Mavic Pro for Beginners - DJI Go 4 App Basics - Part 1

So yesterday was a great day. Check this out. Don't go too fast. Good job. Good job. You just did it. You just did it. Hey you did it. Give me five. Good job. That's right. My little girl finally learned how to ride her bike without her training wheels and it was very exciting. You know nothing is more rewarding for a parent than seeing their child succeed and having excitement about doing something for the very first time. So after I was done helping her learn how to ride her bike without her training wheels something occurred to me. I had like a epiphany or it wasn't epiphany I guess it was more of a realization that you know sometimes when you're learning how to do something for the very first time there's so many things that you're trying to understand so many things you're trying to focus on like you kind of forget what your primary goal is and so I realized that you know I've talked about a lot of different things with the Mavic Pro and how to fly it intelligent flight modes and things like that but I haven't talked about a lot of the basics. So what I'm going to do today I'm going to go back to basics and what we're going to cover today is the DJI Go 4 app. There's so much packed into it and there's so much you can do with it and so what I'm going to do today I'm going to go over some of the DJI Go 4 app. I'm actually just going to cover that top line that goes across your screen. I'm going to touch on each one of those little settings that you have each one of those little icons tell you what they mean and tell you how to set some of those settings. First of all thank you for watching 51 Drones where my channel if you don't know is about learning how to fly a drone from a beginner's perspective. In particular the DJI Mavic Pro and soon the DJI Spark as well. Now when you get your Mavic Pro I know when I first got mine the first thing that I wanted to do is get it up in the air and get it flying. I was so anxious and I was so ready to get it up in the air and see what my neighborhood looked like from the air. But the first thing that I had to do was download the DJI Go 4 app and then try to get myself oriented with it before I could fly. So that's the purpose of today's video. I wanted to show you guys just some of the basic things. Like I said I'm not going to go through everything I'm just going to cover that top line. I'm actually going to break this video up into two or maybe even three parts talking about all the different things that are in the DJI Go 4 app. Okay so when you first start up your Mavic Pro and when you turn on your controller and have your phone or your tablet or whatever hooked up to it the DJI Go 4 app should pop up automatically. And the first thing that you're going to see on your screen is the main screen. And if you're flying the Mavic Pro which I think most of you are most of you who are watching this are probably Mavic Pro owners you're going to see a picture of your Mavic Pro and all you have to do is click on the go fly button right below that. Now when you first get your Mavic Pro it's going to tell you to upgrade your firmware. Most of the time when you get your Mavic Pro that's been sitting on the shelf for a while and there's probably been some updates since that one was created. So make sure that's the first thing that you need to do is upgrade your firmware. Okay so once you get into the app you'll see right here at the very top you'll see the DJI logo you'll see the ready to go and GPS in green. If it's in red that means something needs to be addressed usually if you have to upgrade your firmware or something else if it's got a bad connection there's all kinds of warnings that might pop up on that little thing right there but if it's green it says ready to go that means that your Mavic Pro is ready to fly. If you go ahead and click on that green bar it's going to bring up the aircraft status screen. And what the aircraft status screen is basically it lets you know how your Mavic Pro is doing and if anything needs to be addressed. So if you scroll down you see overall status I have the latest firmware installed you have the IMU which is kind of complicated basically it's the accelerometer the gyroscope and everything that helps the Mavic Pro fly and keep its position. You know you have the compass if your compass needs to be calibrated it will tell you to calibrate the compass however I do highly recommend that you calibrate your compass before every single flight. I'm gonna have you go ahead and watch this video up here if you want to see why you should calibrate your compass every single time. You have the ESC status you have the radio channel quality flight mode calibration and so on. Basically you guys all you need to know if something is red on any of these items that means that thing needs to be addressed and if it does need to be addressed all you have to do is click on it and it will instruct you on what to do next. Okay so let's back out of there the next one that you're going to see you're going to see that little drone icon and it says position like mine says position usually it will say GPS mine will say GPS as soon as I lift it off. We're going to go ahead and click on that and that's going to bring up your main controller settings. Now the first thing that you'll notice on the main controller settings is you can set your home point you can either set your home point to where the aircraft is currently so wherever you launch from that can be your return to home point. Now that's important because if your Mavic needs to come home for some reason there's a problem it needs to know where to come to and so if you set the home point where it's at it's going to come right back to where you launch it from. The other option is to set the remote controller as your home point so that means that if the Mavic Pro has trouble and needs to return to home it's going to come back to wherever you have the controller so if you're holding the remote control you have it set to RC location as return to home point the Mavic Pro is going to come right back to you. Next you'll have the return to home altitude now I have this set usually around 40 meters because there's nothing in my neighborhood or nothing usually where I fly that's higher than 130 feet 40 meters is about 130 feet but keep in mind that everywhere you go is different so you really need to pay attention to what is around you you need to know the altitude of the things around you and set your return to home altitude appropriately if you want to see what happens if you don't have your return to home altitude set appropriately watch this video right here. Next we have the enable multiple flight mode basically you can set this on P or S. P is positioning mode S is sport mode what this button does it allows you to switch your Mavic Pro into sport mode on the right hand side of your controller there's a little switch where you can switch it up to sport mode or position mode okay that's if you want to fly your Mavic Pro really fast I've gotten my Mavic Pro up to 42 miles per hour and I tell you what it's super fun I'm going to make a video on it just to show you guys how cool it is. Next down the line we have the beginner mode when you first get your Mavic Pro you know you're kind of nervous I know I really was and I think most of you guys too especially if you've never flown a drone before the beginner mode basically it only lets you fly within 30 meters and it flies at a significantly slower speed so basically beginner mode just allows you to get used to the controls get used to controlling your Mavic and it's pretty self-explanatory it's for beginners I think I used the beginner mode for maybe about 10 minutes and I got bored with it and I turned it off. Next you have the distance limit you can set a limit that your Mavic Pro can go and so if it gets out too far it will tell you and it won't allow you to go any further than that I don't have that turned on I always keep my Mavic Pro within line of sight because legally that's what you're supposed to do and then at the bottom we have the advanced settings if you go ahead and click on advanced settings what that's going to do that's going to bring up your gain and your exponential tuning now I'm not going to get into too much detail on these but one thing I will show you is the exponential tuning you'll see the throttle up and down the rudder right and left and the forward right and backward left now these are defaulted to 0.25 basically what this number means is that when you push the stick how fast is your Mavic Pro going to react so I set my rudder right and rudder left which is my yaw just a little bit lower because when I push that stick I don't want it to turn too quick I want it to slowly turn in each direction so I set it to 0.20 basically with all these settings you guys you just need to play with them and see what works for you for the sensitivity I just left those where they are for the gain I recommend not to touch those at all you know there's some YouTube videos out there that will suggest how to fine-tune these things but honestly you guys everyone prefers different settings and so I just recommend that you guys play with it and as you become used to your Mavic Pro you'll know which numbers work best for you the next icon that you see on there is a little satellite and it's got a little number by it right now mine says 15 16 17 and so on basically what that is is how many satellites are locked on to my Mavic Pro right now the higher the number the more accurate the GPS signal is for your Mavic Pro it's going to be able to hold this position easier when I've been flying I've had that number as low as a six and I've still had no problem flying my Mavic Pro all right so the next icon that you'll see there it looks like a little Wi-Fi icon we're going to go ahead and click on that and that is the visual navigation settings now this is one of the best features that DJI has and it's the visual navigation settings for me it's some of the most important settings because these settings have saved my Mavic Pro four times so the first one that you'll see is enable obstacle avoidance basically all you need to know about that one is if your Mavic Pro is flying and something either flies in front of it or it gets too close to something it will avoid that obstacle next on the line you'll see the display radar map now I actually don't know what that is I've never been able to enable that so honestly I can't help you with that one next we have enable horizontal obstacle avoidance in tap fly we have enable backward flying in active track and we have enable obstacle avoidance in active track so if you're using the tap fly intelligent flight mode with your Mavic if it comes up to an obstacle it will actually go around that obstacle by itself and continue on its flight path that you have tapped out and if you're using the active track intelligent flight mode if you have enable backward flying basically if you set it to follow a subject and your subject goes backwards the Mavic Pro will also go backwards to make sure that your subject stays in the frame then we have advanced vision settings and here we have enable downward vision positioning landing protection precision landing and turn on smart return to home basically you guys I have these set on all the time the downward vision positioning helps when your GPS signal is bad the Mavic Pro will actually try to match the terrain that it was at when you took off the landing protection is important because if your Mavic Pro is attempting to land say over water it's going to ask you if it's okay to land first precision landing is amazing if you have precision landing turned on and you take off and you fly your Mavic around and it needs to come home for some reason return to home by itself or if you initiate return to home it will come back almost exactly where you took off from and in some situations that can be really important because even if it's off by a couple of inches it could be risky for your Mavic lastly turn on smart return to home I have that on all the time because if your Mavic Pro needs to come home for some reason the battery is going dead or there's some other problem it lost signal it needs to know that it can come back home okay so the next icon on that top bar is what looks like a little remote control with some bars on it we're going to go ahead and click on that and this is your remote controller settings first of all you can calibrate your remote control by clicking on that button I can't do it right now because you can only calibrate your remote control if your Mavic Pro is turned off this is also where you can configure the fixed wing mode I haven't done the fixed wing mode yet basically what it is you can fly your Mavic Pro like an airplane now I plan to get the DJI goggles and I think the fixed wing mode is meant for the DJI goggles I just don't think you can get as much immersion out of the fixed wing mode if you're looking at it on the screen of your phone or your tablet next we have the remote LCD screen and basically that just tells you what every little icon means on your remote controller next we have the button customization you can set your c2 and your c1 buttons which are on the back of your controller the c1 button is on your left side the c2 button is on your right side and you can set these buttons to do just about anything that you want there's seven different options I have my c1 set to center metering and I have my c2 set to camera forward and down basically you guys these are just personal preference you can go ahead and play around with these buttons and find which one works for you honestly I don't use them a lot I do use the camera forward down once in a while if I'm flying over something and I see there's something that I want to get on film right below me I'll go ahead and click on that c2 button and the camera will instantly flip down next you have the 5d button customization on the front of your controller on the right hand side there's a little black button and you can set each direction of that little black button to do one of seven different things lastly you have the linking rc or linking remote controller basically this is if you get a new remote controller yours breaks or you lose it or something this helps you link your remote controller to your mavic pro next on that top line we have the hd button with some bars on it we're going to go ahead and click on that what that is is your image transmission settings basically what this is when you're recording with your mavic pro your mavic pro is going to send a live feed to your phone or to your tablet and that's what this setting is there's really no reason to customize this I would just leave this on auto all the time the next icon on that top bar is the battery icon this icon tells you how much percentage battery your mavic pro currently has left if you click on it you can get into a little more detail about that particular battery it can show you how much power is left what the capacity is how many times it's been charged you want to make sure that the smart return to home is on because if that battery gets down to 10 or if that battery gets down to where it knows it can only get home with that much battery it's going to return to home you can set your critical battery warning and your low battery warning to whatever you want I have mine set to 10 and 20 basically what that means is if it's at 20 my controller is going to start beeping at me and tell me it's time to probably come home when it gets to 10 my mavic pro is going to automatically return to home if you click on advanced settings you can show the battery voltage on your main screen if you want so you can set the time to discharge you can set that from anything from one day up to 10 days I have mine set to 10 days basically what that is you know your mavic pro has smart batteries smart batteries like to discharge all the way as much as possible so if you don't use your mavic pro battery for a long time it will actually automatically start to discharge by itself that's going to extend the life of your battery for as long as possible and details really that just tells you if your battery is doing okay or not okay and then the last icon on the top bar there is the three little dots and that's going to bring up your general settings this is where you can set your units to imperial or metric i live in the united states so i'm going to have mine set to imperial you can set your camera long press to gimbal control or focusing you can choose your live streaming platform this is where if you want to live stream from your mavic pro you can stream directly to facebook or youtube or weibo or some other platform for the maps you know if you live in china you can enable the amap or calibrate map coordinates you can show the flight route i always have that on because i want to see where my mavic pro has been it's kind of fun to see the tracking next you have the video cache so when you're recording video with your mavic pro you can choose to have it send a low resolution file to your phone and that will store on your phone and you can set the capacity of that i have mine set to two gigabytes and then you can also set it to auto clean up the video cache so once that video cache gets up to two gigabytes it's going to go ahead that's just so you don't use up all the space on your phone next we have the flight restrictions the geo system make sure you always leave this on guys if you guys are flying somewhere and it's somewhere that you shouldn't be flying you're going to get in trouble so it's just best to leave that button on there's really no reason to ever turn that off next you can look up any warnings that you've gotten and you can go ahead and clear all those warnings you can change the name of your mavic pro you can choose how you go into full screen with a single finger or double finger and then about tells you all about your mavic pro now there's one more that we didn't talk about and that's the gimbal settings now the gimbal settings actually aren't in that top bar you have to click on the general settings and then over on the left hand side you'll see what looks like a little camera you're going to go ahead and click on that and this is where you're going to set your gimbal settings first of all you have your gimbal mode you can choose first person view or you can choose follow mode 99 percent of the time you're going to want to have this in follow mode next we're going to go into the advanced settings and this is where you can set your gimbal start and stop buffer your gimbal pitch speed your gimbal tilt limit so so you guys these are more of those settings that are going to be personal preference now most people when they're filming with their mavic pro or with their drone they want to get that nice cinematic footage and so you're probably going to watch all kinds of youtube videos and you probably have already on the best settings for cinematic footage now a lot of those are great videos but honestly you guys the best settings really don't exist for everybody you know people can give you suggestions on what's worked for them but that's not necessarily going to work for you so when you watch those best video settings for cinematic footage just be aware that you know they might not be the best settings for every situation but they're a good place to get started so i'm just going to tell you what i have my gimbal settings at and what's helped me out a lot as a beginner you know you have a choice for the gimbal start and stop buffer to zero and 30 basically the lower this number is the slower the gimbal is going to move when you turn that left dial on the top of your controller slow gimbal speed equals cinematic footage but there's also a limit to that because if you go too slow it's actually going to look kind of ridiculous and that goes the same for the gimbal pitch speed you don't want that too fast you don't want your movements to be jerky and quick you want them to be slow and steady to give the most appealing video footage so i have that one set pretty low as well i have that one set to 16 next you have the gimbal tilt limit basically what that is it allows you to tilt your gimbal up 30 degrees so you can look up above where your mavic pro is now the problem with this keep in mind that if you do that if you go up to 30 degrees you're going to see those propellers in your video which sometimes looks kind of cool next we have the gimbal pan synchronous follow always leave that one on there's really no reason to have that one off basically what that means is when you yaw to the left or to the right your gimbal is going to slowly move with that it won't be jerky when you turn left or right and then at the bottom you can reset all the settings to the factory mode so as you can see guys there's a lot more on this screen on the dji go 4 app i like i said i'm not going to cover everything i just covered that top line and hopefully i gave you guys enough information about each of those little icons and each of those settings if i didn't and you want more detail on each of them please comment below that you would like more information on that particular setting like i said i always try to do my best to get back to anyone that comments or questions me within 24 hours if i don't know the answer to something that you guys ask me i'm going to find out for you and get back to you as soon as i can my next video on the dji go 4 app is coming up real soon i'm going to cover the rest of the icons on the screen i'm going to go through some of the camera settings that i use they're not the best settings but they're the best settings that i like and the best settings that work for me but anyway keep watching for that video i'm hopefully going to get that out in the next week or two it's baseball season it's t-ball season it's bike riding season it's camping season it's fishing season so the videos hopefully i'm still going to keep on a weekly basis but they might stretch out a little bit beyond that because i'm going to probably be doing one of those things i just mentioned if you guys got anything out of this video and you liked it at all please consider clicking on that thumbs up button that like button that helps me out so much it makes me feel good and it makes you feel good too if you're not a subscriber you're just passing by this channel and you're checking out this video watching my videos for the very first time please consider subscribing because we have an awesome awesome subscriber base we'd love to visit with each other we're very engaged with each other and we'd love to have you as part of our team and again if you got any comments about this video or any of my other videos or any questions about what i covered in today's video go ahead and put those in the comments below i'll get back to you as soon as i can enjoy these beautiful summer days you guys and as always fly safe and fly smart