Hi all and merry xmas new to droning ( apart from smashing those little crappy indoor ones to pieces) and i told my wife i would love one for xmas. She spent over an hour on he phone with SLRHUT and after having spent a long time discussing with the guy that i wanted this mainly for the follow me function for skiing to film my students and family he talked her into going for the Phantom 4 with the exclusive pack. Way above the price i had expected my wife to pay as i had seen some much lower priced models that would do what i needed. however like a kid in the candy shop i was well chuffed and straight to the park for some play time. Lovely action easy to use very stable on my first few flights a few nervous moments but then i started to look at all the other functions as i will be teaching again in 2 weeks time. I tried the tracking funtion on my children and myself with the dog running around the park and all looked brilliant until i did this from a high hill. The drone does not descend as it tracks the object. This will be a disaster on a ski slope as once a pupil is 500 foot below their starting point firstly they are now the size of an ant on the video and secondly other skiers would blend in with my students and the drone would then follow and fly off with someone else. I tried speaking to SLRHUT to see if i was doing something wrong however they had no idea and sent me straight to DJI. DJI have advised that the drone will not descend and therefore i have a £1500 drone and accessories that is of no use to me. I have most of the original packaging however with their 28 day money back guarantee SLRHUT have advised i will lose 15-25% to repackage the item as new. Firstly can anyone confirm that the Phantom 4 will not match the altiitude of the object it is tracking? Secondly is there a drone with a decent camera that will do this that i can buy instead. Finally are SLRHUT being out of order charging me 15-25 % repackaging costs for something they have wrongly sold to my wife. Thanks to all for reading and for any help they can give me. Have a great new year all.
I would try to map a gps course with altitude points, then have it follow the course as you ski. I have no knowledge of drones that follow and descend, but some may do it if they GPS track your phone and stay a set distance away from it.
The P4Pro will fly Relative to the ground, but, that doesn't help you much ,eh . Have you used Litchi app yet? Unlike the waypoints feature in the DJI Go app, you can plan make up a waypoint mission on your laptop, using the Litchi hub website. I;ve run a 18 point "mission" along the big slope at Blue mtn. ski resort, I had to follow & shoot a group of teens, who were taking snowboard lessons. Of course the elevation changes would have me driving into the side of the hill unless I flew my Psa manually, but I figure flying & running camera I'd probably catch a mogul along the way. So, I used Litchi waypoint mission to make a track down the hill. From there you download your completed mission into google earth, hit "relative to the ground" & my bird flies the whole hill staying at the height (11') you tell it too. To see how its done, look on U-tube & google Litchi mission using Google earth relative to the ground & more than one will come up showing you "how to". It sounds complicated but, after the first one, (I did a short mission in a big open field, big hill at one end,) then it will come easy to you good flying Roy- Ontario, Canada
There are probably ways to do this - but it's not perfected by any means, especially when you are dealing with trees and other obstacles on a ski slope. What you are asking for is precision and GPS and barometers on consumer drones are not designed for this. I think the big question is whether you want to invest the time and money - and experimentation - to get something working. If not, perhaps within another year there will be out of the box solutions which are close. As another poster mentioned, there are ways to preprogram a flight. But that still doesn't change the tracking aspect. What you need at minimum is: 1. A device or separate watch, etc with GPS and/or a barometer. 2. Possibly a 3rd party app like autopilot or litchi https://autoflightlogic.com/autopilot/flightschool#limitations-barometer It may be that the Mavic Pro - which can be operated directly from the device (phone) - can track fairly well if the device has a baro and GPS. You'd have to look into people who have tried it. In that case, the skier would have to carry the iphone or android phone and the drone would follow it.
