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Geofencing has arrived

XtraAxis

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Depending on where you fly, you might start to see the first signs of autels geo fencing.

I'm going to be alittle vague here, but I work at an airport, and operate a fleet of Evo 2 v1s for various tasks around the field. Our airfield is marked as a no fly zone in autel explorer (for obvious reasons)

Intelligent modes are now locked out when operating in autels no fly zones.

We've reached out to autel, and learned this restriction is intentional, and there are currently no plans to allow an unlock of these modes while within a no fly zone.

Atleast with DJI, you can jump through the DJI unlock hoops and get going.

Just wanted to do my duty to pass on this newly learned info to other users.

Manual flying in no fly zones is all you get. Which isn't terrible, but depending on the project those intelligent modes sure were nice.
 
United States.

Another note, mapping missions still function, it is just the intelligent flight modes that are locked. Orbit, smart orbit, dynamic track, ect.
 
United States.

Another note, mapping missions still function, it is just the intelligent flight modes that are locked. Orbit, smart orbit, dynamic track, ect.
have you checked to see if you fire off a mission that you mapped and you lose connectivity, will the drone continue the mission which in the zone?
 
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Things programed in the mission planner seem to work perfectly.

We have not tested the lost connection behavior. Due to the high risk of operation on an airport, it's not really something were interested in experimenting with. Our SOP calls for the lost link option to be set to return to home on signal loss.

When we first received our aircraft a function test of this was conducted in a "low risk" area of the field. And when the controller was turned off, a return to home worked perfectly.

This was before the NFZ update though. So maybe an additional test to ensure the return to home will function should be done.

According to Autel, only the intelligent flight modes are restricted. So I would expect everything to work perfectly.

Just a bummer that they've changed their attitude with reguards to those Intelligent modes.
 
ok that's cool. I was thinking along the lines of making sure the aircraft does not fly on "autonomous gps" so you couldn't stand far away and send a drone on autopilot into a restricted nfz. iirc, the intelligent flight modes the drone is not being actively piloted either. thanks for letting us know and please let us know if you find out more. I agree I think the geofencing features are forthcoming.
 
That's actually a good question to know the answer to. As far as counter UAS planning goes, knowing that tid bit could be useful.

I was definitely bummed after getting off the phone with Autel when they delivered the news. This same thing had happened two app versions ago. But the answer then was, it wasn't the intention, and they patched in a fix next update.

To hear that the now want to lock those modes out, is a bit of a heart break.

I suspect most users aren't flying directly on an airport like we are, so it will have little impact.

I'll definitely provide updates if the geo fencing gets better or worse for us airport users.
 
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I was definitely bummed after getting off the phone with Autel when they delivered the news.
The most disturbing thing about this is that if it is in fact Autel's new position, then they apparently lied about their intentions. And ,therefore their word with regard to geo-fencing has become worthless. I am hopeful that the representative you spoke with was mistaken. I have posted the question to the official Autel Enterprise FB group for clarification.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Should one have nefarious intentions, they don't need intellegent flight modes in order to make good on them. So, it only makes sense that more restrictions would naturally follow
 
What firmware version and app? Also please provide all communications with Autel.

You do realize the current public firmware and app has been available for months now?
 
What firmware version and app? Also please provide all communications with Autel.

You do realize the current public firmware and app has been available for months now?

iOS version 1.11.37 and Android version 1.1.7.83

I unfortunately can't remember the name of the representative we spoke to but we had our call yesterday.

If I'm remembering right, the app version has been out since July. We don't operate with the beta firmware releases.

I would say 75% of our operations are either flown through mission planner, or manual flight. Every once in while we have a project that can make use of an intelligent mode. Or well have a new pilot that well want to train on those modes. Yesterday just happened to be our first attempt to use an intelligent mode on the field since the update.
 
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I can firmly say, they certainly were functional previous app version. Lol

We've reached out to our vendor we purchase through as well to see if they had any way to plead our case for a DJI style unlock system to be developed.

As I said above, those intelligent modes are not a mainstay of our flying. But they were awesome when we had them available.

In the end, Autel has to worry about liability. So I understand their position, and felt it appropriate to let other users know.
 
I can firmly say, they certainly were functional previous app version. Lol

We've reached out to our vendor we purchase through as well to see if they had any way to plead our case for a DJI style unlock system to be developed.

As I said above, those intelligent modes are not a mainstay of our flying. But they were awesome when we had them available.

In the end, Autel has to worry about liability. So I understand their position, and felt it appropriate to let other users know.
If it worked in this location prior then it’s a bug in the app. No new zones were added but the db was updated for China and Japan.

If you would like to verify this, grab the older version prior to July for android and test to see the functionality is there?
 
Which was bugged?

Since the implementation of NFZ anywhere we fly has been identified as a no fly zone. So that has never changed.

So is it a bug that the intelligent flight modes are locked out now? Or that they ever worked in the first place?

I don't mean to be a broken record, but the costumer service rep we spoke with said that autels intent is to restrict intelligent modes while in a NFZ.

When attempting an orbit for example, we can't set a center point, a message is displayed saying "invalid, point in no fly zone." It's our understanding that this is the exact behavior expected from the development team.
 
Which was bugged?

Since the implementation of NFZ anywhere we fly has been identified as a no fly zone. So that has never changed.

So is it a bug that the intelligent flight modes are locked out now? Or that they ever worked in the first place?

I don't mean to be a broken record, but the costumer service rep we spoke with said that autels intent is to restrict intelligent modes while in a NFZ.

When attempting an orbit for example, we can't set a center point, a message is displayed saying "invalid, point in no fly zone." It's our understanding that this is the exact behavior expected from the development team.
Since the July update they added hard nfz for other regions.

This is what I think the error might be. As you said you could use them prior, correct?

But since this is still fluid im waiting to hear back from engineering.
 
Since the July update they added hard nfz for other regions.

This is what I think the error might be. As you said you could use them prior, correct?

But since this is still fluid im waiting to hear back from engineering.
Since the NFZ update we've seen it both ways.
First app version that came along with the NFZ update, they were not functioning, after an update they were functional, and now we're back to non functional.

Our policy has been to run the most current stable versions of aircraft firmware, and app versions. If this is just a bug with the current version, rather than roll back, the preference would be to just wait for the next version to come around with the fix.

I'll stand by to hear what you find out. And I have a feeling we should probably get know each other outside of this conversation. I'll try and send you a PM to exchange better contact information.
 
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Since the NFZ update we've seen it both ways.
First app version that came along with the NFZ update, they were not functioning, after an update they were functional, and now we're back to non functional.

Our policy has been to run the most current stable versions of aircraft firmware, and app versions. If this is just a bug with the current version, rather than roll back, the preference would be to just wait for the next version to come around with the fix.

I'll stand by to hear what you find out. And I have a feeling we should probably get know each other outside of this conversation. I'll try and send you a PM to exchange better contact information.
Ok -

Just received word that orbit is one of the functions that IS locked out in a nfz.

I’ve requested a complete list of non functional modes in NFZ.

I’ve also been assured that mission or waypoint modes are not part of this.

Send me a PM and I will provide my direct email.
 
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Are you sing POI in waypoint mode? Please send me a pm so I can gather more data for the app team.

Thank you!
 
Are you sing POI in waypoint mode? Please send me a pm so I can gather more data for the app team.

Thank you!
Absolutely, we do.

I see that, with the waypoint mission planning, and it's functions, we should be able to recreate anything we were capturing with an intelligent mode.

Everything on the mission planner side of the house is, and always has been 100% functional.
 
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Depending on where you fly, you might start to see the first signs of autels geo fencing.

I'm going to be alittle vague here, but I work at an airport, and operate a fleet of Evo 2 v1s for various tasks around the field. Our airfield is marked as a no fly zone in autel explorer (for obvious reasons)

Intelligent modes are now locked out when operating in autels no fly zones.

We've reached out to autel, and learned this restriction is intentional, and there are currently no plans to allow an unlock of these modes while within a no fly zone.

Atleast with DJI, you can jump through the DJI unlock hoops and get going.

Just wanted to do my duty to pass on this newly learned info to other users.

Manual flying in no fly zones is all you get. Which isn't terrible, but depending on the project those intelligent modes sure were nice.
Wow. I have been thinking about adding an Autel to my collection, but just put on the pause. I occasionally fly solar inspection missions at several airfields. Yes DJI unlock is painful, but I don't want to fly mapping missions manually.
 

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