DronePan is a helpfull panoramic app for DJI Inspire 1

I’m currently testing a beta version of the DronePan app. The app allows for automatic camera movement and shutter release when shooting a panorama.
This app can save a lot of flight time and reduces the need for additional, unneeded pictures. Which also saves time in the post process. It does not produce a final panoramic images. The app simplifies the process of shooting images used to build a nice panoramic 360 degrees view with additional software like the ones from Kolor or ptgui.

The current beta app takes 20 pictures per panorama. The pictures got an overlap of about 30%, which is good enough for a good stitching process.
The good thing is that the DJI Inspire 1 drone can save 20 raw images on to the sd card and cache without interruption. So each pano can be taken in a single step.
I usually shoot more pictures when doing it by my own without using the app, just to make sure I don’t miss a spot. But this leads to a point where I’ll have to wait for the DJI Inspire 1 Camera as the buffer will be full and I’ll have to wait till the buffer has been written to the sd card.
So this reduces the time of a singe panorama shoot to about 1 minutes and 35 seconds. After that you’ll have to wait till all the raw pictures have been saved on the sd card to make sure you don’t loose any pictures in a second panorama.

The great news is, this app will be completely free. First release is planed for iOS but they are also working on a future Android version.

Sounds good, but there is also room for more

To use the DronePan app you’ll have to leave the DJI Go app and start up the DronePan app separately.
The DronePan app also shows some basic information’s like a battery status or flight height but that’s about it. When returning to the DJI Go App you’ll have lost visual camera output until you full close the DronePan and DJI Go App and restart the DJI Go App again.
This is something you probably don’t really want to do mid flight. But Dennis Baldwin, the developer is working on it. So hopefully this will be fixed in the final version.

Right now the app just takes single pictures, but multiple images would be nice to remove unwanted stuff like pedestrians or cars easily.
Maybe we’ll see this as an option in the final app. But this would also need to slow down the shooting process, to make sure all raw images are getting saved to the sd card and there should also be a short time delay of about 2 seconds between each shot to make sense to be used to clean unneeded stuff.

The DronePann app is already a great tool for people that shoot a lot of panoramas.
Maybe this app also pushes a bit on the DJI crew, so we will see a full enclosure of this feature in a future DJI Go App release.
After all a single cockpit would be the preferred method of choice.

Bellow you’ll find a short clip that shows how the app works.

Update Aug. 17th 2015

The current version is getting reworked.
In a future version the camera will be able to pan above the horizon and the yawing will be done with the drone and not with the gimbal anymore.
This allows for more prop clearance and will also allow to use the app with the Phantom 3.