DJI Ground Station Pro Settings Explained (In-Depth Walkthrough)

what's going on guys Billy here and today we're going to taking a look at the ground station Pro app offered by DJI this came out just a few months ago and I haven't really gotten a chance to learn all the features until quite recently as it never gave it all that much attention this app is currently iPad only which really does suck and I do hope it comes up for other vices soon as I know a lot of people use iPhones and Android devices now this apps main purpose is to plan flights or as DJI calls them missions before takeoff this app isn't perfect but in today's video I figured I would go over all the settings and fully explain what they mean many of the controls and settings are hard to understand so I do hope that this video helps you guys out now in order to make it easier for you to follow along I will include a red arrow to indicate where I am referring to on the screen now that wasting any more time let's jump into it to start things off let's take a look at all the different settings buttons and icons on the home screen now starting in the top left corner we have the home button and right now it's not doing anything it pretty much has no function when we're on the actual home screen but once we get deeper into making missions and creating different types of missions this will act as a home button allowing us to get back to this home screen right here now next net we have a quadcopter icon that clearly states which drone we're using I feel so this is somewhat redundant as of course you know which drone you're using much of the case you guys have forgotten they've included that in the top for you to take a look at next to that we've got our mode and there's basically the mode that our drone is flying in so right now I'm in GPS mode or the standard pee mode if we flip it over to sport mode we'll notice that this text changes to sport and if we flip the ACPI mode of course it'll switch to ATT I usually I'll keep mine in GPS mode as the drone will be flying itself and I want to make sure that all the sensors around the drone are enabled next we've got the satellite icon and this does two things first of all it'll show us the amount of satellites that are locating our drone to establish a GPS connection and it also shows those 1 to 5 bars it's pretty much a signal strength and are color coded so if you have red it's going to be poor signal strength if you have yellow it's right there in between and if it's white you're all good everything should run perfectly now next to that we also have the remote controller icon this will show us these string the signal strength between the remote as well as the drone again this is color court red means poor signal strength yellows right there in the middle and white means you're all good next we have the camera and I'll show us the signal strengths from the camera as well as which camera we're using again just like the quadcopter icon I feel so this is quite redundant as like the only time that this comes in handy is when you're using inspired room as the inspired rooms do have separate cameras that you can attach next we have two battery indicators the first one is going to show us the aircraft battery and the next one will shows the battery life of our mobile device in this case our iPad now there's two final things we do need to go over on this top bar of the ground station pro app the first are these three dots these are kind of some miscellaneous settings we'll be able to calibrate the compass choose our stick mode turn on math optimization if you're living in the mainland of China and choose our measurement unit between Imperial and metric finally we have this help tab and there's kind of some even more miscellaneous settings showing up the app version the Terms of Use the user manual as well as the license the final icon along the top bar is this flight icon let me click that it'll pretty much start the mission but it's not going to start it right away you are going to have to click another start button before we have to do that it's going to go through all the different sensors calibration etc etc but this some that we'll get into later in the video when we go over some of the different missions there is one final thing that I did forget to mention and that is the line that's going across the bottom of the top bar this is also another battery indicator and when we're actually flying him here it'll show us the amount of time estimated remaining that our battery has until it dies now moving down from the top bar we do get into some more juicy information on the Left we have some of our different missions we can see all of our missions or virtual offense missions our Waypoint missions and our 3d map missions and from here we're able to load up these missions that we've already saved now moving over to the map we'll notice that we have three icons need to pay attention to first of all it will show us our current location and I can tell you right now I'm not standing underneath in that tree for some reason it sure is a fake location or shows some place that you aren't and I suppose there's a glitch at the moment I hope this is something that D Drive fixes as this is super annoying when I'm trying to plan my mission next we have this green circle marked with an H in the middle this signifies our home point and then finally just underneath of that we have this white circle with the blue triangle in the middle this shows where the drone is currently located and just next that it'll also show the distance of the drone from the home point moving along we have three more buttons in the top right corner that we need to go over I'm not really sure what these official names are for this video I'm going to refer to them as button one button two and button three so hopefully that's easy enough for you guys to follow now button one is going to snap to our current location so once you click this well notice that it pretty much centers us on the screen if we move all the way over here and click it again it'll snap right back to our current location button two is going to show us different map styles so right now I'm on a satellite view I can then switch to a hybrid view which is maps or street names as well as satellites and then I can switch over just to a pretty much street view usually I use the satellite view so I can actually see what I'm mapping and I don't have to deal with all those street names pretty much clogging up my screen now as far as button 3 goes right now it's grayed out and for some reason I haven't been able to get it to work throughout my entire time of using this app so as you guys know what this does make sure leave it in the comments below and once I find out I'll throw it down in the description for you guys so a long time I thought it was going to be able to snap the whole entire map to look north as you guys know if I rotate it this way and I click this it should be able to snap it up like that I hope you guys understand what I mean but as a right now it's grayed out and I have no idea what it's used for and finally to wrap up the buttons on the home screen and the bottom right corner we have the new mission button from here we can choose a new virtual sense a new 3d map or a new Waypoint root mission so guys as I said this pretty much does wrap up this home screen now let's move on to creating some different missions for the second half of this video I am going to do it a little bit differently usually I'll get the footage first and then do the voiceover afterwards but I'm going to do this live so I'm talking you guys right now as I'm controlling the iPad which shouldn't make it easier for you to follow along as I create these different missions now I do want to mention that I since disconnected my iPad from my phantom 4 Pro and the cool thing about this app is you don't need to be tied down to the remote to actually create different flight plans so whether you're out in public whether you're laying in bed or you just can't connect your drone at that moment you're still able to create all these missions that I'm showing you guys right now jumping down into the new missions tab we'll see what we have three separate mission types virtual sense 3d map and Waypoint route now let's first take a look at virtual sense and this works pretty easily it pretty much works just how the title says it's going to create a virtual sense that our drone cannot fly out of so we can do this by either tapping on the screen or controlling the aircraft and flying to the destination so the first thing we're going to do tap and let's say we want to create a virtual sense around this green so we'll tap in the middle which will bring up a box now we can move these different way points around and if we want to create a different way point we can click the plus button in the middle from here we can set some different settings on the right side and look at the different values around the screen so let's go and take a quick walk through first of all in the top right we can set the mission name by clicking the pencil button for right now I'm going to keep it as mission 9 next we're going to see our mission type which is obviously virtual sense and after that we'll be able to set our maximum speed as well as the maximum altitude that our term can fly at underneath of that we'll be able to see the latitude and longitude of the virtual sense and we'll also be able to delete a point if we don't like where we've set that Waypoint at next we have these Joystiq looking things there's different arrows and basically this is used to fine-tune where that point is so sometimes you can't get that exact place that you want the point to be set so if we move that Waypoint down just a little bit it'll move it ever so slightly which is perfect if you're kind of trying to map out a really tight area next we have this little black box and this will be used if our drone is connected so we'll be able to see what the camera sees if we're trying to fly around and set this with our aircraft rather than tapping on the screen but for right now our drum is disconnected so we're just going to see nothing next to that we also see some different information about the drone we'll see first of all the heading of the drone and then the speed the latitude and longitude and also the altitude as I said it currently my drone is not connected so there's going to be nothing for those values but once you start up your drone you'll be able to see where it's located the altitude the speed etc etc and finally once we're done creating this virtual fence mission in a top of corner we can simply click Save and boom you're saved now we can click the back button in the top left corner and we'll notice that the virtual fence is still there on the screen using the aircraft to actually set the virtual sense it's pretty similar to actually tapping on the screen the only difference that you actually need to fly the drone around so as you fly around you'll be able to see these three buttons along the side we had finish set and it's kind of like a back arrow button basically if you accidentally set a point you're able to delete that so as I walk around or as I fly around you notice that as I click set these different weight points set and then once I'm all finished I click finish and the virtual sense has been set from there I'm able to tweak all the different settings like changing the speed as well as the altitude the next mission type that we have is 3d map this allows the dream to fly through an area that you've selected to map out what's on the ground such as buildings agriculture fields etc etc so once we click on 3d map we can actually lay this map out by tapping or the aircraft so first of all let's take a look at the tapping method now let's say we want to map out this hole just like you laid out with the virtual fence first of all we're going to tap in the middle of the screen to bring up the box now we can move these waypoints around just like we did in the virtual sense mission types and then we can also hit the plus button in the middle to add new waypoints so we can make it nice and defined and really get the area that we want so this area right here looks pretty nice this is a good little example to show you guys how to lay out the waypoints but from here it really doesn't work all that well when I show you how to actually 3d map this area so for that let's move on to another example that I created just a few days ago here I've laid out some confines around the 14th hole on the golf course that I live on as you can see the blue line signify the area and the green line signify the path that the driven will fly on to take pictures in order to hide those green lines we can tap this button in the top right corner usually I would recommend turning this on and keeping it on as you always want to know where your drone is flying and the expected route that is going to be flying along underneath of that we can hit the pencil icon just like with the virtual sense to change the name of the mission for now I'm going to leave it as golf course 14 full 3d map underneath of that we have some information we can look at first of all we see the mission type which is 3d map - area we have our flight time estimation which comes in at around 5 minutes and 59 seconds after that we have our flight length which is 3537 feet and then finally you have our waypoints quantity which comes in at 78 now the waypoints quantity kind of goes hand-in-hand with how many photos it takes usually the camera on the drone will take photos at every single Waypoint so you're going to come out with around 78 points or 78 photos give or take one or two underneath of all that information you have two separate tabs basic and advanced first let's go over some of the different options under basic the first option we have is camera model with this I've selected fan of for pro but you do have a wide range of different camera models to choose from obviously you want to choose which drone you're using for me I have the Phantom 4 Pro just because that's the one that I use when mapping using ground station Pro and you always want to make sure you have your camera selected as switching up drones will switch up the estimated flight time for some reason so right now I've got the Phantom 4 pro camera if I switch the Phantom 3 professional camera it bumped it down again I have no idea why but you always want to make sure that you have your drone selected to get an accurate representation of how long the flight will take underneath of that we have our shooting angle which is parallel to main pass and vertical to main pass now one thing that I've noticed is that when you shoot with vertical to main path it's definitely going to add a lot more lines or a longer path that the drone will have to follow along but the lines always tend to be straight where sometimes when you select parallel the lines will be sideways just like this one right here although parallel to main path may save you some time I really tend to shoot on vertical to main path just to make sure that my photos come out looking nice and crisp and they all line up together when I'm stitching them together next up we have our capture moon we can choose between hover and capture at point capture at equal distance interval and capture at equal time interval now the two less options the two interval options kind of go hand in hand with hover and capture at point the general stop at each individual Waypoint take a picture and then continue to move on to the next one with catch our equals distance interval where the drone is going to continue to fly along its path and not stop but it does fly at a slower speed so if we choose our hover and capture at point we'll notice that we can change the speed up and down but if we choose something too late equals distance interval we're not be able to choose the speed whatsoever usually I would recommend choosing cover and capture at point as I feel like that's the way you get the best looking images next up we've got our flight course mode we can choose between inside or scan mode now the way that inside node works is basically like a virtual sense almost the dream will never leave the confines of the area that you've selected if we select scan mode we'll notice that sometimes the driver cut corners such as right here in the middle of the screen would go outside of the area to make sure that it gets to the next point or the next line that needs to travel along as fast as it can usually I would always recommend staying on inside mode as you want to make sure the drone is always inside of your area you've selected as you know that that area is going to be safe underneath of the flight course mode we can change our speed as well as our altitude that the drone will fly at when it's moving inside of the area as you can see the altitude does change the flight course pass the reason that it changes that is because obviously the trim will be higher and it's going to take larger pictures so it doesn't need to make as many sweeps another word on going over some of the options under the basic tab let's move over to the more advanced settings which features some different sliders that really allow us to take control of how the flight will go so first of all we have our front overlap ratio and our side overlap ratio this is going to choose how much the pictures will overlap and usually when using a service like drone deploy to stitch together your images they recommend that you use a 70% overlap so usually I would always recommend keeping these overlaps over 70% when we change the overlap ratio for front will notice that the weight points go up and down and when we change the size of a leper ratio we notice that the whole entire flight path actually changes the next option we have to change is course angle and this will actually choose which way the drone flies so I would like to choose something that looked natural like if we see this right here there's a bunch of lines going everywhere and for some reason that just doesn't look natural for me the drone is going to be flying everywhere and I feel like it's almost going to struggle to take pictures so usually I'll set the course angle to something that looks the most natural and something that will make the drone and you know give it a nice easy task to fly along which is this right here it looks like the dream is going to make some sweets going back and forth which is going to be nice and easy next up we have margin which will dramatically change the flight route so as we can see when we move it towards the left the more virgins around the outside of the area actually get bigger and something like using negative eighty six feet it's going to be ridiculous the German isn't even actually going to pick up anything along the top usually I'll keep the margin all the way at zero feed just look at the outsides of the area overlap and when I'm trying to make a nice 2d map I'll make sure that we're getting the whole entire area that I've selected in the frame underneath of margin we have gimble pitch angle I would always recommend keeping it at a negative 90 degree angle as that's going to have the camera look straight down and when you're making a 2d map that's the best way to have the camera you're not going to have it at zero degrees looking straight forward as you're going to be taking pictures of trees and sky the final thing that we get to choose under the Advanced tab is the end mission action we can choose between return to home hover and land now to choose the return the home altitude we can simply click on it again and choose our return home altitude as for the rest of the things across the screen it's pretty much the same as the virtual sense in the top left corner we have the Save icon and the bottom left corner we have some information about the drone such as the heading the speed the latitude and longitude positioning and the altitude we also get in the bottom right corner those joystick looking buttons that allow us to really fine-tune our waypoints so we can select this Waypoint up at top will notice that we can actually move where it goes using these little arrows and everybody does come in handy when you're trying to get a nice precise position using the aircraft is set up to 3d area is fairly easy all you need to do is fly from place to place and click the set button to place a different wave plate or a different marker you can hit the back button underneath of that to delete a point that you just placed and once you're all done you can click the finish button in the top right corner from there you get access to all the different settings that you get when you're actually tapping on the screen to set the area the third and final mission site that we have is Waypoint flight this allows you to set a course for the dream to fly along that includes multiple waypoints with different actions we can set these by either tapping on the screen or setting them with the aircraft just like in the DJI Go app first let's take a look at the tapping method setting a course is super easy all you need to do is tap on the screen to set the different points here we'll notice that the starting point is marked by a circle with an S in the middle if you want to add another point in between any of the points already declared we click the plus button and drag first of all we'll be able to change the name by simply clicking the pencil icon then we can see the mission type which is our Waypoint flight next we have the flight time estimation which comes in at around 1 minute and 25 seconds underneath to that we have our flight length which comes in at 845 feet and then finally it comes in with the total quantity of waypoints which is around 7 underneath of that bit of information we can change the settings for all the points or for each point individually so first let's go over some of the different options for all points first of all we get to choose the speed at which the drone will fly moving this back and forth well does change the flight time estimation underneath of that we can set the altitude for the entire trip after choosing our altitude we can choose the aircraft heading this basically chooses which direction the gern will face when it goes to each Waypoint so first of all we can choose course aligned so it pretty much will face straight as it moves to each Waypoint it'll follow that Green Line and look straight ahead towards the next Waypoint we can also choose defined per point which allows us to go under the each point settings and choose which way we want to turn to face at each of the different way points finally we can choose manual which allows us to choose the heading of the course manually from every mode using the sticks next we get to choose the pitch angle of the gimbal if we have defined per point selected we can then change the pitch angle of the gimbal at each points under the each point tab in the top right corner if we haven't selected to manual we get to select this by ourselves as we're flying using the left wheel on the remote controller finally we get to choose our end mission action we can choose hover land or return the home if we click return to home from here we get to choose the altitude at which the drone will return to home at another we're done taking a look at the general settings for all the points let's move on to the tab that does each point which allows us to customize what the drone does at each individual point first we have altitude if this is set to disabled the drone will stay at 210 feet throughout the entirety of its course if we click enabled we're now allowed to choose the altitude per point so right now I've got 400 feet at this point but if we move on to the next point the altitude is still set at 210 and that goes for saying for each of the different points underneath of the altitude we also have our aircraft heading and right now we're not able to change that but that because we need to go back to all points and change the aircraft heading over to defined per point now once we go through each point will notice that we could change the aircraft heading depending on which way point we go to also when we take a look at the actual map one of us that there is a little line or a little arrow next to each of the waypoints that has now appeared the actual way that the aircraft will be pointing is signified by that little arrow above the circle so as we notice when we move back and forth we can see that the drone is moving from side to side so we can really choose which way we want the term to be facing underneath of that we can choose which way we want the aircraft to rotate either clockwise or counterclockwise and we'll notice that this is signified by that little arrow next to the dot or next to the Waypoint finally we get to choose our gimbal pitch angle and because in our all-points section we have choose defined bur point we can choose any value between 0 degrees and negative 90 degrees as we know zero degrees is looking straight forward and negative 90 degrees is looking straight downward the final thing that we get to choose is a waypoint action once we click add Waypoint action we'll notice that there is a list that include hover photo capture start recording stop recording aircraft rotation and gimbal pitch rotation so let's say at this point we wanted to hover and we want it to photo capture we can reorder these by moving it up and them up and down or we can propagate actions so therefore it will move these actions to all other waypoints one thing that I must mention is that these waypoints don't act like the one in the DJI Go app as you know in the DJI Go app it'll continue to be go to each Waypoint and keep moving but each time that it gets to a waypoint in this application it comes to a whole NS stop which is kind of weird I feel like I would wish though to rather go on a fluid motion through each of the waypoints and not stop at each Waypoint I'm not sure if DJI intended it to do this but again I do know that this was made for mapping and not really for cinematic purposes as far as the rest of the icons go on the screen they are pretty much exactly the same from all of the other mission types in the top left corner we can save our mission in the bottom left corner we have some different things like the aircraft's heading the speed the latitude and longitude of a points and the altitude finally in the bottom right corner we have the same thing and we have that little joystick green thing the arrows that allow us to really fine-tune where the points go the one new thing that we have is this icon right next to the delete button and it says in SNMP and basically this swaps between the start and end points so right now my start icon is towards the bottom of the screen and I'm finishing where the blue Waypoint is in the top left corner if we click this button the rolls will reverse so we start all the way up in the top left and end all the way in the bottom if we choose to select our Waypoint using the actual aircraft rather than tapping it works almost exactly like it does in the DJI Go app we just have to click set when we get to the point that we want to actually drop a waypoint if you want to delete the previous Waypoint that we just set click the back button that is located underneath of the set button and once we're done click on the finish button from there you'll get access to all of the settings that you did when you would tap on the screen the last thing that I want to go over with you guys is this screen that pops up once we go to take off basically it's kind of like a prepare for flight checklist it shows us which drone reducing as well as which mode we're flying in it shows the distance from our flight area the GPS the compass and IMU the battery the camera SD card and mission action as well as the Waypoint once you see all green you should be good to go it starts to fly and make sure that there's nothing above you so the drone can take off smoothly and not run into a tree that would probably be something that you don't want to happen but anyway I'm going to wrap this video up here I hope you enjoyed make sure you like and subscribe if you're new around here to have trying to upload daily also make sure leave a comment if you have any questions whatsoever I know this certainly was a long video and I'm sure that DJ I will make some changes to ground station pro in the future and if they do add a new mission types or does any new settings I'll be sure to cover them in the next video or another video down the road so guys as I said this video is coming to an end and I'll talk to guys later peace [Music]

Channel: Billy Kyle

Views: 51,975

Keywords: DJI, DJI Phantom, DJI Phantom 3, DJI Phantom 4, DJI Osmo, DJI Osmo Mobile, iPhone 7, DJI Mavic, DJI Mavic Pro, DJI Inspire, DJI Inspire 2, DJI Phantom 4 Pro, DJI Phantom 4 Professional

Id: 1nuPypFQ3nI

Length: 24min 21sec (1461 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 05 2017