DJI Ground Station


hover.ch

Member
I just started to use GS, however, I live in Switzerland. I would be more than happy to have someone else using GS to discuss several topics!
 

Yes.... sounds good. I have the 900Mhz Ground Control Station functioning but need to go through simulation training for a few days first..... Seems I have to take my MR apart so that I can remove all the output connections to the escs as well as the GPS. If I am reading the manual correctly so that I can perform simulations safely.... Or is the an easier way?
 

hover.ch

Member
I'm using a 2.4Ghz link but that shouldn't make a big difference in terms of usage.

IMHO, GS is powerful but not very intuitive to use. And the manual is not bad but very hard to read (at least with my English) and there are many questions left open.

Disconnecting the motors is definitively a good idea, or, at least, taking off the propellers. I did not, and, although I carefull switched to simulation mode (I even got the popup window which I confirmed), the copter suddenly took off upon hitting Go... I managed to land safely, but still pretty scary... I honestly didn't double-check whether GS properly switched to simulation mode, my fault. But make sure the copter cannot takeoff even if you plan to stay in simulation mode.

However, although simulation mode might be a good option, it doesn't replace flight tests. And there are plenty of questions popping up once you really start to test GS. Coming from Mikrokopter hardware I must admit that I love WKM's stability but I'm somehow disappointed by GS and it's limitations, except from the nice Google Earth 3D maps.

There are quite some missing features I got used to during the last 2 years, e.g.
- POI in missions (not only in WKM standalone mode)
- ability to "look sideways" while flying waypoints (yes, that's not possible right now except with a 3-axis gymbal)
- ability to record a waypoint of the current location 8at least I don't know an easy way to do so)
- keyboard shortcuts for very basic commands like PAUSE and CONTINUE, a real pitty and a very simple thing to implement

I'm looking forward to learn about users experience with GS/WKM, but it seems that there are not too many GS experts out there.
 

hover.ch

Member
One hint for ground station testing:
Record a screencast of the entire fligth session. That's a big help in the debriefing. Once you have landed safely, or even at home, you can go through the entire flight once again, keeping an eye on some details you missed before.
 

The manual suggests much better radio range link by keeping the Ground Station radio antenna vertical and as high as possible.
But the USB cable is also very short...... adding an extender cable will reduce the power to the radio as there is only 5 volts to begin with.
On the otherhand, adding an antenna cable between existing antenna and the radio would also allow for a higher positioned antenna.
But radio theory indicates significant attenuation in the longer cables.

I think the best approach would be to build a longer replacement USB cable c/w the 2nd head so as to take advantage of the extra power from an alternate USB port.
If anyone know where I can get the pin-outs for the existing cable that would be extremely helpful.
While a 10 to 15km range is possible in the country, for the 900Mhz, the range can be less than 1 kilometer in urban areas..... so radio antenna placement is critical for these frequencies.


hover.ch

Good advice, i.e., to simply remove the props.
I will have to learn how to record a screencast of entire flight session as you suggest for debriefing.
One possible way to record a waypoint of current location might be to select MS OS snipping tool to grap a screen shot.
 


Good info but What do you mean by record a screencast?
Are you saying I should video record the screen or have DJI GCS software record the sim flight into a database that I can open later? If so, how?
 

hover.ch

Member
Good info but What do you mean by record a screencast?
Are you saying I should video record the screen or have DJI GCS software record the sim flight into a database that I can open later? If so, how?

I'm using GS on my MacBook Pro, under Parallels running Windows 7. Quicktime on a Mac has the ability to record the screen content as well as audio. That turned out to be an excellent recording of what happended on GS and in front. If I'm testing several scenarios, "I'm speaking to my Mac", which records my spoken plot together with what I see on the the screen, like a video. Very handy to analyze the entire flight later on.
 



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