DJI Drone Settings In Depth - DJI Fly App Guide Part 2

Continuing where we left off last week, we looked at the drone settings on the DJI Fly app. The app controls the best DJI drones on the market; thus, it is arguably the most popular drone-related app in the world. In the previous article, we went over all of the settings from the main screen, waypoints, camera, and welcome screen. Now, we will focus on all the available settings menus by tapping on the three dots in the corner. Each chapter will represent a tab in the settings.

Safety

1. Obstacle Avoidance Action—Bypass, Brake, or Off changes the behavior of obstacle avoidance systems. Bypass automatically searches for an unobstructed path, while the brake mode just does not let you fly. Off means obstacle avoidance is entirely disabled.
2. Display Radar Map—The radar map is a visual circle in the main camera view that indicates proximity to the obstacles the system is detecting. Use this setting to turn it on or off.
3. Advanced RTH - optimal means a more intelligent pathing when returning home, using the obstacle avoidance system, while preset will do the usual ascend-fly straight-descent option.
4. Auto RTH Altitude: The return to home altitude is the height your aircraft will ascend before flying straight to the home point.
5. Update Home Point - here, you can refresh the RTH point. You can do that for your or the aircraft's current position.
6. AR Settings—In this section, you can enable or disable the augmented reality overlay in the camera window. The overlays are your home point marker, RTH path, and aircraft shadow.
7. Max Altitude - maximum flight height you impose on your drone.
8. Max Distance - maximum distance from the remote controller you impose on your drone.
9. Compass (status), Calibrate—This shows your compass's status, and the blue button on the right allows you to calibrate it if its status is compromised.
10. IMU (status), Calibrate - shows the status of your IMU and allows for calibration in case something is wrong.
11. Battery Info - This will display information about the battery currently in the drone. Most importantly, it will show the battery cell status and cycle count, allowing you to judge the battery's health.
12. Auxiliary LED—bottom LED toggle. Auto will turn on the bottom LED during takeoff and landing in low-light conditions.
13. Aircraft LEDs - these are the red and green LEDs below the motors. Auto mode will disable the red ones during image capture.
14. Unlock GEO Zone—This will take you to an interface that shows unlocking certificates. If you want to upload documents and unlock various geo zones, you will need to do that on the DJI website, and these will appear here in the app.
15. Find My Drone - opens the map, which shows where your drone is or its last recorded position.
16. Advanced Safety Settings—A few more safety features will be included here, including aircraft behavior during a full disconnect and emergency motor stop and AirSense and UAS Remote ID settings.

Control

1. Units - the app's unit options. They affect the main screen's speed, height, and distance display.
2. Display Zoom - toggle the size of text elements in the main camera view.
3. Subject Scanning - enable or disable constant subject scanning. Subjects such as people or vehicles will be displayed with small markers for quick tracking in the main camera view.
4. Gain and Expo Tuning—This contains a huge section of tweaks for each flight mode. You can choose the maximum speed for Cine, Normal, and Sport modes and tweak how sensitive the sticks are when flying in each mode. According to your input, you can also tweak the gimbal tilt to make it smoother and quicker. Explore these settings if you think the drone is not agile or smooth enough for your tastes.
5. Gimbal Mode - Follow or FPV modes. Follow mode is the standard one for GPS drones. FPV mode will not stabilize the horizontal axis of the gimbal, giving it a more FPV-like feel.
6. Gimbal Calibration—Goes to the gimbal calibration menu. If the camera is crooked in a resting position or the horizon does not seem straight during content capture, calibrate your gimbal.
7. Stick Mode - stick mode refers to which contains which controls.
8. Button Customization - you can remap the Fn button functions here.
9. RC Calibration—Remote controller calibration interface. Do calibration if you experience different flight behavior compared to your input, such as a drone flying slightly instead of straight.
10. Flight Tutorial - replay the tutorial.
11. Re-pair to Aircraft (Link) - trigger this to relink the remote to your aircraft if you are experiencing connectivity issues. 

Camera Tab

The first section will differ for photo and video settings depending on your selected capture mode.

Camera - Photo

1. Format - your photo storage format selection - JPEG, RAW, or both.
2. Aspect Ratio - photos aspect ratio. The real ratio is the 4:3, 16:9 only crops in, which you can do in post.
3. Resolution - photo resolution selection.

Camera - Video

1. Format - file format to store saved video files.
2. Color - color mode selection will affect the video color gamma and bit depth.
3. Coding Format - encoding selection between h254 and h265.
4. Video Bitrate - CBR or VBR selection means constant or variable bit rate.
5. Video Subtitles - if enabled, the drone will create and SRT file for each video with live coordinates and other information.

Camera - Everything Else

1. Anti-Flicker - setting to reduce light flicker caused by artificial light sources. If you notice this effect, you can try different modes here.
2. Histogram - enable the histogram display on the main camera view.
3. Peaking Level - focus peaking will show what is in focus on the frame. You can disable it here or choose how visible the peaking effect is.
4. Overexposure Warning - This setting will add a blinking effect in the main camera window, where the frame is overexposed and completely white.
5. Gridlines - grid line overlay in the main camera windows for composition purposes.
6. Frame Guide - will add boundaries to the main camera window, which will help you compose your video for different formats (for cropping in post). This will not be visible in the footage.
7. White Balance - white balance setting.
8. Storage - Format - storage location choice and format button to format the currently chosen storage.
9. Custom Folder Naming - you can name the folders that the aircraft creates on the SD card.
10. Custom File Naming - you can name the photo and video file sequences the drone creates.
11. Cache When Recording - enable or disable screen recording in the app when taking video.
12. Max Video Cache Capacity - video cache size limitation on your device. Older captures will be deleted to make room for newer ones.
13. Reset Camera Parameters - resets all camera settings to the defaults.

Transmission

1. Live Streaming Platforms—This will only display the RTMP option for live streaming your footage to an RTMP server.
2. Frequency - allows selecting the particular frequency for your drone connection to the RC.
3. Channel Mode - allows selecting a particular channel for the connection. It may be helpful in exceptional cases, such as RC meets or events with a lot of radio chatter.

About

1. Name - the customizable name of the drone.
2. Wifi Name - drone wifi name during Quick Transfer.
3. Model - drone model designation.
4. App Version - DJI Fly app version number.
5. Aircraft Firmware - Check For Updates - firmware version number and a button to trigger the check for update.
6. RC Firmware - remote controller firmware number.
7. FlySafe Data - fly-safe data version numbers.
8. Check for Updates - this button triggers checking for new FlySafe data.
9. Import from Files - You can import safety geo zones from files here.
10. SN - serial number of the aircraft.
11. Reset All Settings - resets all of the DJI Fly app settings to the defaults.
12. Clear All Data - clears all cached data associated with the DJI Fly app.

Conclusion

This concludes our brisk overview of all of the settings in the DJI Fly app. Some stuff, such as video color modes or expo tuning, deserves a deeper dive and explanation. Still, our goal was to show where each item is and give a brief description. These articles should be the quickest and most convenient reference if you can not find a setting. Use CTRL+F to enable search in your browser, and you can easily find the item you want.