We’ve just upgraded to the latest version of DD on iPad and have begun experiencing issues with our ability to continue flights when the area requires battery swaps. On landing after using a full battery, replacing with a new one and hitting “continue” in DD we’re finding that the expected dashed line which denotes the portion of the flight plan which has already been flown doesn’t show the area that we just flew. If we were to hit “continue” we’d end up flying the same portion again.
From memory this has only happened on the third flight of a larger area (i.e. switching between battery 2 and 3) and has happened when we’ve just removed and replaced the battery (keeping both DD and the controller powered up) and when we’ve landed and switched off the drone, controller and exited DD.
Currently we’re working around this by re-drawing the area to only cover the section of the flight plan which we’ve yet to fly. However, resizing the area of interest also appears to affect the start point at which DD “thinks” it should be continuing the rest of the flight. Tricky to explain but if DD “thinks” it should be resuming the flight halfway across an area (i.e. half has already been flown), if I resize the area of interest by 50% DD re-calibrates the “continue” point to be halfway across this newly resized area rather than the bottom corner of the newly sized area.
It tough to explain this behavior in writing but long story short we end up redrawing a completely new plan and try to guess where we should be setting our new start point (which should be the proper continue point).
Not nearly as bad as your experince … but I have multiple times had the case where the app directs the aircraft to fly all the way back to the beginning of a line segment, as opposed to the point on the line segment where the previous flight/battery ended.
oneeyedhobo - I think this expected behavior as I guess the sdk is only aware of waypoints that have been reached rather than individual positions along a track. We’ve always made sure we hit the return to home button just after the app has shifted the next waypoint on the map and the drone has made its turn towards it. That way we don’t end up flying back to the same point and taking duplicate photos.
Our issue is more specific than that as described above and isn’t reflective of the expected behavior. It has only started happening since the most recent update.
Currently we’re working around this by re-drawing the area to only cover the section of the flight plan which we’ve yet to fly.
While we look into this issue, you can work around it by changing the plan’s starting waypoint, available under the “Advanced” button on the planning page. By doing this, you won’t need to redraw your plan.
I usually close and reopen the app at battery changes and it has virtually always (maybe always) come up Continue where I left off.
If not, just copy the plan (three dots to the right of the map name) and set the Starting Waypoint under Advanced to the last waypoint you were at. It will start flying there.
I have had this issue also. What should have been a 3 battery, 1 1/2 hour job turned into a full day and more than 8 batteries.
There were over 2700 images captured with no way to sort out “duplicates”. The map was just under 200 acres in remote area w/ no internet connectivity.
Thank goodness for McDolnalds WiFi as we did as others in this thread and kept “drawing” new maps for the area that we didn’t “think” we had flown. Fortunately all but 1 GCP was captured and we are waiting results from surveyor we are working with.
I’ve run into the duplicate photo problem; not a big deal if it’s only a few, but if it’s hundreds, then it becomes an issue.
My solution (for a Windows machine, I’m sure you could adapt this to Mac):
Get a copy of “BR’s Exif Extracter” or similar utility. It pulls the lat/lon data from each photo in a given folder and exports the data into a single file.
Use Exif Extracter to export all EXIF info including coordinates and image file names into a CSV file
Open the file in Excel, sort by image name, insert column headers into row 1
Use an Excel Macro to make a KML file that gives the 3-D location of each photo
Open the KML file in Google Earth, identify duplicate image locations and delete jpg files as needed.
Upload the remaining files to DD
Here’s the VB macro I wrote that creates the KML file. You’ll have to modify it to specify the location you want the KML file to be saved in.
Sub ExportKML()
'Exports Exif into KML
'Latitude must be in Column Q
'Longitude must be in Column R
'Altituce must be in Column S
Dim kmlFile As String, iRow As Integer, fileName As Variant
fileName = InputBox("Enter the name for the KML file")
kmlFile = "C:\Users\**INSERT YOUR USERNAME AND PATH HERE**" & fileName & ".kml"
iRow = 2
Open kmlFile For Output As #1
'Insert KML Header
Print #1, "<kml xmlns=" & Chr(34) & "http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" & Chr(34) & " xmlns:gx=" & Chr(34) & "http://www.google.com/kml/ext/2.2" & Chr(34) & " xmlns:kml=" & Chr(34) & "http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2" & Chr(34) & " xmlns:atom=" & Chr(34) & "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" & Chr(34) & ">"
'Insert Styles
Print #1, "<Document>" & vbCrLf & " <name>" & fileName & ".kml</name>" & vbCrLf & " <open>0</open>" & vbCrLf & " <Style id=" & Chr(34) & "default" & Chr(34) & ">" & vbCrLf & " <Icon> <href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/shapes/placemark_square.png</href></Icon>" & vbCrLf & " </Style>"
'Add the points pulled from the image files on the active sheet
Print #1, " <Folder>" & vbCrLf & " <name>Points</name>" & vbCrLf & " <open>0</open>"
Do Until IsEmpty(Cells(iRow, 1))
Print #1, " <Placemark> " & vbCrLf & " <name>" & Mid(Cells(iRow, 1).Value, 5, 4) & "</name> <styleUrl>#default</styleUrl> <Point> <altitudeMode>absolute</altitudeMode> <coordinates>" & Cells(iRow, 18).Value & "," & Cells(iRow, 17).Value & "," & Cells(iRow, 19).Value & "</coordinates> </Point>" & vbCrLf & " </Placemark>"
iRow = iRow + 1
Loop
Print #1, " </Folder>"
'Insert paths between points
iRow = 2
Print #1, " <Folder>" & vbCrLf & " <name>Paths</name>" & vbCrLf & " <open>0</open>"
Print #1, " <Placemark> " & vbCrLf & " <name>" & iRow - 1 & "</name> <styleUrl>#default</styleUrl> <LineString> <tessellate>1</tessellate> <altitudeMode>absolute</altitudeMode> <coordinates>"
Do Until IsEmpty(Cells(iRow, 1))
Print #1, Cells(iRow, 18).Value & "," & Cells(iRow, 17).Value & "," & Cells(iRow, 19).Value
iRow = iRow + 1
Loop
Print #1, "</coordinates> </LineString>" & vbCrLf & " </Placemark>" & vbCrLf & " </Folder>"
'Insert KML Footer
Print #1, "</Document>" & vbCrLf & "</kml>"
Close #1
End Sub
Not certain if I should be starting a new thread but yesterday I was mapping a large field that needed 2 battery changes (3 batteries in all) I’ve done this using 2 batteries before without any problem, flight plan shown as dotted where the drone has already travelled, solid where flight is still to happen. Changed 1st battery and resumed flight correctly (battery percentage 30% when I returned home 1st time) when I resumed the flight for the 2nd time after landing with a battery at around 45% there was no dotted flight line and the drone wanted to go back to a start point about halfway through the 1st flight. Is a 2nd battery change not possible or have I done something wrong? Phantom 4 Pro
We’ve heard a few reports like this lately Chris, and are investigating. Currently we cannot reproduce the issue in testing but Stephanie will keep you updated.
Summary of Issue:
Frequent crashing of App. Previous version used to show continued path of drone and images after resuming mission. But latest update doesn’t show the path. Date Issue Began:
1/11/2017 Drone Model:
Phantom 4 pro Mobile Device Model and OS version:
iPad mini 4
We flew again earlier this week and the issue now appears to be the reverse of the initial issue. When we hit ‘continue’ after a battery swap (powering down the drone, controller and closing the app in between battery swaps) the drone continues the mission at an incorrect waypoint much further in from the expected re-start point.
Essentially if we’d reached waypoint 25 of 100 with one battery and hit continue on battery 2, the drone re-starts the mission at waypoint 30 (for example) and misses out a bunch of expected flight paths.
This happened on two separate occasions on Tuesday this week and it wasn’t immediately apparent that it had happened until we returned to the office and mapped the photo points in a GIS requiring us to re-fly the missing sections later in the day.
Hello @ChampionHouseI would suggest updating your drone and DroneDeploy app to the latest versions. We have corrected these waypoint issues in our latest update.
@ChampionHouse, I had this once a few weeks ago, whereby after switching the battery the drone would return to a waypoint one or two ahead of where it left off, leaving out a pass or two - approx 150 images.
I didn’t know what had caused this and only actually noticed when uploading the images to find a line or two of blue spots missing. Because of it however, I routinely press the RC’s RTH button immediately after it reaches the end of a pass before the next waypoint in the distant appears, effectively not allowing the system to activate the next long pass. It hasn’t done it again since but then it looks like from @Yusuf’s comment above that it was a bug and my workaround has had no affect anyway although I reckon habits will die hard though and I will continue to work this way forever more.
Had a similar issue yesterday: after successfully doing one battery change, I recalled the drone to home just after a long leg (using the RTH button) and after changing battery it changed the job status to “Live Map” and would not allow us to fly the remainder of the mission.
Any advice on how to avoid this issue, or force a “continue” status, is welcome!
I’ve done 4 or 5 flights with multiple battery swaps in the past few weeks and not had a problem. (P4Pro) I always use the RTH icon/button on the app rather than on the controller and watch the display and the drone to make sure I hit the button when it is on what i call the “base leg” - the short leg between actual flight lines. I check the proposed flight lines when I go back from the dashboard into the mission and make sure it is showing solid lines where I want it to, but I haven’t had it skip a line for several months and a few versions ago. I also restart my phone and controller after 3 or 4 missions or battery changes just to play it safe as I’ve had problems with the phone slowing down and overheating, again that was at least 6 moths ago and also with an older phone (Galaxy s7) I’ve since upgraded to the Galaxy s8 Active which seems to be much more robust.
The only problem I still see on multi battery flights is that the photo counter never shows up after the first battery swap. I get the message “Photo capture started” and can see the real time camera view give a little “hitch” as it takes each photo.
One way to continue would be to make a copy of the mission and then fly it again and set the starting waypoint where you want on the advanced settings page. You should pay attention to where you were in the mission when you hit RTH so you can go back there. I grab a screenshot (press the power and down buttons at the same time on the S8) right after the RTH so I can refer to it if needed.
Just a few items I’ve included in my workflow to prevent getting back to the office and finding I missed some photos - hope this helps.