Questions after flightplan deployments

ANAFI Ai
1

Yesterday we tested some GroundSDK mavlink flightplans on the anafi ai drone, and I must say we were impressed by its accuracy and precision. We learnt a lot about the flightplans, and we therefore have some questions.

  1. To our knowledge it seems like the flightplan requires a waypoint. Is this true? and why? The drone doesn’t need a takeoff, but it will fly with a waypoint.
  2. Taking pictures and videos do not work. We tried taking pictures and videos with the flightplans. I’ve tried the example provided in the Parrot Mavlink docs and it won’t run in the simulator. Is there something we are missing?
  3. Is it possible to stream a live video from the drone while executing a flightplan? This could be really useful, since it would be nice to see the drone while executing it. We overcame this by turning on the controller and connecting to the drone while in flightplan, from there we were able to view the stream from the drone.
  4. Does the controller have a wifi connection? When using the ipad as a controller we encountered network problems with the drone. Even though the ipads 4G and wifi was turned off, it could still get a connection to the drone.
  5. Sometimes the controller would require calibration before we used it, but when we tried to calibrate it the app seemed to not respond to anything. Suddenly the calibration requirement was gone, and then it came back and so fourth. We went outside and it still didn’t work. Would like to know why it was erratic.
2

For anyone interested i created a small guide on how to create and deploy flightplans on the real anafi drone.

6

Hi @mgr098,

  1. A flightplan requires at least a waypoint. If you do not specify the takeoff command then the drone will be smart and take-off before trying to reaching a waypoint. What would you want to achieve with a flightplan that has no waypoints?
  2. Have you configured the simulated drone to have a storage? You need to indicate this in your .drone file. See one exemple Configuration at launch time - 2.8.2.
  3. You can live stream the front camera using either OpenFlight, FreeFlight or GroundSdkDemo. You can also branch a micro-HMDI cable to your controller and a screen.
  4. The SkyController has a WiFi connection that is how it connects to the drone directly. If you want to fly the drone via 4G, then the 4G connection of your iPad should be enabled as the SkyController uses the iPad’s network connection to communicate with the drone via 4G.

Best,
Georges

1 Like
8

With regards to 4.) it sounds like you’re trying to fly on 4G without the controller connected. That is not possible as the drone needs to connect to the controller itself via your phone or iPad’s 4G connection (the controller contains the secure element needed to ensure the encryption over the network, if I understand the documentation correctly).