Nightmares planning Astro missions with Auterion MC
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- Instagram / echopres
AMC on the herelink is a headaches for planning complex astro missions.
Spoiler Alert - Auterion Mission Control app is sandboxed.
In this video I dive into #Astro mission planning using the AMC app on the herelink. there is some challenges with planning complex operations.
This video series is SO valuable. Not only do many of us need to find suitable non-DJI (read NDAA/Blue) sUAS alternatives but also sharing your workflows is very affirmational to an otherwise fairly siloed industry. Thanks so much and as always looking forward to the next.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I’m glad you find it valuable.
Goodness gracious we need more videos like this covering real life experiences with the hardware and software
Thank you. Much appreciated.
Nice video. Thanks for the info. I had similar problems planning missions or the lack of importing KML's. Hope this is fixed in a firmware update.
New firmware video uploading now. KML import works!
We aren’t very happy with AMC either. We flew on Thursday, it took 15 minutes of fiddling to get the stupid thing to bring up a background image so I could plan the mission. It seems to require a takeoff point, I didn’t see you do that. I flew a mission at 200 then wanted to refly the same mission at 400 to maximize battery efficiency. I edited the mission (in the air), upload then it starts coming home, what? Turns out it goes to the takeoff point then turns around and goes back to the mission start. It took me a few times to figure that out. Despite using 10% of the battery fighting it it did get about 25% of the mission done before I had it come back to hotswap the batteries. That in itself is a picky procedure. After it processes, pull one battery, put new battery in, double click…it is very particular…click 3/4 second click (not too fast, not too slow)…wait until battery says hotswap then replace other battery. It did resume in the correct spot.
It’s a beautiful flying drone, photos are awesome, PPK is okay but doesn’t replace GCPs. Swiss software sucks as usual. I like that it’s a lot less nanny than the dji drones. I’m an aviator, just shut up and let me fly it, quit taking over in critical situations, I’ve got it. My Cessna never refused to fly because I was in some airspace…that is so dumb. I have clearance but dji doesn’t know that.
Here’s a tip…if you are half a mile away and need to return fast…let it start back then switch to altitude mode and jam the stick full forward and start descending. You will get back with a lot more battery life than it ever will.
My other gripe is shooting video with this thing is an adventure. I got it to work once with a fast empty 64gb SD card in the camera. dji makes that a lot simpler. We use them for scouting…if I have a monument I need which is a long hike I can fly down there to see what it looks like…very handy.
Yes, so many nuances with AMC. There is an update coming out soon that will address some of the issues. You can cache the maps for offline use. That has helped us save some time in the field.
I've had similar woes using Herelink on Harris aircraft. Eventually I discovered how to browse the android file system and transfer files between the sd card and internal memory. The only way I've found is by going to settings - storage and at the bottom there is a button to browse files. I haven't used Auterion, but my company plans to use it in the future. Hopefully there is a way to transfer flight plans from an sd card to the corresponding missions folder for auterion like there is for QGC.
Path to download/upload missions is Optimus > Documents > AMC > Missions.
I really appreciate your videos. We're on the same mission. I love my P4 RTK units but we need to move away from DJI. My favorite photo data sets are now from our Wingtra Gen II, I'm really enjoying that platform. I have a Harris H6 EFI on the way to replace our M600. We'll see how that goes. I'm so sad that the Astro is so clunky. I really like the look of the platform but these planning and execution woes make me very gun shy. The market is thirsty for a P4RTK upgrade & replacement - an M300 killer. We can't just keep buying DJI.
Thank you. There is a lot of us on this mission. I've been curious about the Wingtra, but I'm an eBee guy. I managed to get the first eBee X in the USA and it's bee a great workhorse. I prefer flying with network RTK and not having to PPK. The eBee has been so good and accurate at that....... BUT VTOL would be very very good. Maybe someday. The Astro has some challenges for sure, but I am able to get good data from it. I'm just having to bend to it's workflow vs what I want.
I just pulled out my Astro and updated all the firmware. I flew a small job where i wanted the best resolution. First flight, i had one of those battery swap issues where after swapping, the copter resumes the mission but at full speed. Ugh.
I had to restart the mission, but finally made it to completion.
Image quality was good but not great.
I ordered the 50mm Sony lens and re-flew the mission at the same elevation but i had to fly half as fast as the previous mission that used the 24mm lens.
The image quality was amazing!!!
So now I’m looking at the new controller to replace the Herelink toy. $6k plus the copter needs to be sent back for the upgrade. I want to do it, but i want the non-Chinese radio so I’m waiting until it’s available and then I’ll upgrade.
Did you have any battery issues when changing? I have 1 battery where it’s screen get messed up while charging.
Great video, I appreciated hearing in detail how you work with clients to create a proposal. How did you deal with the airspace issues, you said you were right next to an approach?
I especially like in version 1.1 8.3-1 that the speed STILL defaults to maximum allowed. So plan, save a mission, then open that mission and the speed is set back to 20m/s instead pf the saved parameter of 7m/s. Love this video! Do you have any more recent videos with the herelink/Astro setup? We bought one 3 months ago and it’s been nothing but a nightmare! UgCS now supports Astro/Sony setup for photogrammetry but you still have to run it through the herelink AMC platform and the flight speeds/altitudes are all over the board. Maybe after 2 or 3 uploads will all of the parameters come across correctly. UgCS does not currently support Astro and LiDAR payloads, either…
Anything we can do to assist? Obviously we don’t control the AMC software, but we would be happy to chat on future developments on the hardware etc of herelink.
Hello and thank you for commenting. I would welcome the opportunity to chat about future developments.
Have pinged you on LinkedIn
Good video
Oh, and have you been able to install the latest AMC on the herelink? Mine keeps saying there’s an existing file with the same name and wonmt update the app 😂. Pretty sweet, Auterion. Worked fine on my windows PC though. When I emailed Auterion support about the issue, they told me to contact Freefly as it was their issue to resolve, haha. What?!?