Vertical flight / Common GPS location

My DJI Mini 3 Pro doesn’t like flight plans involving the same location at different elevations. I’m trying to fly a single location, taking a 360 video at each location of a single lat/long. The goal is to get the 360s at each location, stitch them together an upload to create a 3d image. I’ve put in 3 or more stop points an 1 or 2 meter increments. The drone does the initial 360(panoramic profile without photos), flies to the final and stops. It skips my incremental steps and doesn’t due the final 360.

Mission - Backyard 3d mapping

It is difficult to understand what you are doing because you mention taking both video and photos. If you share your mission here so we can examine it, you may get some answers.

That should be my mission. Same Coordinates, different elevations, trying rotate 360 at each.

I have had a look at your mission. You have four waypoints at one meter height increments. Each waypoint has a series of “rotate aircraft” actions. The first and last waypoints include a “start recording” and “stop recording” action.

While I do not understand the usefulness of this mission, the main problem is that in the “Settings”, you have the “Path Mode” set to “Curved Turns”. If you change that setting to “Straight Lines”, all of your camera actions will be performed.

I just went back and forth with dji R&D about this about 6 months ago with my Mini Pro 4. DJI drone is not capable of going straight up while rotating. Here is where we ended up:

Our engineers have reviewed your operation settings. Currently, the waypoint flight function cannot support waypoint task settings in the pure vertical direction. Therefore, after setting the waypoint, the APP cannot effectively calculate the time required to complete the task, and the execution is difficult. There will also be some problems.

Therefore, it is recommended that when you use waypoints to fly, please ensure that the distance of the aircraft changes in the horizontal direction. We will also forward your usage needs to the relevant team for evaluation.

Here’s the whole thread:

What is described in that thread is different from what Jordon is doing. Your thread is about multiple waypoints with different headings to produce rotation during a transition from one waypoint to the next. What Jordon is doing is going straight up but using camera actions to rotate the drone at each waypoint. Those are two completely different functions.

I have successfully flown many vertical waypoint missions but not necessarily with different headings at the waypoints. I will have to test one with different headings at each waypoint. The DJI forums are notorious for poor and incorrect information.

I just made a test mission doing exactly what you are trying to do. It executed successfully but the resulting video is not of much use because of the abrupt rotations. Those camera actions, such as “Rotate Aircraft”, are really meant for positioning the camera prior to taking a photo. In your example, you are recording video.

If what you want are photos, you will need to alter your camera actions to take photos where appropriate instead of recording video.

If what you want is smooth video, you will need to specify different headings at different waypoints (they must be separated by 0.6m) and record as the drone flies from one waypoint to the next.

I just flew a test mission using Litchi with an Air 2s where I had four waypoints share the exact same coordinates but at different heights with different headings. The mission executed as expected with the drone ascending while rotating.

You are using a Mini 4 Pro which has on-board waypoints and presumably DJI Fly. That is different software and a drone that I do not have so I cannot test your exact setup.