DJI has released an exciting new firmware update for its top-of-the-line Mavic 3 consumer drone series, bringing native Waypoint Flight support to Mavic 3 Classic, Mavic 3, and Mavic 3 Cine drones.
Waypoints is an automated flight mode that enables a drone to follow a specified flight path over and over again. You can define Points of Interest (POI) along this flight route, which tells the drone where it needs to focus while capturing images.
Parameters such as camera action, altitude, speed, heading, gimbal tilt, zoom, and hovering time can all be defined for individual waypoints — which makes this intelligent flight feature incredibly useful for jobs such as filming real estate, mapping, or assessing the changes in an area over time.
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Several third-party flight planning apps, such as Litchi and DroneDeploy, have typically enabled DJI pilots to fly consumer drones for commercial jobs using Waypoints. But these apps can support a drone only when their developers have access to the aircraft’s capabilities. This is where DJI’s Mobile SDK (software development kit) comes in.
DJI has not released an SDK for the Mavic 3 users, despite users flooding support forums with requests for the same. This could be because the tech giant also offers ultra-affordable enterprise-level aircraft built using the Mavic 3 platform, and releasing a Mobile SDK for the consumer series would essentially cannibalize the sales of Mavic 3 Enterprise.
In any case, DJI has now added Waypoints to Mavic 3 Classic, Mavic 3, and Mavic 3 Cine drones with a new firmware update. In addition, the maximum flight altitude limit has been raised from 500m to 1,000m, though you’d still be required to fly in accordance with your local airspace regulations.
You also get 4K 24/25fps resolution in Night mode now, while offline map access is also being made available. Go to Profile > Offline Maps to download maps of your planned flight destinations and have the maps displayed even when there is no network connection.
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To see these changes, update the Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Cine aircraft to v01.00.1000. The Mavic 3 Classic, meanwhile, needs to be updated to v01.00.0300. You will also need to update the DJI Fly app to v1.9.0 or later to access the new features.
The corresponding firmware versions for the drone remote controllers are as follows:
For Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Cine
- RC-N1 Remote Controller Firmware: v04.17.0800
- DJI RC Remote Controller Firmware: v01.02.0200
- DJI RC Pro Remote Controller Firmware: v03.01.1200
For Mavic 3 Classic
- RC-N1 Remote Controller Firmware: v04.17.0300
- DJI RC Remote Controller Firmware: v01.02.0200
- DJI RC Pro Remote Controller Firmware: v03.01.1200
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