So I have been flying the Alta for a while now (logged around 50h) and while I really enjoy it i think there are some things that could be improved. Here are a few things i can think of, any other thoughts are welcome. When reseting the home point on the controller, the home point distance does not change on the FPV telemetry. I use the telemetry a lot, it helps me to be able to consistently get back to a first or second position. I note my height and distance then ill use a landmark to get an angle reference. It would be cool if there were a way of "recording" a first position on the telemetry via a switch. Not sure exactly how it would work but maybe of the height/distance indicator changed color once you were back to that position. Since the alta records amp draw and mah used, having this info available on screen could be handy as well. Being able to reset this would also be nice as we hotswap batteries and keep the alta running most of the time. Another safety feature would be a warning on the FPV monitor prior to takeoff if battery voltage is below a user definable level. And maybe as a secondary protection you could have it where the copter will not arm the first time you try arm it with the battery below a lower more critical limit. It would be nice if we could change the speed indication from meters per second to miles or kilometers per hour. Here is a cool idea to borrow from DJI, on their bigger copters when you hit full throttle on any motor, the LED on the motor changes to orange. Its a cool feature and helps the pilot to get a better idea of how hard the machine is working especially when flying in atti mode where your throttle isn't directly linked. I have a concern with how the alta transitions from gps mode to atti mode if GPS signal is lost. I will often use the GPS speed clamping when doing a slow push in on a subject or if I'm trying to get into a tight first position. Yesterday as an example i was getting into a first very close to a cliff face to shoot an actor jumping from the cliff just above me. My worry is that I'm sometimes giving close to a full stick input on the cyclic moving towards something (in this case a cliff) with GPS speed clamping and if i were to lose GPS i would be almost instantly accelerating at full speed towards that subject. Maybe if the alta does lose gps while the speed clamping is engaged it would slowly over a few seconds transition to atti buy limiting the bank angle of the copter. Adding the strobing boom LED's could help too. This would only happen if gps is lost and not if manually switching between modes. Any other ideas?
I second the loss of GPS danger whilst using velocity clamps. I've had it lose GPS and almost crash into the back of a lorry once. It's such a great feature that really sets the Alta apart from any other drone in terms of slow speed controllability but due to the possibility of it suddenly loosing GPS and accelerating towards something it always makes me very cautious using it around actors or when tracking behind a large object, like a lorry! Amps and may would be great on the FPV too.
Yeah w gave up on the velocity clamps, cool idea but until the Alta has a better GPS or RTK system its a bit sketchy for real world on set use. Also hate how the Alta behaves when GOS drops out and goes to height mode and back, super jerky... the old WKM was smooth when it lost GPS to ATT... hope they fix that in future updates.