Autel Evo II Pro Observations

[PingSpike]

So. Saturday came and went and three things happened.
1/ I took the dog for a walk
2/ My drone flew away for no apparent reason.
3/ Someone hit our car.



Any clues?

Nightmare mate :/

Have you run the flight log through AirData to see if anything jumps out?








Etc?

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

Nightmare mate :/

Have you run the flight log through AirData to see if anything jumps out?

View attachment 9304



View attachment 9305


Etc?

No. How do I do that? Edit. Found eveything I needed. GWMF. Google was my friend.

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

No. How do I do that? Edit. Found eveything I needed. GWMF. Google was my friend.

Hi. Found what I needed.

No significant drop in voltage. Battery was in green. Battery temp went from 57.5°f to 71°f Outside air temp was 5.5°c. Signal was good. Compass however went mental. 87.7 rate of turn. There was little to no input from me after 27s in.

The compass was out of whack!!!

I did a flight straight after the crash to test everything and it's all in the green.
So something sent the compass mental on the first flight.

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

So I have had an email from Autel. Lots of questions. Had I turned off obstacle avoidance, had I done this or that wrong, with a disclaimer at the bottom making it sound like any repair was going to be at my cost. No thank you.

No idea of how long it would take for them to have the drone, test it, and decide what my fate was so I contacted the amazing eBay seller. They sympathized and readily agreed to a return and full refund.

Once this is returned I am done with Autel.
I will find a cheap Parrot Anafi and be done with it.

The whole thing is such a shame.

 

[mike9591]

So I have had an email from Autel. Lots of questions. Had I turned off obstacle avoidance, had I done this or that wrong, with a disclaimer at the bottom making it sound like any repair was going to be at my cost. No thank you.

No idea of how long it would take for them to have the drone, test it, and decide what my fate was so I contacted the amazing eBay seller. They sympathized and readily agreed to a return and full refund.

Once this is returned I am done with Autel.
I will find a cheap Parrot Anafi and be done with it.

The whole thing is such a shame.

They suggest calibrating the IMU, Gimbal, and Compass in that order for every new E2 user. Similar calibrations needed for other drones too. If we fly from an area 50-100 miles from our normal region, we redo the compass cal. It only takes a minute.

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

They suggest calibrating the IMU, Gimbal, and Compass in that order for every new E2 user. Similar calibrations needed for other drones too. If we fly from an area 50-100 miles from our normal region, we redo the compass cal. It only takes a minute.

I did an IMU, Gimbal, and Compass the week before and always do a compass calibration prior to flying.
I had, with this drone, done over 5 calibrations in the 22 days I have owned it.
The drone had not been anyway other than just outside my house or my living room as the weather has been so bad in Scotland.

Where I was flying was 3 miles up the road.

With the Parrot I was lazy and never did any of that and it was always fine, DJI I rarely had to do anything with it.
Autel is like a baby that needs to be coddled every 5 mins.

Put it this way.
I originally bought an Autel Evo II Pro in early October, there were drifting and lens issues. After a month of doing suggestions, calibrations, testing, uploading tests, talking to Autel, Testing, upgrading software, testing, calibrations, talking to Autel, testing it was returned.
The replacement was worse. Same deal Testing, Autel, testing etc etc. Returned. We are now into November. I was supposed to catch the Autumn tree colour. Nope still testing and calibrating.
The replacement to that was worse. Same deal Testing, Autel, testing etc etc. Returned. We are now into December. I was supposed to catch the Autumn tree colour. Nope still testing and calibrating.
I bought an Evo II Pro from an entirely different company. Excellent service, much better deal.
Same deal Testing, Calibrations, testing, slight issues with lens, slight drifting, this time connection issues and bugs in software reported to Autel. More testing upgrading of software, calibrations etc etc. Then crash. Returned.
So. I am either the most unlucky person to have issues with now 4 Autel drones, each issue similar but slightly different, or I can't follow Autels instructions properly, though my screen recordings say otherwise, or there are quality control issues with software/hardware with the Autels.
I am never going to know as I sadly have given up on them as I have wasted the better part of 3 months Beta testing for them with their supposedly commercial product.

 

[mike9591]

I did IMU, Gimbal, and Compass the week before and always do a compass calibration prior to flying.
The drone ad not been anyway other than my living room as the weather has been so bad in Scotland.

With the Parrot I was lazy and never did any of that and it was always fine, DJI I rarely had to do anything with it.
Autel is like a baby that needs to be coddled every 5 mins.

2 other issues may be overlooked.. idk. just thinking out loud. Kp indexes have been higher in areas of late. Those mess with the compass and GPS. Second, with as bad as overcast skies, thick clouds it can make things drastically change for the conditions that create what you describe. Did you use a UAS app for details pre flight? I do this for every flight regardless of drone, and never have I ran into such issues.. mostly because that app reports conditions not favorable.

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

2 other issues may be overlooked.. idk. just thinking out loud. Kp indexes have been higher in areas of late. Those mess with the compass and GPS. Second, with as bad as overcast skies, thick clouds it can make things drastically change for the conditions that create what you describe. Did you use a UAS app for details pre flight? I do this for every flight regardless of drone, and never have I ran into such issues.. mostly because that app reports conditions not favorable.

Dude, this is Scotland we are talking about, the conditions are always the same, just before the rain, just after the rain, misty and cloudy. I checked the weather conditions every day before I go out with my camera or drone.
The simplest way is to just go and look out the window, which is where I have been flying 90% of the time.
The other 10% is the local forest which is a few miles up the road where the crash happened. Both places are known to me and the drones I fly and the conditions have been the same.

I have not trusted flying anywhere else as I have only been testing these Autels since I bought them.

I think the universe is telling me to not have a drone. So I will comply.

 

[mike9591]

Dude, this is Scotland we are talking about, the conditions are always the same, just before the rain, just after the rain, misty and cloudy. I checked the weather conditions every day before I go out with my camera or drone.
The simplest way is to just go and look out the window, which is where I have been flying 90% of the time.
The other 10% is the local forest which is a few miles up the road where the crash happened. Both places are known to me and the drones I fly and the conditions have been the same.

I have not trusted flying anywhere else as I have only been testing these Autels since I bought them.

I think the universe is telling me to not have a drone. So I will comply.

We experience crazy conditions here in the Space Coast of FL, so much so that not only are drones problematic, but they won't launch if the conditions are not favorable. It can be crystal clear blue skies,, ground level winds within limits, but winds above ground can be crazy high. Flew one day with 8 mph AGL, and operating alt of 325 it was gusting at 28-35 mph.

We fly Autel, DJI, Anafi, Yuneec too, but most work is designated to the orange birds. No drone is perfect, and some it takes a year for the mfg's to get the fw where it needs to be. One of those things I learned wit my DJI fw updates, and app updates for Go4... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Is that new feature worth problems still being sorted?

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

We experience crazy conditions here in the Space Coast of FL, so much so that not only are drones problematic, but they won't launch if the conditions are not favorable. It can be crystal clear blue skies,, ground level winds within limits, but winds above ground can be crazy high. Flew one day with 8 mph AGL, and operating alt of 325 it was gusting at 28-35 mph.

We fly Autel, DJI, Anafi, Yuneec too, but most work is designated to the orange birds. No drone is perfect, and some it takes a year for the mfg's to get the fw where it needs to be. One of those things I learned wit my DJI fw updates, and app updates for Go4... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Is that new feature worth problems still being sorted?

Been there many times and watched a shuttle launch a couple of times. Not the same shuttle. lol. Two different shuttles two different times.

Thankfully we do not have your weather. It's either blowing a gale here or still.
I used to skydive and weather and conditions are one of the important factors when jumping out of the plane or just before getting into the plane or before you even get to the dropzone.
Being careful and tons of planning prior to doing anything is embedded into me in anything I do.
The variables are another matter entirely which needs to be spent evaluated for anomalies. Like the Autel.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this thread. the Autel has great potential, but for me, there are too many variables to make it a useful drone, to me anyway.

 

[Fishhead3]

I don't disagree on the photographic quality. Its very good. My main issue is with altitude control. The other day I brought it back to land and it read minus (-) 7.3m just when it was about to land at the take off point. And yes, I have done all calibrations. This is not an unusual observation. I don't understand how this can be used for business applications that rely on accuracy of spatial location. A couple of metres is fine but I have had inaccuracies of up to 11m.

 

[Mainey]

Also, to me, if the company is not delivering, its a CEO issue and so a well reasoned case needs to be put to the CEO.

It shouldn't be a great long shopping list of 'wish it did this' or a long list of complaints. Such an approach needs to be constructive and be contributed in the best spirit of wanting Autel to be a major player.

My suggestion is that a well argued letter to the CEO be prepared that sets out the commitment of users to having a serious DJI competitor in the marketplace, the need to have an internal focus on sorting out the software issues and the need to have a more customer focused support system in place.

We should form a small group to progress this and seek an online meeting to discuss our suggestions.

Thoughts?

Best information I have ever read about attempting to get OUR drones working better.

Is no good talking to the receptionist as she probably has been advised to 'dump' any negative emails etc.

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

OK. So I'm an idiot.

I bought another Autel Evo 2 Pro V1 in an Amazon sale.

Just tried it. Did all the necessary calibrations and firmware updates and then went outside and did a compass calibration. Maybe a tiny bit of drifting when lower to the ground but assumed this was becuase of potential obstacles.

Flew around. Few videos and pictures and testing the sensitivity of the controls. One thing I did notice that the forward obstacle avoidance sensors are way too sensitive. Even at 94ft up in the middle of a field and push forward on the stick the drone tells me there is something in the way and stops forward motion.
Trying to keep forward motion was a stop/start affair.
Backwards however, awesome, pull back, it goes back, forwards it stops, starts, stops starts and bleeps to tell me there is something in the way, 94ft up in the air. Unless it's thinking the Scottish midges are obstacles?
Turned off OA and bingo, normal forward flight resumed.

After 34 minutes of control faffing and more calibrations etc. the drone landed and I changed the battery.

Then the drone was now drifiting to the right. Tried different missions, precision flight etc. still drifiting right for about 4 minutes then started to fly straight again.

This was something I had experienced before when I last tested the AE2P in 2020. Either when putting in a battery for the first time or changing batteries, the drone would drift for 4 minutes after take off.
I did wonder then if the battery was creating it's own magnetic field and tricking the sensors.

So will now do a OA calibration and see if that fixes the issue of it not flying forward properly. If not. my 5th Autel Evo 2 Pro will be returned/Exchanged.
Fingers crossed.

 

[Quad808]

Hope you get that sorted. You know this, but just make sure you are not taking off near any metal, and that includes cement with re-bar in it. May want to do a compass calibration, even though you did one I imagine, try a short flight...if drifting, come back, land, do a compass cal and see if that helps. Worth a shot!

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

Hope you get that sorted. You know this, but just make sure you are not taking off near any metal, and that includes cement with re-bar in it. May want to do a compass calibration, even though you did one I imagine, try a short flight...if drifting, come back, land, do a compass cal and see if that helps. Worth a shot!

Hiya. The OA calibration alleviated the sensitivity from the front sensors but the drone still has to be a significant height before the OA beeping shuts off. Might be useful to do all the sensors.

I do a compass calibration everything I start, and now, any time I put in a new battery. That seems to have solved the first 4 minute drifting.

Where I live is in the middle of the Highlands of Scotland and where I was testing starts on a private tarmac road .8 of a mile from any metal or 2 miles from the nearest powerline.
If there is any metal nearby it must be under the road or from my camera kit or belt buckle etc.

Now just practicing trying to get a smooth video when applying 2 or three inputs.
.2 .2 .2 .2 on EXP is OK. But it needs to be fattened at the top of the S Curve to stop the ramp up in speed. Still feeling my way round this but would love more smoothing parameters to make it DJI intuitive.

Plus there is now a -1.4 Roll tilt required on the gimbal to straighten the horizon. Least there is a setting to correct it.

 

[Brock Inspector]

TL; DR entire thread but are you updating via the .bin card method or have you done FW updates over-the-air as prompted by the controller? A FW reinstall with the .bin download and dragged to a card method has fixed many a flakey problem for quite a few folks. Update all your batteries too

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

TL; DR entire thread but are you updating via the .bin card method or have you done FW updates over-the-air as prompted by the controller? A FW reinstall with the .bin download and dragged to a card method has fixed many a flakey problem for quite a few folks. Update all your batteries too

.bin card method. Done and done and done.

 

[Brock Inspector]

Try flying in another location to see if you've got magnetic interference, could be high iron content in rocks

 

[Autelpilotsnumpty]

Try flying in another location to see if you've got magnetic interference, could be high iron content in rocks

Been to Loch Ness, Loch Farr, Loch Ruthven, Whitebridge and Nairn Beach. Gimbal -1.4 to - .8 out still. It's not a big deal as it's manually correctable. Be nice if it worked but this, out of all the Evo 2 pro's I've owned, tested, flown and returned, is the best. The only issue, aside the gimbal issue is that it's brand new and a V1. having spoken to Autel about the V1, V2 issue, they have told me to return it to the seller and wait for the V2.