Tuna,
I don’t believe anyone was suggesting to use you and your talents to do an end run around Yuneec. OTOH, you have a history of producing good functional software and generating updates as needed vastly faster than Yuneec does. Basic waypoint flight planning has been available as a standard function with consumer level drones as far back as 2013-2014 when they were equipped with APM or Mikrokopter flight controllers. In my view Yuneec has deliberately limited their consumer equipment by removing or omitting that feature from the base FC they build off of. I have two such non DJI COTS machines in my shop where at any time I can sit down with a laptop, program a mission directly to the FC, launch and observe, or launch, fly, interrupt a mission and redirect the aircraft as needed. No APK’s or Apps required. The same applies to a wide variety of flight mode selections. That both cost less than an H Plus, can be fitted with my camera of choice, have very long range when operated with telemetry radio and antenna tracking as conditions require, and are both extremely high in reliability and positional accuracy should not get lost in discussion. Those facts establish Yuneec could provide the same or similar if the desire was present as both use APM and Pixhawk FC’s, which is the deconfigured basis of the H-480 FC. Sure, the 580 and H Plus are using PX4 but rapid development of PX4 came to a screeching halt over 3 years ago due to a massive falling out between the developers and various corporate interests. Many of them bailed from the group, removing many of the best from further PX4 development. That programming a basic orbit feature with waypoint tangent intercepts had not been incorporated with PX4 is a fair indication of developmental problems. Having to stop at each waypoint on a flight plan to change direction is a miserable failure. We might also consider that 3DR released a version of their X-8 in 2015 specifically designed for mapping and directly integrated with Pix4D software and did a **** fine job with a Canon point and shoot camera.
That Yuneec wants to play to different groups of consumers is commendable but the manner they have been serving them leans a bit towards the deplorable as once their products are released the bugs they contain are slow to be corrected, if they are corrected at all. They need to be aggressive in process and product improvement or risk experiencing exactly what has been occurring with product owners seeking their own solutions. That both the 520 and H Plus were released with poor gimbal horizontal positioning pretty well establishes the focus has been on getting new airframes out the door for sales generation, not getting new products out the door that satisfy their customers needs. There’s the appearance of an attitude of “take the money and run”. They did rather well with the Typhoon H with a series of firmware improvements but have fallen flat on their faces with the 580 and releasing the H Plus without some of the features in the H-480, including NFZ wavered software, along with a pin cushion lens was either extremely poor quality control, poor planning, or deliberate. As 580 corrections still languish I'll call the problem one of prioritization. Fixing what's broken is not high on the priority list. Pick the one that suits the moment.
If they want to be competitive they have to meet customer needs and demands. If they desire only to pick up the few that won’t or don’t buy another brand they still need to keep that group relatively happy if they want to remain in business. I don’t know very many people that will spend $1,600.00 to $4,000.00 knowing they will have to develop “work around's” for that new equipment to function as it should have before it went into distribution. Few will wait indefinitely for fixes that never don't get delivered.
Bear in mind some of us still know how to build what we want or need and are not dependent on a company to provide us what the company feels we should have. In having that knowledge we have the ability to quickly recognize corporate BS before we step in it and choose a path that takes us around it instead of through it. The only drawback for us is having to use an external monitor instead of a screen incorporated with the transmitter. OTOH, we can pump data directly to anywhere we want to at longer ranges and higher resolutions without needing an HDMI cable.
Unlike Yuneec we don't need, or want, to do the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result.