Random missing images from flight plan

Summary of Issue:

The flight plan was flown with success.
Upon uploading the images I notice random missing images including a length where about 10 images were missing.
The total number of images taken was 993, 2 missions with 85/95% forward overlap and 75/75% side overlap.
The map is still being processed (24 hours thus far and still going…

Date Issue Began:

17 October 2017

Drone Model:

P4 pro

latest firmware in drone & RC

Mobile Device Model and OS version:

iPad pro 256 gb
v 11.0.3

Hi @Daniel777,

Can you share the map ID of the map you’re having issues with? And is the email associated with your DroneDeploy account the same as the one you used to register on our forum?

Keep me posted,
Christina

Thanks Christina

yes same email

I’ve been communicating with Andrea (support) via email.

I flew 2 missions -

Milbrodale 11880 low
and
Milbrodale 11880 high

low was flown at 99 metres above launch
high was flown at 202 metres above launch

This was suggested by DD (Stephanie by email from memory) as a way of avoiding the high topography on part of the site to avoid loss of the drone (as happened during the last attempt of mapping that property).

I uploaded the total combined images to DD and then noticed the missing random images.

I have saved the screen print of the upload process which shows the missing image positions.

The images have been uploaded to map “11880 Milbrodale”

Perhaps DD should alert the pilot in the field that images are missing and that parts of the flight plan need to be re-flown??

Or is it that the image position map produced at DD upload is faulty? - and the images are actually there amongst the 993 images.

Hi @Daniel777,

Thank you for providing the additional info. I kindly ask that you reach out to one support channel at a time with a particular issue.

I see that @Andrea has been in touch with you via email, so please respond back to her if you have any other questions.

Cheers,
Christina

Thanks Christina

Yes however Andrea has not been able to come up with any solutions or answers as to how or why.
Andrea has now advised me that she “synced” with Stephanie (whatever that might mean and offered advice that conflicts with Stephanie’s original email advice to me.

It is difficult to know who at DD is the tech support and who knows what and has what experience.
Various people respond to various forum posts without clearly identifying themselves as DD employees.
More confusion.

regards, Daniel

Hi @Daniel777,

By “Synced” I meant that I spoke with Stephanie and clarified the information that we provided to you separately. We are sorry if the information wasn’t clear and created some confusion. We are all genuinely trying to help you with your questions/issues but it is difficult when you are not providing us constructive feedback.

So, may I ask, what is it about my suggestions or advice that is not clear? We would appreciate if you can share something that helps us improve your support experience.

Best,
Andrea

I experienced the same problem with my DJI P4 (non-pro). After many successful missions and finally returning home, I discovered all my higher terrain areas were missing too many shots of the higher level areas. I used 200m as well to avoid a radio tower sitting at 125m tall in the lower elevation. Elevation of ground for mission varried between 2m above sea level to the 125m for the tower. The missing high ground was aprpoximately 90-100m elevation. I used a Oppo late model smartphone, but feel the image loss was probably due to the slow processing speed of the Oppo. However, that logic is difficult to confirm since no lost images occurred at the lower elevations. Another anomaly that occurred was that on several missions for some reason the camera faced forward, not toward the ground, thereby rendering the images unusable for making maps. I plan on upgrading my smartphone in the near future and will then try to replicate the problem again with a higher graphics processing speed. Cheers! jim filgo, Jakarta, Indonesia

As far I understand the mobile device (phone or iPad) does very little processing during the flight.
I notice that DD app has again been updated …
I flew another mission a couple of days ago and didn’t experience even one missing image.
I suspect that that issue has been resolved now.

Drone: Phantom 4 Pro
Tablet: Samsung Tab S3
Dronedeploy Version: 2.59.0
Issue: Dropped pictures
Date of Issue: 31 Oct 2017
Mission Size: 9.73 acres, 7 long rows of 800’
Altitude: 253’
Speed: 10 MPH
Forward and side overlap: 75%
Flight ID: 937b7b57a0_ORBCHAPPELOPENPIPELINE

Problem:
The majority of pictures on even rows are missing while only 1 or 2 pictures are missing on odd rows. There are 12 evenly-spaced pictures on a full row. The 2D Map still shows the whole area of the mission but the 3D Model details are weak. The pictures at turning corners show rotational blurring and were not submitted for processing.

These issues do not occur in Pix4D Android App so my P4P drone and controller are capable of flying this mission and taking pictures along each row with approximately equal spacing.

update

I flew another mission and once again have various missing images.

Also many images at the waypoint turn points are blurred due to the rapid rotation during image acquisition.

Please advise if it is critical to manually remove these blurred images? - or does DD map processing automatically remove them…

Solarbarn, when you take imagery with Pix4d which is the best software for creating the map - DD or Pix 4d?

Hi @Daniel777

I’m sorry to see this. We have seen some users experience similar issues while using DD with Android. We are carrying out a slow roll-out for the new update to 2.60.0 for Android that should fixed the image capture issue. I would uninstall and re-install the app just to make sure that you have the latest version running. This should fix the issue with images being dropped.

I would also recommend resetting the drone to default settings in DJI GO and recalibrating the camera. Please let us know if you have any issues moving forward.

Cheers!
Zach

Zach it has nothing to do with android - sorry but you can’t blame this DD malfunction on that!

after hearing about all the android compatibility issues with both DJI and DD I went out and spent another $1,000 on an iPad pro 2016 model which apparently has guaranteed compatibility with both DJI and DD.

and still have issues… missing images on most flights… sometimes whole runs of them…also blurred images on waypoint turnarounds.

and yet at other times not one image is missing…

It seems that DD has software glitches that need sorting out before it can be reliably used…

aircraft - phantom 4 pro
device - iPad pro 2016 256 gb
firmware & os - all up to date
DJI go4 camera setting all at factory default
SD card - sandisk 64gb extreme formatted by DJI app in aircraft

only variable is DD app functionality

I’m just about done with beta testing DD at my own expense - time to try Pix4d me thinks …

Hi @Daniel777,

I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues, but it’s difficult to assist when you do not specify which maps you are having issues with. Can you share the names of the maps you’re having issues with and what problems exist with each of them?

Thanks,
Christina

Milbrodale & Pokolbin both have numerous missing images

I completed processing the 203 pictures taken by Pix4D Android App in Pix4D Desktop. This took over 8 hours on my Yoga 900 laptop which is over 4X slower than DroneDeploy cloud processing. The Pix4D results were not very satisfactory because it complained that 40 of the pictures were not calibrated. As a result the 3D model had several distracting artifacts (some areas were 100’s of feet too high). I am still working with Pix4D to try and sort out this problem. But for the areas without artifacts the 3D model seemed to have more details than the DroneDeploy 3D model based upon the same 203 pictures taken by Pix4D.
So at present if I could use Pix4D to fly missions and Dronedeploy to process them into 2D maps and 3D models then I would have a fast and reliable solution.
My observation of the faults with DroneDeploy are exactly the same as yours Daniel777, many missing pictures and blurry pictures at all turning corners. It amazes me that, even after years of software development, DroneDeploy cannot fly missions reliably.

I’m new to this.
for all my maps I fly at about 90% forward overlap and about 85% side overlap.
0f the 3 jobs I have tried DD on, 2 had numerous missing images but the overlap overcame that issue anyway.
However the image sets were of just under 1000 images and about 7 gb data.
Uploading took about 7 hours and DD processing took about 18 hours.
I have tried other software for flight planning and they appear to be more sophisticated than DD.

DD will use any images to create a map so SolarBarn what you are suggesting is easy.

I have updated the App to 2.60.0 and will try flying this tomorrow if the rain holds off long enough (a challenge in Oregon this time of year).
I am also going to try PrecisionFlight from PrecisionHawk. They offer 5 free maps/month just like DD. But the App seems to have fewer planning options than DD. It does connect to my P4P OK.

I processed the same 203 photos taken with Pix4D and sucessfully processed by DroneDeploy on PrecisionHawk’s PrecisionMapper. The results for the 2D map are worse and the 3D DSM is awful with shapes in the sky and large missing areas.
I should mention that the mapped area of 15.2 acres consists mostly of 1000 trees up to 130’ in height on a slope that drops 200 feet. This area has a very high fractal dimension making construction of detailed maps very challenging. So far DD is definitely doing the best job of processing the photos. PrecisionMapper, while fast, really struggles and Pix4D, which rejects 40 photos as being uncalibrated, creates large artifacts in the 3D model.

I flew the PrecisionFlight and the new DD apps today. DD version 2.60.0 dropped many fewer pictures while PF took black pictures due to too fast shutter speed; 1/1250 sec vs 1/30 with DD. I sent a note to PF asking about fix. For the new DD app, I will try to squeeze in some more missions tomorrow between periods of rain to see if reliability is definitely improved. All pictures at turning points with DD are still too blurry so this has definitely not been fixed in 2.60.0 release.

I think what you guys are experiencing is that all of these 3rd party apps use a pretty similar method provided by the DJI SDK to take photos and adjust camera settings. There are some small differences, but as you saw that auto exposure on the dji camera chose a slow shutter speed for DD but faster for PF. It could have easily been the reverse depending on what the DJI camera chooses. That being said, we are working on an alternative to DJI’s auto exposure but we don’t have a release date to share just yet.