How to Use POLLi With the Sony Airpeak S1

With the new support of Sony’s Airpeak S1 drone there are some fine details that one needs to know when dealing with this drone and how it interacts with POLLi. Since the main way one will fly this drone is via the Sony Airpeak Flight App, it is important to know the interactions of both POLLi and Airpeak Flight.

Airpeak S1 General Information:

Batteries

The Sony Airpeak S1 comes with standard lipo batteries that charge up to two at a time on a provided charger from Sony. One thing to keep in mind for charging the Sony Airpeak S1 batteries is that the charge time on these will be long and the discharge time will be short. Expect to get 12-16 minutes of flight time and 2-4 hours of charging time per pair of batteries.

Camera & Gimbal

The camera gimbal provided should be calibrated well, but be prepared to have to calibrate it again if you chose to use a different lens than what was provided. As well, get familiar with the camera you are using, going for a flight and taking normal pictures using Airpeak Flight in normal manual controlled flight will give you an idea of how the camera itself handles and how much control you have over it while in flight.

Field Necessities

Calibrate drone if flying in an area far enough away from the previous flight or if the drone asks for recalibration. The Airpeak S1 will ask for regular calibrations regardless if you take off in the same location about every 14 calendar days. Calibrate the controller as necessary and power up the RTK ground antenna and allow that to calibrate to get to within the ~5 ft accuracy range.

Automated Missions:

POLLi

When creating a flight plan with POLLi and then transferring the flight to Airpeak Base it is important to pay attention to what you’re doing in POLLi as that is where you can edit and change your flight settings and not in Airpeak Base. To create an automated flight plan follow these steps:

  • First go to your POLLi account and create a flight plan as normal within a premade site (or make a new one for the flight).

  • After putting your area of flight down and you get more settings on the left hand side of the screen go to the top left and click the three dots and select the “Airpeak Mode” to begin editing your mission.

  • Using forecasts for winds, try and predict the best possible angle for winds if you’re not going to be flying the same day that you are creating the flight plan. If you are planning to fly the same day then looking at where the wind direction is via official aviation weather sources will be the most accurate data.

  • Your RTH and enroute altitude, due to how the Airpeak S1 functions and starts automated missions, should be at your mission altitude. If you deviate the RTH altitude from the mission altitude you risk getting bad images at incorrect altitudes due to rapid corrections from the drone.

  • Figure 1 shows a mission that was freshly made and put into Airpeak mode and Figure 2 shows a mission that has been edited to get closer to what we anticipate the weather and take off points to be.

Figure 1

Figure 2

  • On the main screen of the flight plan you will notice a red “H” home button that you can maneuver around. This should be placed in the relative takeoff position. It does not have to be the exact takeoff position but near the takeoff position due to terrain follow. If you put this icon in a position with high elevation difference for your actual takeoff position in the field then terrain follow will not function properly.

  • After you have completed any other necessary steps and the mission is how you want it then in the top left corner of the settings there will be a button with 3 dots with an option to swap over to the “Airpeak Mode”. Here you should have the same options that you had prior and they should carry over, verify that the settings did carry over. 

  • Select the correct camera settings you are using as different lens’ will give different images and effect settings with the flight plan.

  • Download the flight plan from here and save it with your own name or the one provided from the download.

  • Login to Airpeak Base (note: if you are doing this on an iPad then when loading Base select to load it as a “Desktop” in the browser you are using) and select the project you want to import your flight plan into and then select “Add Mission” and then “Import file for Timeline Mission” to import your KML file. Then select the mission you downloaded from POLLi. Be sure to click the “Do NOT Adjust” button when importing. Figure 1 shows the screen in the “Project” select screen.

  • Once imported there should be nothing left for you to do besides save the flight plan and name it in Airpeak Base. Once you sync the app on your iOS device with Airpeak Base in the Airpeak Flight App then you will be able to see and use the flight plan when connected to an Airpeak S1.

Figure 3

Using Automated Missions

To use the automated flight you have saved, be sure to have synced with the Airpeak Base cloud with an internet connection prior to flight with the Airpeak Flight App to be able to see the flight plan you want to fly. This is needed as you need to disconnect both Wi-fi and Bluetooth from the device you’re using prior to take off.

To select the flight plan you want in the bottom left of the HUD for the Airpeak Flight App you can select the automated missions button and then select from the Timeline missions as that is how it is saved in Airpeak Base. Once selected you will be given pre-flight checks of the drone verifying systems and calibrations are correct. Once you go through these pages you will be given a button at the bottom middle of the HUD to press and hold to take off. Once pressed down, do not let up until the propellers start spinning as sometimes the app can lag behind and not fully register the press.

The Airpeak S1 will take off, raise its landing gear, and then transition to the start position for the flight plan. Once there the drone will position itself to point towards the next point in the mission as well as tilt the camera down and into the 90 degree position for the flight. Once in the start position the Airpeak S1 will give an option in the bottom middle of the HUD to START the mission. This is where you must have your RTH altitude set to the same altitude as the mission altitude as the start position will be the same as the RTH altitude and the drone will climb or descend to meet that mission altitude while flying the mission. To stop this all you need to do is have the RTH altitude set to the mission altitude.

After the mission starts, monitor the controller and Airpeak Flight as at times you may get warnings of increased wind that may not have been present at the surface or bad RTK data coming through. Sometimes this may require a re-fly but this is not always guaranteed.

During Flight:

Automated Missions

During automated missions the pilot should be aware of the drone and its position relative to the pilot and check for any obstructions that could get in the way of the flight path. As well, during the flight it might be possible that the camera gimbal changes its tilt angle, this can be easily fixed by simply tilting back to the 90 degree angle. IF the camera angle is tilting often then that is indicative of the gimbal needing to be rebalanced.

When using RTH keep in mind that the POLLi app sets the RTH altitude and it will be set to that altitude until you manually adjust it or you do a new flight with a different RTH altitude. It is also good practice to keep the antenna for the controller pointed towards the drone at all times or within a 30-40 degree cone of the controller antenna in order to keep your connection as good as possible during automated flights as it is possible to stray too far and lose connection.

Manual Flights

When using manual flight the drone will be pretty responsive to control inputs so be wary as in high wind conditions you can overspeed the motors easier than expected. If you want to verify the camera gimbal can hold position in higher winds or if it can simply hold it with the balance you currently have then be sure to climb up to about 20-30 feet prior to trying to tilt the camera down. If you try to tilt when close to the ground the gimbal will stop prior to getting to 90 degrees and not go any further.

Post Processing:

Once the flight is complete you can pull the SD card from both the camera and the RTK unit on the Airpeak. Take these cards and put the photos that you want to convert in a new folder on the RTK data SD card. In the Airpeak Flight App go to the menu in the top right and then the RTK tab. Once there you should see an option about halfway down to merge GPS data with photos. Select this and follow the directions with a lightning adapter SD card reader. Remember to only use one SD card for the whole process, it may ask you to eject the current card then inject another one but you can use the same SD card for the whole process. Once the process is completed you will have photos with GPS data tagged to them put into the RTK data folder pathway to then use to upload to POLLi in order to process.

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