Android / P3A Version 44 very "buggy"/ Video links included

Flight - Discussion and Q&A
1

Holy smokes! What exactly did you “fix” with version 44 because it is quite a bit more unstable than 43? You need to roll the android version back ASAP and try again.

Here is a quick summary of the problems I had on the 1st flight attempt using 44:

  1. Mission altitude must be set to 375 ft or lower or it will fail to initiate flight due to “Altitude too high” error (continuous problem - See video #1)

  2. If you get an error when attempting to start a flight, you can’t return to edit the mission without returning all the way to the dashboard (continuous problem - See video #1)

  3. Live video feed box may or may not open when mission starts - no video for flights in Video #1, #2 & #3 (2 different flights), got it in flight shown in Video #4 & #5 (same flight)

  4. On 1st mission, drone began taking pictures then stopped taking after ~20 pics. Mission continued flying to completion but didn’t take pictures. The pic counter stopped indexing and only showed “1” as the image count starting as soon as the pictures stopped being taken. I suspected there was a problem, but decided to run mission to completion to see what would happen. There was no live video feed image on the screen during the entire mission. I did not take any video of this flight / problem.

  5. As shown in Video #1, the drone began taking pictures at the start point, but did not fly anywhere. Had to do a Return to Home and re-start.

  6. When traveling to and home from mission, the programmed altitude is significantly higher than the mission altitude. I note this in Video #4 & #5 but if you watch for it, you can see it happen in any shot with the drone travelling to or from a mission. I am pretty sure this is where your bug is preventing me from flying missions at 400 feet.

  7. The position icon is stuck pointing north regardless of what direction the P3A is actually facing.

  8. When a mission is initiated but interupted (i.e battery swap) you cannot resume the mission unless you exit fully from the app and restart it. (Video #4)

I am going to try another mission set this afternoon and have done a full reboot on my android device. Hopefully that will clean some of these problems up (not properly starting mission / stopping photos / no live video) that seem to be intermittent. I will provide a reply to this thread if I learn anything more.

Please watch the videos at the links provided below and you should get a pretty good idea of where we are at with version 44. Video #6 is just provided so you can see the hardware / firmware I am using.

Links to videos showing bugs:

Video #1: https://goo.gl/photos/ZPhLrJcHc1ziPBDP7
Video #2: https://goo.gl/photos/XQ69haVWsFDic51K6
Video #3: https://goo.gl/photos/DpGbqjpZaG7uMpxZ9
Video #4: https://goo.gl/photos/Y7mpX34s7o6uoLf29
Video #5: https://goo.gl/photos/FAFQZXD7U8ZETq3q8
Video #6: https://goo.gl/photos/sfUxht1vX5fZjDvg9

2

Follow-up report - I flew 2 additional missions after posting my first findings.

The good news:

  1. Live video feed box ran correctly both flights.
  2. Flights flew with no problems or hang-ups.
  3. All photos taken correctly through entire mission.

The bad news:

  1. The drone orientation icon remains locked to the north (Comment - I always point my P3A north at start-up)
  2. The altitude when traveling from the home point to the start point and when traveling back to the home point is always at least 10-15 ft higher than the mission altitude.
3

Thanks for the detailed report!

Glad to hear it is working better.

  • The live video feed can sometimes not initialize properly. We are adding a checklist warning about this so you don’t takeoff. It’s coming in next release.
  • The mission altitude warning has recently popped up. We think it’s a DJI firmware issue, but we’re investigating it.
  • Returning to dashboard after an error is something we’re fixing. It’s been on the list to fix for a while now.
  • That’s troubling about it stopping to take images mid-flight. The only thing I can think of is to format the SD card before the flight? It usually helps.
  • It’s interesting that you saw it flying higher to and from the mission. We’ll take a look to see if something has changed here. And you’re right about this being a possible reason that the altitude warning shows.
  • I’ve made a note about the position icon. We didn’t see that in our testing but I can see it’s happening.

Thanks again and sorry you’re having issues.

4

Chase - I flew three more missions today. Weather was perfect this weekend here to get over my fields. I’m not normally this busy.

No more issues with interrupted pictures, so I think it was just a one-off glitch. If it returns, I’ll try the format trick.

I watched the altitude setpoints as it flew each mission. The altitude setpoint when transiting to/from the mission was always 10-15 feet above the mission altitude. Sequence is something like: Mission altitude set at 375 and takeoff initiated - bird climbs straight up to the home aloft setpoint altitude 385 - travels to setpoint 1 at 385 - drops down to 375 and begins mission - finishes mission at 375 then climbs up to 385 - returns to home aloft setpoint at 385 - lands.