft forums of these dampers failing. So much so, we have extra re-enforcement zip ties on the cage as insurance.

I wish Map Pilot would be able to have the M300 coded so we could use that software. I’ve come to love and trust it with all my other birds and I am sad I am unable to use Map Pilot with my M300.

I also wish DJI would allow us to program the TX sticks/expo/other flight features to customize to our flying style, like EVERY OTHER DRONE THEY MAKE. We could fix the bad braking feature, customize our sticks to our style of flight and get more efficient auto piloting.

Does anyone here have clout with DJI? Do they even listen??

Uh, don’t hold your breath regarding DJI. They have what I call Customer NO-Service!!!

We use UgCS and life is like living on the beach, when it comes to mission planning, very productive work flow with ZERO “waste of time”. Terrain follow is built into the system so it’s something we don’t have to think about; UgCS does all that automatically.

BEST $2000 we spent (we got Perpetual subscription)

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WE CAN USE MAP PILOT!!

In our training session yesterday, we fired up our Map Pilot and the flew our test pond with it. Holy cow… my crew was giddy with excitement to watch our bird make GRACEFUL turns in the sky, only slowing down 50-60% of the speed to make these awesome turns. Even stopping was done with grace.

For my subscription money, Map Pilot has it.
I will NEVER use DJI Auto Pilot again. EVER.

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Which one is this? The one from drones made easy?

Nope…

I’ve used their “product” for the last 6 years. I don’t work for them, they just have one of the best autopilot programs out there, IMHO.

When you visit the site, look for Map Pilot Pro.

Cheers!

They support m300 now? unfortunately iOS only, but I used in the past for terrain following and like the software.

It does. NO FPV though. So if you guys want them to support the FPV camera they need enough interest from the community for them to write the code for it. In our conversation with them about it they basically said “nobody uses FPV anyway”. So we should maybe let them know why that is not the case and I’m sure they’ll put some development effort into it sooner than later.

Yeah…
Who is “nobody”?
In my past experience, the FPV view is handy for so many things.

I am just going to mount my “toy” FPV camera to my drone.

So there.

LOL

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Can you run a second M300 remote with DJI Pilot just for FPV?

I do this with UGCS.

Good Question… I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t have a second M300 controller, or I would try.

I can give this a test in a few weeks. I’ll respond once I’ve tried it.

Have you used the terrain following function that was just added to dji pilot 2? Curious of your thoughts!

No, I have not seen the terrain following update for DJI Pilot2.

I’m a Map Pilot/Maps Made Easy fellow. That being said, I am curious to hear news and feedback… I am always listening :innocent: :wink: :grinning:

I’ll let you know in the next few days since I’m really trying not to buy UcGs right away if I can avoid it, looks awesome though!

Maybe it’s because I do majority of my thermal mapping with a m100 and other missions with the inspire 1 back in the day, but holy cow map pilot has not worked at all in the past for me. More than happy to give it another try. Their tag pilot app has been wonderful for reporting hot spots.

I have no experience with their “Tag Pilot” app.

I’ve had really good mileage with Map Pilot. The only glitches I’ve experienced are due to pilot error and my ipad died in the middle of the flight once. LOL, that was fun!

Looking forward to see your experiences.

It’s -25°c right now, with a nice breeze to keep your flesh frozen! No fly for me.

This update is going to help day to day for many people. However, if you’re flying canyons or mountains, etc or just large river valleys even- I would fly the site, make your own DEM in ROCK Surveyor and then follow it.

Okay. The region I fly it is not uncommon to see 1000’ elevation gain or loss. Would the DTM dji pilot 2 downloads not be a great option?

I think for those jobs you may want to check USGS 3DEP availability or something higher res like a custom one you make

Depending on the location you can obtain high quality DEMs from different public agencies. DNR in WA provides a huge library of free data.

Also Map Pilot Pro works well enough but I’ve had issues with uploading the flight data to the drone after calibration and then the software crashing which really will ruin your day when its flight 2 or 3 of a hot swap mission… and were still using an M200 for now.