Took My First Karma Flight; Have Lots of Questions

[Deleted member 676]

I received my new Karma with the Hero6 Black camera last Friday. Took it out Sunday for its maiden flight. As some background, I've been flying a Phantom 4 Pro about twice a week since April so some of my questions are influenced by my P4P experiences.

So, any advice you can provide on these questions is appreciated:

1. It appears you can't access the drone via the controller unless it has GPS signals. I was hoping to power it on in my apartment so I can get used to the flight interface and change settings. Is there any way to do this without a GPS signal?
2. I ran into a problem where the Record button wouldn't start the camera recording. Pressed it multiple times, pressed it and held it, etc. I had a 128GB SD card in the camera, with about 100GB available, and I had already recorded on the card successfully with the camera being handheld earlier. I landed and swapped out card for a 64GB card, tried recording with it, and it worked. Any reported problems with the Record button not working at times?
3. After I put the new SD card in, the camera screen was all white. After finally getting the Camera Settings menu to appear, the minimum ISO was at 800, which was blowing out the sunny scene. It was at 100 originally, and I didn't change it. It appeared to change on its own. I changed it back successfully but has anyone had the camera settings get changed without doing it themselves?
4. Where in the interface can you format the SD Card?
5. The Karma seemed to auto-land a bit harder than I expected. It came down, slowed maybe a tiny bit, then thumped to the ground. Nothing broke, but I'm used to a softer landing with the P4P. Is this normal?
6. It appears that the auto-landing kicked in when there was 3:00 of flight time remaining. It seems that if the Karma was out a bit from Home, this may not be enough time to auto-land safely. Is this based on remaining flight time or battery percentage?
7. I noticed the camera has a color setting of "GoPro" and "Flat" - I used "GoPro" along with a polarizing filter and the colors seemed over-saturated a bit. Is the "GoPro" color setting already boosted?

Any answers are appreciated. In particular, if you're flying both a Phantom and a Karma, I'd be interested in your comparisons. ... John

 

[Jacszone]

I received my new Karma with the Hero6 Black camera last Friday. Took it out Sunday for its maiden flight. As some background, I've been flying a Phantom 4 Pro about twice a week since April so some of my questions are influenced by my P4P experiences.

So, any advice you can provide on these questions is appreciated:

1. It appears you can't access the drone via the controller unless it has GPS signals. I was hoping to power it on in my apartment so I can get used to the flight interface and change settings. Is there any way to do this without a GPS signal?
2. I ran into a problem where the Record button wouldn't start the camera recording. Pressed it multiple times, pressed it and held it, etc. I had a 128GB SD card in the camera, with about 100GB available, and I had already recorded on the card successfully with the camera being handheld earlier. I landed and swapped out card for a 64GB card, tried recording with it, and it worked. Any reported problems with the Record button not working at times?
3. After I put the new SD card in, the camera screen was all white. After finally getting the Camera Settings menu to appear, the minimum ISO was at 800, which was blowing out the sunny scene. It was at 100 originally, and I didn't change it. It appeared to change on its own. I changed it back successfully but has anyone had the camera settings get changed without doing it themselves?
4. Where in the interface can you format the SD Card?
5. The Karma seemed to auto-land a bit harder than I expected. It came down, slowed maybe a tiny bit, then thumped to the ground. Nothing broke, but I'm used to a softer landing with the P4P. Is this normal?
6. It appears that the auto-landing kicked in when there was 3:00 of flight time remaining. It seems that if the Karma was out a bit from Home, this may not be enough time to auto-land safely. Is this based on remaining flight time or battery percentage?
7. I noticed the camera has a color setting of "GoPro" and "Flat" - I used "GoPro" along with a polarizing filter and the colors seemed over-saturated a bit. Is the "GoPro" color setting already boosted?

Any answers are appreciated. In particular, if you're flying both a Phantom and a Karma, I'd be interested in your comparisons. ... John

I recently got mine too and I think I can answer a few questions for you.

1. I turned mine on indoors, after it was unsuccessful in acquiring a satellite signal I had the option to use it without signal with a warning attached. I only wanted to find out so I could film in a sports hall.

2. I haven’t had this problem but have fixed a couple little issues by removing the battery which did resolve them

Mine also auto landed very heavy without damage but don’t bother anymore as I get a much smoother landing without it.
If the auto land sequence kicks in when you get a low battery, you can exit the sequence, which I have done a couple times, it is on the controller screen.

I can’t answer any of the others unfortunately as it is still too new for me.

Hope this helps.


Regards from a newbie


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[James Hatch]

Plan your shoot. Don't push your flying time. Now follow what I say in the following You Tube:

 

[JCLs]

I have learned that a lot of people on this site have not had much if any experience flying anything RC and drones are the easiest of aircraft to fly! That also means that the majority of folks totally depend on built in systems to protect the drone and cannot understand fly offs etc. They also know nothing about charging LiPo batteries. With Karma battery connector and charger combined with Karma software we don’t have anything to say about charging rates and discharge. We do have something to say about storing our batteries.

THE VIDEO ABOVE IS DEAD WRONG. NEVER STORE BATTERIES AT FULL CHARGE!! NEVER!!!

Read this:
Battery storage

And last, but not least, we come to battery storage. For long term storage, the batteries should be discharged or charged, depending on their current state, to around 3.8v per cell. That voltage will ensure that the battery will not be damaged over long periods of storage, and will not loose part of its capacity (because 4.2v per cell (4.35v per cell for High Voltage LiPo batteries) is a critical voltage for the battery and it should not be stored fully charged) and will also prevent the voltage from dropping too low due to self-discharge. Most modern chargers should have programs for charging/discharging batteries to storage level voltage. As a general rule NEVER leave your batteries charged for more than one day. Some people might argue that even one day is a long time for a Lipo battery to stay charged, but lets face it, I have over 50 batteries, I can't charge all of them when I get to the flying field, so I have to do it the day before. If you know you are not going to be using some batteries for a long time - anything from a week to over a year - make sure you discharge/charge them to 3.8v per cell before you store them.

===================

So how do we know what 3.8 per cell volts is? It is a point between maximum voltage of 4.2 volts and recommended safe minimum voltage to pull battery to which is around 3.4 volts per cell. From what I can tell those levels correspond pretty good with the indicator lights on each battery. So if you charge a battery to point 2 lights are lit steady and 3rd light is just flashing you are pretty close to 3.8 volts per cell. Easy to do!!!

Top off batteries as close to flying time as possible. After flying charge back up to two full lights when possible, not as big a rush. If battery shows 3 lights or more lit after short flight only option I know right now is to fly Karma a bit more to pull battery down a little.

I have been building and flying first helicopters and now drones for several years and have elaborate charging systems package I wiped out high performance 6 cell battery pair early on by keeping them charged. Here is full article I pulled above from, most things here we cannot control with Karma system. There are many more similar write ups on web.

Arxangel's RC projects: Charging, discharging, and maintaining LiPo batteries properly


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[PolarPro]

I received my new Karma with the Hero6 Black camera last Friday. Took it out Sunday for its maiden flight. As some background, I've been flying a Phantom 4 Pro about twice a week since April so some of my questions are influenced by my P4P experiences.

So, any advice you can provide on these questions is appreciated:

1. It appears you can't access the drone via the controller unless it has GPS signals. I was hoping to power it on in my apartment so I can get used to the flight interface and change settings. Is there any way to do this without a GPS signal?
2. I ran into a problem where the Record button wouldn't start the camera recording. Pressed it multiple times, pressed it and held it, etc. I had a 128GB SD card in the camera, with about 100GB available, and I had already recorded on the card successfully with the camera being handheld earlier. I landed and swapped out card for a 64GB card, tried recording with it, and it worked. Any reported problems with the Record button not working at times?
3. After I put the new SD card in, the camera screen was all white. After finally getting the Camera Settings menu to appear, the minimum ISO was at 800, which was blowing out the sunny scene. It was at 100 originally, and I didn't change it. It appeared to change on its own. I changed it back successfully but has anyone had the camera settings get changed without doing it themselves?
4. Where in the interface can you format the SD Card?
5. The Karma seemed to auto-land a bit harder than I expected. It came down, slowed maybe a tiny bit, then thumped to the ground. Nothing broke, but I'm used to a softer landing with the P4P. Is this normal?
6. It appears that the auto-landing kicked in when there was 3:00 of flight time remaining. It seems that if the Karma was out a bit from Home, this may not be enough time to auto-land safely. Is this based on remaining flight time or battery percentage?
7. I noticed the camera has a color setting of "GoPro" and "Flat" - I used "GoPro" along with a polarizing filter and the colors seemed over-saturated a bit. Is the "GoPro" color setting already boosted?

Any answers are appreciated. In particular, if you're flying both a Phantom and a Karma, I'd be interested in your comparisons. ... John

My experience with the Karma Drone is not extensive, but I own and use a HERO5, filters, and Karma Grip pretty heavily. I would be happy to answer what I can.

2. My HERO5 occasionally seems to require two button presses to realize I have given it input. That may be in part because it is a little older now, though it still responds to voice, app, and remote commands with little to no delay. I have seen some SD cards cause the camera to freeze and become unresponsive, but from what you said it sounded like only the shutter button was the issue. If the problem only happens when the camera is connected to the drone, then that may be an issue with the connection points in either the camera's USB port or the Karma harness. I've also found that a reset and a manual software reinstallation solve most problems with GoPro cameras (I've had a few over the years) so those tend to be worth trying.

3. I've seen mine change certain FOVs or framerates depending on the mode/resolution I am in, but not ISO. It sounds like you may have given it some accidental menu input during the time the screen was white.

4. The camera's preferences menu has an option to format the card, at the bottom. On the Karma Controller, I am unsure.

7. Yes, the "GoPro" color setting is more saturated by default. The camera is doing additional color processing on the image when this setting is active. I believe it is meant to emulate the look of their in-house videos. In combination with the added saturation from a polarizer filter I can definitely see the colors being too much. I typically shoot in the Flat color profile with either an ND or polarizer filter and then color correct afterward - that's provided me with some good results.

Hope this helps!

- Oliver from PolarPro

 

[Deleted member 676]

Sorry for the delay in responding to some of these recent posts; I stopped getting automatic email updates for some reason.

Thanks for everyone's advice. I feel pretty good about how to handle batteries but learned some new things from you all.

Regarding my Question 1 in the original post, I did get the controller and drone to connect without GPS - it just took it a while; I just had to be patient.

For Question 2, the Record button is still a bit touchy - it works more consistently now but I find that I have to press it quickly in the center - if I press and hold, or press on the side, it doesn't take.

For #3 - I've had the white camera screen happen again, even though I didn't change anything manually. And... it only seems to happen when in Video mode - Photo mode and Time Lapse Video work fine.

For #4 - I found that there's not a "format" function but rather I have to select all the existing media the Delete All. Works the same, but requires several more steps.

For #5 - I've been landing manually lately and will try to do that when possible to avoid heavy landings.

On #6 - Nothing new to report here.

And for my question #7 - I've started using the Flat color profile since I have a polarizing filter - this produces better video.

Thanks for all the advice. Still getting used to this bird - it's different than flying my Phantom 4 Pro, quite a bit. Just need more stick time to get used to it.

 

[Parapraxis]

#3 change your video default. This is separate to the video settings on the controller.