DJI M2E Dual: Drone Configuration with DJI Pilot app

Owned by Julia
Last updated: Oct 24, 2024 by Doga Viala
5 min read

The following settings are mandatory to successfully carry out Survey measurements in CSP plants and must also be considered before doing the camera calibration

The DJI handbook for the M2E Dual can be found here.

If you are using Litchi

to perform flights, you will need to make all adjustments as described here in the DJI Pilot app. Litchi cannot be used to set any parameters!

Memory Cards

Only new SD cards may be used (depending on the number of recordings, ~0.5years to 1 year max).

With older SD cards it is possible that errors occur in the IR videos and that the corresponding flights have to be repeated.

Only use the memory cards mentioned here (see DJI M2E Dual specs):

  • Supports a microSD with capacity of up to 128 GB. A UHS-I Speed Grade 3 rating microSD card is required.

Using a different memory card will result in corrupted videos and it will not be possible for Volateq to evaluate the data.

Check the controller's date and time settings. If they are incorrect, the videos will also be saved with incorrect metadata, making it difficult to assign the videos to the correct operational state and to merge drone videos and solar field operational data.

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access controller settings
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go to date & time

DJI Pilot App: basic settings and pre-flight check

  • Open the DJI Pilot App and log into your user account. 

  • After rejecting or updating the software updates (firmware updates may take up to 1 hour, so do not update the firmware short before scheduled flights), we see the main screen an choose manual flight to get to the settings menu   

  • Set “Return to Home Altitude” to the highest building of the plant (e.g. cooling tower, electrical transmission lines) plus an offset of at least 20 m.

  • Make sure only the in section 1 mentioned SD card is used and there is enough free memory on the SD card (approximately 25 GB per flight required)

Visual camera video settings: 

  • Make sure that the button is set to camera to grab videos: 

  • Access the settings below the menu on the right side of the screen: 

  • Set the exposure correction value (EV) to –1.7. Other parameters are shown, but are not changeable or do not need to be adapted.

  • Select the correct video resolution (4L)

The simplest solution is to protect both wheels on the front of the controller with tape, to avoid accidentally touching the wheels and altering gimbal tilt and/or zoom:

  •  General video settings: 

    • Histogram: OFF

    • Timestamp: OFF

    • Video caption: ON (very important, that way the drone meta data is stored in .srt file format. This information is indispensable for data processing)

    • ROI: FULL

    • Gain Mode: Low

    • Auto FFC: ON

Infrared Camera Settings:

  • Switch to the IR camera by pressing the button on the left side of the screen 

 

Flight controller settings 

  • Put the Maximum Altitude to a value of 10 meters above the maximum altitude of the highest way point.

  • The same applies to the maximum flight distance. Please adapt the value to the distance between starting point and the outermost way points.

  • “Smart Return to Home” is strongly recommended in combination with the default threshold limits. 

The M2E Dual has a special (rather useless) feature, the so called “MSX“. this is an overlay of IR data with edge filter from the visual video stream. Looks nice, but render the IR data unusable. So please make sure MSX is NOT activated:

  • Correct:

  • Incorrect:

The M2E Dual features iso-therms, which are very useful for stable IR intensities across different scenarios.

  • Check the settings for Isotherms: 

    • Valid range for Summer ambient temperature (> 20°C) and operation conditions: 10°C - 60°C 

    • Valid range for Winter ambient temperature (< 15°C) and operation conditions: 0°C - 40°C 

  • The switch on the lower right must be GREEN (ON) . This button sets the isotherm to constant. If this is not done, the brightness is adjusted during the flight and the videos cannot be evaluated. 

  • The temperature range does not reflect the real temperatures in the solar field, but has been proven to be the best compromise in terms of sensitivity and contrast. 

Set IR color palette to GrayIso: