Suggestion for future app feature

[gruvpix]

Not sure if anyone of influence at DJI actively browses these forums, but I thought of something today that would help IMMENSELY in getting panorama photos while in my opinion not being extremely hard to program into the DJI pilot app.
What if there was a set button/preset for shooting panos? With one operator you have to do a very specific yaw movement to get a decent panorama, with two it is easier, but you still have to stitch the images together afterwards. While it is not extremely difficult, it seems like with some help from the app this could be achieved much easier. Could set 90 to 360 degree panos in 45 degree increments and you would have plenty of options, and simply be able to open up the stitched image straight from the microSD on your computer...
My apologies if this has been addressed in another thread, I just was struggling to line up a decent pano and thought to myself there must be a better way!

 

[damoncooper]

One more: POI is coming but it would be super sweet to be able to select a point in space on the screen with your finger and have the a camera track that point smoothly in center frame as you fly by.

I tried being the camera op flying with a friend who was piloting and wow it's harder than you think to fly by an object and keep it centered on screen.

 

[Jeroen van Craaikamp]

i like your idea but technically i expect this will take up to much bandwidth between the camera/drone and controller. As you may have seen, it takes DJI 2-3 seconds to take/store a single photo. I can imagine a couple of alternatives that would enable the same result:

- Time lapse photo's given a fixed roation/rudder speed of the drone (the faster the rotation, the shorter the time delay between the shots).
- 1 photoshot per 30 degree turn of the camera/drone

I guess a time laps function is rather easy to implement and may be used for other purposes as well.
Maybe the next thing will be distance-lap photo shooting (i.e. shoot a photo after every X meters horizontally travelled ) .

Also, i guess there are more pressing features to be implemented that were promised:

- IOC-Point of Interest
- 100 Waypoints DJI (Ground-station style)
- Accessible On-Line Flightlog in cloud

Simple App features that I would also appreciate:

- In users flight details, show max horizontal/vertical speed, max. height, and max. distance
- Mail particular flightlog as a CSV or KML file
- Flight/Battery statistics/analytics (preferably with maintenance recommendations)
- Share Flight Details (i.e. the flight-log picture) from Pilot-App directly to Facebook/Twitter
- Line graph with vert. speed, vert. height, hor. distance to home, # satellites, signal strength, battery power, drone heading, and camera heading (Y values) over time (X- values)
- Time-Laps Photo's (with 3s- 30s interval between shots), enabling panorama/gigapixel stitching

I have been thinking about something slightly more complex App Features:

- Aerial Tripod: Toggle use of right stick to either gimbal pan/tilt operation or aileron/elevator operation (allows pilot to act as camera man when hovering)
- Adjust Gains during flight (easy accessible screen with six 0-100% sliders for resp. Thrust, Rudder, Elevator, Aileron, Pan and Tilt Gain, plus a gain "reset" button)
- Follow Me function via Pilot App; Drone follows Controller position, maintains relative height/distance to controller (switched off when left stick is being moved and/or via the App)

I would be jumping through hoops if the DJI folks would implement programmable manoeuvres:

- Auto Pilot with four controls (toggle on/off on-screen or via one of the switches underneath the controller)
- Auto rudder (preferably with adjustable rotation speed, -100% to + 100%)
- Auto elevation (preferably with adjustable backward/forward speed -100% to + 100%)
- Auto aileron (preferably with adjustable sideward speed -100% to + 100%)
- Auto thrust (preferably with adjustable up/down speed -100% to + 100%)
- Calculated waypoints: circle, oval, 3pt. radius, parallel lines, triangle, rectangle, square, hexagonal, octagonal, (with a tick box to get smoothed corners)
- During flight: GoTo WayPoint (in a direct (3D) line or at a specific height)
- 3D Point of View (camera direction) per waypoint, with smooth camera direction transition between waypoints (allows to pre-program a complete video-shoot)

In general; for the I2/I3 I hope DJI will make the controller programmable like the Futaba 8, 10, 14 or 20 models and add 4 extra switches.

Although I would personally love to be able to zoom in/out (given the height/distance restrictions towards buildings/crowds), this would introduce privacy violations risks, so i'll pass on that request.