DJI Mavic Pro

I just got my first DJI drone, the Mavic Pro. Coming from the miniquad scene, the features on the Mavic are amazing. This article will walk through the unboxing and setup. I hope that an absolute beginner can use this as an easy walk through to get everything needed to setup and get flying.

Unboxing

Once you get it unboxed, go out and capture some awesome footage!

What's Included

I bought just the Mavic Pro, not the "Fly More" combo which costs a cool $299 extra. In the box with my Mavic Pro, I got:

1x Mavic Remote Controller
1x Battery
3x Propeller Sets (that's one spare set, included in the box)
1x Battery Charger, which includes 2 USB ports on the charger itself, so you can charge a battery, the remote and your phone all at once.
1x Micro usb cable for charging the remote

I also ordered an extra battery and an extra set of props.

First Flight

Coming from the world of DIY and open source quadcopters, I was expecting a bit of work to get things working. I was pleasantly surprised when all that I needed to do to get flying was attach the front propellers, turn on the drone and controller, connect my phone and click, "Take Off." The hardest part was installing the DJI Go 4 app on my phone (which is not hard at all).

Protips

Some things that are not apparent without reading the manual

Takeoff and Landing

You can use the app to takeoff and land or you can use stick commands to manually start the props. Arm with either:

(LEFT STICK)   (RIGHT STICK)
[DOWN + RIGHT]  [DOWN + LEFT]

OR you can arm the motors with:

(LEFT STICK)   (RIGHT STICK)
[DOWN + LEFT]  [DOWN + RIGHT]

When you come in to land just pull the throttle down until the quad is on the ground, then use the same stick command you used to arm and the quad will disarm.

Firmware Updates and Calibration

Usually you update your firmware via your mobile device, just make sure you have a fully charged battery on the controller, Mavic and your phone.

I have gotten an error message that said "Calibrate Vision Sensors with DJI Assistant on PC or Mac for higher accuracy." If you see this you'll need to grab the download from https://www.dji.com/mavic/info#downloads and install the software on your computer. Use the micro USB port on the side to connect it to your computer after installing DJI Assistant and it will detect your quadcopter. From there, simply follow the guide for calibration.