Neo exposure levels and not landing

Charge · Saturday at 6:47 AM

I did a pre sunrise ride out to a tidal offshore Island.
Here's the gopro footage at normal exposure level, Ive even brightened it a tiny bit.

The exact same time the Neo looks like this on standard exposure, its BEFORE sunrise, it was actually pretty dark.

And it did the not landing on my palm trick again, set to far high follow, it finally landed after a minute of trying.
You can see the light level, I am pointed at a brighter image but the Neo is practically night vision!

Here's the vid, starts at 1:22, also me trying to jump catch it.

Chrislaf · Saturday at 12:14 PM

Beautiful area to bike ride!

Are you using your phone as a controller or just the autonomous functions available on the NEO control panel? I rarely use the control panel and only in good light conditions with a suitable surface for the VPS. If I am not using the RC-N3 controller I will use my phone as a controller since I have a bit more control over the NEO and especially if it doesn't want to come down.

With regard to exposure, if you are using Auto settings the NEO will adjust the ISO and shutter speed to keep the scene bright so that may explain why it looks much brighter than it actually was. To control this better you need to use Pro (manual) settings and adjust ISO and shutter speed accordingly to get as close as possible to what the scene actually looks like keeping in mind that the dynamic range of the NEO is limited especially in low light. These are only available with an external controller.

I often bike with my NEO but I have a mount that attaches to my handlebars so that I can use my RC-N3 controller and this gives me full control over the NEO so I can use Pro (manual) settings. Here's the mount I have that I got from Amazon.ca.

Screenshot 2025-02-01 at 12.10.40 PM.png

Chris

Charge · Sunday at 3:03 AM

Thanks, yes I'm using hand launch only, it's strange that the main camera can see perfectly in very lowlight, but the down facing cameras need large amounts for drone safety, I'd rather it was the other way around !
Maybe shining a torch on my hand might help.

Chrislaf · Sunday at 11:01 AM

Charge said:
Thanks, yes I'm using hand launch only, it's strange that the main camera can see perfectly in very lowlight, but the down facing cameras need large amounts for drone safety, I'd rather it was the other way around !
Maybe shining a torch on my hand might help.

Yes, the VPS camera needs lots of light to work properly. Since your bike ride was in a wide open space you should be able to get good GPS signal. If you use your phone the app will tell you if it doesn’t have GPS but it won’t say how many satellites are locked in like a controller will.

When I was snowshoeing the other day, I had to wait until my phone stopped displaying the message that there were no satellites otherwise the NEO would have likely had problems holding position since the VPS would not have been able to distinguish any pattern over fresh undisturbed snow, so in that case just using the drone only was out of the question.

Chris