Camera Focus Failed to Update-Causing Return to Home

Would you trust them if they did give the update?

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There is another discussion I was reading where it might be a memory card issue conflicting with the status of the app because it got interrupted mid action.

Other users swear that if you change the memory card to a clean one, it corrects the issue.

It’s raining here today but as soon as it clears up I’ll try and replicate & let you guys know.

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WORK AROUND CONFIRMED. IT SEEMS TO WORK.

Good news guys. It seems that the memory card trick works. Can somebody else please run a multi-battery mission to confirm.

Here’s what I did.

My setup today:
Phantom 4 Pro v2.0 (everything standard. current firmware)
Std Phantom 4 Pro White Controller (current firmware)
Samsung Tablet USB Screen (latest firmware/os)
2x Sandisk 32GB Extreme Pro v30
1x Samsung EVO Plus 32GB

  1. Get the drone ready. Load into DJIGO4 and format 3 memory cards all nice and fresh. Confirm compass calibration, flysafe & firmware. Check # of satellites.
  2. Close DJIGO4 and open DD
  3. Fly mission. It fails the camera focus in the Preflight Checklist. With the Retry Box still open on the screen use the left scroll wheel to tilt the gimbal to 90 degrees then back to 0 then back to 90 then back to 0.
  4. Click Retry on the focus error box. It should now clear.
  5. Launch the drone and fly mission to first battery change (maybe we can replicate using the RTB function rather than fly the entire battery but I haven’t tried this).
  6. Bring drone back, power down drone, change battery.

SKIP THIS NEXT SECTION. I JUST DID IT TO ENSURE THE PROBLEM STILL EXISTS. SKIP TO STEP 10.
7. Power drone up. Hit continue mission.
8. Clear the preflight checklist focus error using the gimbal trick from STEP 3.
9 Launch drone. It will fly to next waypoint and try to resume the mission. It will fail focus and RTB immediately. Power down drone.

  1. Switch memory card with a fresh one. Power up drone.
  2. Hit continue mission.
  3. Clear preflight focus error using gimbal trick from STEP 3.
  4. Launch drone and watch it fly away. NOTE: IF YOU PERFORMED STEP 7,8,9 YOU WILL NOTE THAT YOUR DRONE ICON ON THE SCREEN STOPS WORKING AND IT SHOWS TO BE HOVERING OVER THE LAUNCH POSITION EVEN WHILE THE DRONE IS OFF FLYING. IF YOU LOOK CAREFULLY YOU’LL SEE THE BEARING LINE TO YOU DRONE MOVE AROUND AS YOUR DRONE CONTINUES THE MISSION BUT THE DRONE ICON IS BROKEN.
  5. Cross your fingers as the drone approaches the next/first waypoint.
  6. Watch in glee as it takes the first/next photo and continues the mission. You know. Yes get excited that the work around actually works instead of the program just working like it should. [sarcasm]
  7. Repeat as needed to complete mission.
  8. Upload, Process, Deliver and Get Paid.

We prefer to use the Mavic Pro whenever we can because it’s less hassle with the general public in most cases. But when we need the mechanical shutter it would be nice to know that the platform works the way it should. We were honestly caught by surprise and feel completely let down by DD on this one. At least it looks like this work around works for now.

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I’m about to pay for DJI Pro, so I can get paid :slight_smile:
Oh, its IOS only. But of course. Funny how the engineering community is PC based but mobile stuff is IOS first. Whatever, company is paying.

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I tested again today, same camera focus failure issue on S20 Android 12.
I tried the switch memory card trick, no luck.
Even if it did work, that is a bad solution for a business that needs reliability.
I should mention I can get past the preflight focus error. Retry normally works, but I did the gimbal rotation thing too. That is not the overall failure going on.
So DD is dead in the water for Android 12 devices (likely S20 and up)…
I guess I mean for multi-battery flights.

If someone is on the moon and this happens, just split your mission into one battery flights and you can finish and limp home with data. I had to do that to get by when I first ran into this.

I did find it interesting that DJI Go 4 would not start until I downloaded the latest using sideload apk.
Apparently, the one on the store is slightly old.
Then the DJI Fly app has the same “start for a second and crash” issue, but no fix.
So you cannot switch gears and use the DJI app instead of DD.
So I also have an IPad we got a while back but I never use it for the drone.
When phone renewal time comes, I’m going apple as work pays for it and several industry related apps seem to be better maintained on it.

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Man that is just some crazy stuff. So you have a Samsung S20?

What do you other folks have?

My thought is that it might be something specific to a manufacturer or product line. Samsung, Motorola and LG are notorious for tweaking their instance of Android and their own bloatware which allows for bugs to pop up because the flight app is designed on a vanilla version.

My Google Pixel 5 which runs great but I am waiting for my upgrade to a Google Pixel 6 Pro so I hope that doesn’t break…

I have the same issue, P4PV2 and after each battery change in large missions the drone is rarely able to focus the after flying all the way back out to resume the mission. It took 3 tries (drone returning home) to get it to resume mission and on another mission the same day I gave up after 6 tries.

I’m using a Samsung A52G phone (Android).

My Samsung A52G phone is running Android 11 so the problem is not isolated to Android 12.

I was not able to replicate the problem on each of my flights (on rare instances it works). In all cases when DD goes thru the checklist it pauses on the camera check/test and most times it fails but a retry has always allowed the checklist to complete.

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Também estou tendo o mesmo problema desde o início de 2021.
Tentei alterar várias configurações, mas nada resolveu.
Esse problema impacta diretamente no tempo útil de voo devido a necessidade de rth.

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Ajuda nós Drone Deploy.
Cadê a atualização com a correção do bug? :raised_hands:

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I just got back in from another attempt to fly a multi-battery mission. Instead of using my A52 5G Android phone I used my 7" Tripltek Android Tablet running Android version 9.

The first battery flight was great but I was unable to get the drone to focus the camera for the second flight. I sent the drone out 5 times (with 3 witnesses) and it came back each time unable to focus the camera on my P4P V2 drone.

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I was able to round up an IOS phone (Iphone 7) and install DroneDeploy. On Wednesday and Thursday I was able to fly two each day multibattery missions without any problems. the IOS app has some additional functionality that the Android app does not. Clearly the problem is with the Android app and not my drone.

The problem could be simple and might just require changing the delay upon reading the drone camera. I say this because most of the times the DD Android app reports a failure to focus the camera when running thru the check list, after a retry the checklist completes fine.

Simply putting a loop delay or a retry in the app might solve the problem.

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I switched to only using apple devices with DD. I have both an old IPad Mini 4, and a new Mini 6. I’ve done 8 missions with multiple batteries and no problems. I’d encourage others to do the same, maybe if they have an IPhone already.

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So I’m waiting now for about a year to start paying for DD but this bug is still present. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the camera focus, when I touch the screen to make DD focus, everything seems to work out. DD is just unusable with this bug. Still no fix in sight? Has DD ever said anything about it?

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Support has told me that both of my Android devices are not supported and that I need to revert back to using 4 year old IOS devices (or older).

They have not even admitted that it’s a bug, just unsupported hardware.

I too have not signed up with DD for the same reason. I don’t want to be using a tiny Iphone 7 screen that’s hard to see in the daylight when I have a perfectly good Android tablet with high visibility I purchased for drone use.

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I have the same problem mission abort due “Focus Failed to Update” at the mission start point using an Inspire 2 tested with all 3 firmwares available (including latest V01.02.0600) on an iPad (iOS 15.7) Dronedeploy 4.107.0 and an Micasense Altum-PT camera. Tried 3 different SD cards and also flying with no SD card.

With Pix4D Capture I don´t have this issue, same as DJI GO 4, so its a Dronedeploy BUG

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