Drone Deploy losing connection during flight

I have been flying missions using a Phantom 4 Pro V2 and, for the most part, things have gone well. Drone Deploy lost connection a couple of times, but other than pausing for a moment, things continued without a problem.

Recent flights have had the issue more often and, as a result, the drone begins returning home once the signal is lost, then once connection is re-established, it moves to the closest line of the targeted area and resumes. Usually, this is at the ends of the mapping area, causing the edges of the mapped area to not be there. I have noticed that as soon as the connection is lost, aside from pausing the flight, image recording ceases and the camera icon and count actually disappears from the monitor.

After reading some of the threads, I’m wondering if sunlight could be causing the sensors to see an obstacle. The only thing I see odd about that is the fact that connection is only lost after around 1,000ft or less. But, from takeoff, everything is fine. There is nothing in the areas where the disconnects occurred that would be a cause for signal disruption (actually, the one area that we thought would be sketchy was fine).

I call upon your knowledge. Has anyone suffered from this problem and any ideas for a fix?

Thanks!

Do you think there is anything around that could be causing any radio or electronmagnetic interference?

Have you tried turning off OBS?

Next, I would try a range (VLOS of course) and see if you get the same symptom. While out there try rotating the drone every 90deg to see if an antenna is having a problem or if just on side of the aircraft is weaker.

I attempted to fly yesterday’s flights again today and the problem was worse, so I thought I’d try a manual flight and see if I suffered a disconnect. Unfortunately, the wind gusts were getting to be too much and I kept getting warnings, so I brought it back. Hopefully, tomorrow will be more ideal for some tests.

What are you running drone deploy on? Did DD crash or did it keep running and just lose connection? That is similar to what happened to me, but the first time Drone Deploy completely shut down and I had to restart it. The second time (different field) DD kept running but kept losing contact, I had visual line of site in both instances and nothing between us.

I’m using an iPad mini. I’m just losing connection. Drone Deploy stays active and has not shut down (yet). Unfortunately, these are survey shots for our Engineering department, so the drone is out of line of sight whenever this occurs. Thankfully, it always starts heading back home when it loses connection. After four years of flying, I’ve yet to lose a drone and I definitely don’t want to start now. :slight_smile:

What version of the iPad Mini? Hopefully at least a 4… Not running out of VLOS might help. :wink:

I’m using an iPad mini-2, OS 12.4. One of the tests I’m going to run tomorrow is using my iPhone XL instead of the iPad and see if that makes a difference.

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i have the same problem with Phantom 4 Pro V2 keeps disconnecting and reconnecting with drone deploy app during the flight. It’s fairly consistent whenever we fly it so it should not be the magnetic interference. I suspect it’s something between the drone and the app because we don’t have any problem with flying another drone (matrice 100) with the same cable and ipad. We only fly it within the sight and the drone flies normal even if the drone deploy disconnects with the drone. But I don’t know the reason and I am concerned the situation will become worse. Any insight on how to solve it?

I’ve had this a few times, and it suddenly got worse today. Through trial and error I discovered that the cable I was using to connect the remote to my iPad was flaky and was causing the “lost connection.”

Appears it wasn’t losing connection with the drone per se… but rather with the remote.

Might not be your situation but it helped me!

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I had the same thing happen with our P4pro V2 using a ipad mini2. Then the worst - disconnect turned into a lost drone. About 90 seconds after takeoff on a mapping mission the drone disconnected and then disappeared while I was looking at the screen. Haven’t been able to find it as it dropped into rugged mountainous dense bush. I had a few disconnects on previous fights but they were all ok. The battery was fine on the previous flight it was used on. I tried downloading the flight log to Airdata but this worked for our other unit we used on the same day. Any ideas would be appreciated.