DJI Fly App - A Beginner's Tutorial

Hey everyone, how are you doing? I hope you're having a great day. So the DJI Mini 2 is all the rage right now for people who have been waiting for a drone that's capable yet affordable. Now many people who are buying it are first time drone owners. And one of the most confusing things for new pilots is to learn how to navigate the software. In this case, it's the DJI Fly app. So in this video, I'm gonna take you through a complete walkthrough of the DJI Fly app in the hopes that you will become more familiar with it and be more at ease as you learn to fly your brand new drone. So let's get right to it. Hey, welcome to 51 Drones everyone. If you are here for the very first time, I invite you to peruse the channel. And if you find value here, subscribe for future content. Yes, I chose the word peruse for some reason today. Now, if you are a seasoned DJI pilot, this video probably is not really for you. I will be walking through everything as if I'm giving a tour to someone who has never been here before. I'm gonna go through things kind of slowly and kind of meticulously. So if that's not you, and if you already know how to use the DJI Fly app, then I suggest just skipping this video and then wait for my next video, which is gonna be talking about the best settings for the Mini 2. And that's gonna be coming out here real soon. So let's go ahead and get you oriented to the DJI Fly app. The first thing that you need to do is, of course, download the app from the Play Store or from the App Store. And then once you get it downloaded, you need to update everything. What you need to do is once you open the app, it's gonna tell you if anything needs to be updated. And if it does, go ahead and do that. It takes about 15 minutes to do that. And then you'll have to restart your drone and then you're gonna be ready to go. And then once you're ready to do that, once you're ready to open the app, just click on Go Fly right here. Now, one more thing before we get into this. I did record this actually before the launch date of this drone. So as I mentioned some dates in this video, just be aware that this video was made about a week and a half ago. So let's get started. Starting in the upper left-hand corner is where you will see what mode you are currently in. So it will show N for normal mode, and that's what you're gonna be using most of the time. C for CineSmooth, which is when you wanna get that nice, cinematic, smooth, slow movements. And then S for sport mode, and that's for flying your little Mini 2 fast and furious. Next to that is the status bar. This is where it's gonna tell you if you are okay to fly or it's gonna tell you if something needs attention. Like for instance, this will tell you if you're in restricted airspace or maybe your compass needs calibrating or your IMU or something like that, or a wind warning's gonna pop up there. Many things are right there on that status bar. And then if you tap on it, you can see this is where you can adjust your return to home altitude, and then also set your maximum flight distance and maximum flight altitude. Now make sure, at least in the United States, that you keep that maximum altitude set below 400 feet. That is the rule. You have to keep your drone under 400 feet. And then at the very bottom, it will show you how much space you have left on your SD card. So moving over to the right, you will see the battery indicator, which shows you the percentage of remaining battery power. And when you tap on it, you can see the approximate time left until the drone initiates the auto return home. And then you can see when it's gonna force land, like how long you have until it actually lands by itself. And then at the bottom, it'll tell you when your battery's gonna be completely depleted. Now keep an eye on that little green number all of the time while you're flying because that can change rapidly in windy conditions or cold conditions. Now next to that, it shows your remaining flight time. And then right next to that is the transmission signal strength, like what's the signal between the controller and the drone. And then next to that is the GP indicator, which shows you how many satellites are locked onto your drone. In the very upper right-hand corner are the three dots, which brings up the main menu. Now we're gonna come back to that in just a few minutes. Now down the right-hand side here is the photo video mode icon, where you can choose photo, video, quick shots, or panorama. Now looking at photo mode, you have the options of shooting a single photo, and then the newly and very exciting added auto exposure bracketing, which takes three shots at three different exposures. And then you can also choose to do a timed shot, which is actually an interval timer, where it takes a photo every five seconds all the way up to taking one every 60 seconds. Now clicking on video, you will see all of the options for resolution and frame rate, 4K up to 30 frames per second, 2.7K up to 30, and then full HD up to 60 frames per second. Next here is the quick shots mode, which gives you five automated flight shot options, and they're called Dronee, Rocket, Circle, Helix, and Boomerang. Now a real brief description of these, Dronee flies up and away from you. In Rocket mode, the drone is gonna rise above you and then go straight up above you. Circle mode is just how it sounds, it just goes around you in a circle and it keeps an equal distance away from the subject. And then Helix, that also does a circle around you, but what it does is it increases the distance away from the subject as it goes around in the circle. And then finally in Boomerang, the drone flies up and away from you and then also goes in a circle and then comes back to you. So there's some pretty fun automated shots there. At the very bottom is panorama mode, which lets you take a tiny earth shot, a 180 degree photo, or a wide angle shot. Below the mode button is of course the shutter button or record button. And then right below that is the play button to view all of your photos and videos that you have taken with your Mini 2. Now taking a look at the bottom left is the map view, which gives you all kinds of information about your location and your flight path and everything. So study that and check that regularly while you're flying. Next to that is where you'll see your altitude and then your distance from the launch point. And then above those, it shows your current horizontal speed and current vertical speed. Now the middle bottom is your position and your heading indicator. And then if you look over to the right, the bottom right shows you how much space is left on your SD card. And then next to that is your exposure compensation. And this is where you can adjust the exposure quickly. Like you can go up or down to quickly adjust, you know, if it needs to get brighter or darker. And then next to that is the exposure lock. And so if you have a really nice exposure and you're gonna be panning your gimbal up and down, typically what happens when you pan it up, it's gonna darken the exposure to compensate for the sky, but maybe you don't wanna do that. Maybe you wanna keep your exposure the same. So you wanna click on that little AE and that's gonna lock your exposure. And then at the far bottom right is the auto or manual camera settings button. If you click on that, you can adjust your ISO and your shutter speed. And then this right here, this is your meter. So it will tell you if you have the proper exposure. So the closer to zero, the better. Now use this as well as the histogram to make sure that your exposure is correct. And I'll talk about the histogram here in just a minute. So next, let's go through the menu. So you're gonna click on the three little dots in the upper right-hand corner, and you're gonna see safety, control, camera, transmission, and about. Clicking on safety, you will see the same as when you click the status bar at the top, like your flight protection settings. Here's where you can update your home point to your current location. And this is also where you calibrate your compass and your IMU. Now, when should you calibrate these? Well, you really only need to calibrate them if it tells you to on the main screen in the upper left-hand corner. And it's really super simple. It's easy. It totally walks you through the procedure. It lists everything to do, and it shows you images of what it should look like. So really easy to do. And it will tell you in red letters if that needs to be done. Basically, if you see any red lettering right up here, then something needs attention on your drone. Right here is where you can also check your battery information. And this here is where you can view any unlocked geo zones. And then it also keeps a record of all previous ones. So before your launch, you're gonna see a list of geo zones that you previously unlocked. And if you're having trouble unlocking a new zone, let's say you go to a new location and it's a DJI geo zone and you can't unlock it, what you wanna do is just come back to this spot right here and make sure that all of those expired geo zones are turned off. Make sure the tab is over to the left and then you should have no trouble. Right here is the advanced safety settings where you choose what to do when the drone loses connection or if you need to stop the props immediately. Let's say something bad's gonna happen and you see it coming and it's not worth the risk so you're gonna crash your drone and you can pull those sticks in and down. This right here is the payload mode button. And you should only turn this on really if you are going to be using the prop guards. Below the advanced safety settings is find my drone. Now this is pretty useful for if you crash your drone or if it falls out of the sky and you're not sure exactly where it is, you can go ahead and turn this on and then you're gonna be able to see its location on the map and you can also toggle it to start blinking and beeping loudly. That's gonna help you zero in on it. Right below that is remote ID. Now this is built into every DJI drone because it will be coming very soon and if you toggle these off, you won't be able to launch your drone. Next is the control menu. Here's where you can choose to display metric or imperial units. You can adjust the front LED right here by choosing the action and the color. You can set the gimbal to follow mode where the gimbal remains fixed or FPV where the gimbal will follow the movement of the aircraft. You can toggle the gimbal to move upwards beyond horizon like you can have it tilt up a little bit and I always leave that on. It's nice to have that extra range of motion. Here is where you calibrate the gimbal. So if you're flying along and you notice that your horizon seems to be off a little bit, you can go ahead and calibrate that gimbal and that should fix it. This right here is the advanced gimbal settings. Now I'm not gonna cover those here today in this video but I will be making a video soon showing you what I have found to be the best settings for the Mini 2. So watch for that and make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss that. You wanna click right here to recenter the gimbal straight ahead and down and then if you click it again, the gimbal will pop back up to level. Here you can set the remote to charge your mobile device which is very nice. The Mini 2 controller has a tremendous battery life. So I do recommend using it to keep your phone charged especially if you're flying in colder weather. This is where you choose your stick mode. Now mode two is the default and it is the most common but you can change that if you want to. You can customize the function button to do one of two different things, either recenter the gimbal or toggle the map view. Now you can actually set it for both. You can just tap on it once to recenter the gimbal and tap quickly twice to toggle the map view. You can calibrate the controller here if you feel like your sticks aren't accurate like if you're pushing straight ahead on the stick but the drone is maybe going to the right a little bit, it's probably time to calibrate your controller and you can click right here if you want to view a short flight tutorial. That can be very useful for brand new pilots. Under the camera menu in video mode, you can toggle on the video subtitles but I've honestly never used that so I can't tell you what it looks like. This is also where you can toggle the histogram and the overexposure zebras. At the very least, I do recommend to always have the histogram on so you know if your exposure is balanced. The simplest explanation I can give you of the histogram is that if the mountains are to the right, then your image is overexposed, it's too bright and if the mountains are to the left, it's underexposed, it's too dark. Now the zebras will also tell you what is overexposed by showing you black and white bars over the portions of the scene that are too bright. Right here, you can add grid lines to help you find the center of the frame or the rule of thirds and you have three different options. I usually keep the first one on just to have that center point. Here is where you adjust the white balance. The Mini 2 does actually a pretty good job of auto white balance, but there may be times when you want to adjust your color temperature to match the surroundings or maybe the lighting is changing. You know the sun is going behind the clouds once in a while and that auto white balance is going to really make your video look off so you might want to set a constant white balance. This is the auto sync HD photo button. This means that when you take a photo, it is automatically saved to your mobile device. This here displays your SD card remaining space. Toggle this right here if you want to cache a low res version of whatever you are recording and then you can also set the max of the cache size right here. Now, if you're in photo mode, the camera settings are just a little bit different at the top. You can adjust the format of your photos by choosing JPEG or JPEG plus RAW and then you also have the option to shoot in 4.3 aspect ratio or 16.9. Now, the next menu option is the transmission tab. You really don't need to do anything here. Just leave those set to dual band and auto and then finally, the about tab tells you all of the identifying information about your drone and your firmware. This is where you can check for the latest updates and you can download them from here as well. So that's the DJI FlyUp, the newest version as of November 4th, 2020. There are always updates so if there are any changes, I will put the changes down in the video description and if they make a lot of changes, I'll just make a new video. Now, I do recommend that right now, you save this video in a playlist or add it to your watch later playlist because there's a lot of information here and if you're brand new to flying, this is your first drone, this is your first time seeing the app, it's nice to have this information easily accessible. So I do recommend that. So let me know in the comments if I missed something. Maybe there's a question that you have still. Just comment below and I'll try to answer it to the best of my ability and I ask you to please click on a thumb on your way out of the video today, preferably the one that's pointing up but it really doesn't matter. As long as you click on one, I just really appreciate it. Also follow me on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok for all kinds of other content. I wanna sincerely thank you all so much for watching the entire video today. Have a wonderful day everyone and as always, fly safe and fly smart.