Personally I think the old vs. new gui is barking down the wrong tree. I believe I had all my major issues start before the new gui even came up as an option for me to select. Right now I can’t even get into the app to see if the new gui is on or off because it has already ground to a halt while I’m putting in my user name (can’t even get to putting in my password.) I got to “olson126@u…” and it just stopped being responsive. If I wait 10 minutes I might be able to get one more character of my user name inputed … but I honestly just gave up on that. I don’t have any way to know how the app is put together (and I’ve never developed apps for iOS), but I don’t think it’s just the new interface, I don’t think it’s an out-of-memory issue … I wonder if it’s somehow tied to weird network communication issues or failures, or more likely will end up being something far weirder than that.
I don’t know enough about the ipad but I loaded up the lireo info lite app and it’s reporting I have tons of ram free/available although I can’t watch the memory usage and run drone deploy simultaneously like a person could on a desktop OS so I could be misreading that. Dunno …
You would be the only person to report this pre-4.x. You need should probably restore your iPad with iTunes and start over. It might take you 30 minutes.
As Michael said, not really anyone posting issues prior to v.4. I’m still running DD 3.18.1 with ios 12.3 on an ipad air2 without issue, either the logging in or the flight problems.
DD should just re-release 3.18.1 unless it has a conflict with ios 13. I’ve seen numerous problems in many apps with ios 13 FWIW. so I’m standing pat for now.
I believe I started having problems with v4.2.0 (but before activating the new gui) or maybe I’m misunderstanding all this talk about the new gui … the app hasn’t run well enough for me since that upgrade for me to really see if there was a difference in gui look & feel or if there was a way to select new vs. old?
Wondering if anyone can tell me if they have been able to complete a lengthy mission with the ongoing Version 4.2 bugs (I have iPad Mini 4). I have completed a couple of missions with the bugs (one thing I have learned is that you can switch to the Go4 app in flight to monitor flight, battery life, etc. when the DD app begins freezing up). My concern is that both missions have been relatively short (only a couple of batteries). I have a 6 battery (100 Ac) mission coming up with a tight deadline and am wondering if the DD app will continue functioning well enough to complete a mission of that length. It seems to me that the DD app gets progressively worse as mission length increases. Any info on sucess/failure with longer missions would be greatly appreciated. I am considering downloading Pix4D Capture to fly the mission but really don’t like the idea of using it for the first time on a critical mission.
Unfortunately I am still getting pretty much the same behavior I have had. They turned off my ability to see the new Dashboard UI, but I still have the new flight interface so this is going to continue until that gets fixed. I finally updated to iOS 13.3.1 this morning and have a ton of flying tomorrow so i’ll find out one way or another. I’m getting to the point that I don’t care since the H520 is working so well.
More to your question though I have been running a 3 battery mission with frequency that seems to do fine. The problem resets itself after the reboot of the drone and the swaps go just fine, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t immediately or eventually lag again.
I don’t want to repeat things I’ve said earlier, but I also have pix4d capture here on my ipad mini 4. It seems to run fine and be super snappy and responsive. I flew with it maybe a year ago when we were getting familiar with our phantom. It should work, but I think you’d definitely be wise to fly a similar test mission before heading out to a critical mission.
I’m in the same boat. I need to head to a place about 3 hours drive away to fly some multi-battery missions, and I need to test pix4d before I go, but I’m in Minnesota and weather + schedule conflicts has been a challenge. Now the upcoming week’s weather doesn’t look great. I may end up heading out and crossing my fingers that pix4d will work well enough. Right now the DD app is a complete non-starter … won’t even let me input my user name before it bogs down and stops responding.
Thanks Michael, this is exactly what I was looking for. I’ve become reasonably comfortable with the lag since, for the first time that I can remember, the Go4 app when left running in the background will reconnect on its own when I switch while in flight. This is great since it allows me to monitor battery and photo acquisition when DD freezes. Main concern is if I can continue a mission with repetitive battery changes. Hope they get this sorted soon: I had almost forgotten the early days when i was afraid to touch anything as long as the mission was progressing without a hitch.
Right on. I can’t stress enough on how important it is to have backups and preferably different platforms. Technology in the name of progress breaks too easily and having the eggs in one basket is not an option for business critical applications. Having different flight softwares is the norm in this industry, but people need to not only think about having a backup drone, but a drone from a different manufacturer. Similar to a Microsoft update breaking Outlook on an iPad and taking down email for all field crews, DJI could flip a firmware switch and take a fleet of drones down. Luckily we have Android phones and some had computers just like we also have Yuneec drones. We’re all the way up, nothin’ can stop us… except an EMP, .
Today I flew a 100 Acre / 6 battery mission with the DD Ver 4.2 flight app. After having no luck at all trying to start the app using my iPad Mini 4 (which I have used many times with previous versions of the DD app) I was about to give up when it dawned on me that I also had the app (ver 4.2.1) on my iPhone (duh). I switched out the iPad for my iPhone and, to my pleasure and amazement, the mission execution was absolutely flawless. I mean truly boring - not a single glitch - perfect. I even used automatic exposure and focus (which I usually don’t do) because it was one of those 50/50 cloudy days and because I didn’t want to complicate the mission in any way. All of the photos were as good as any I have ever taken on a mapping mission.
So here’s what I know: the iPad Mini 4 is a wifi only device that depends on a 4g Verizon Jetpack MiFi device for its internet connection. The iPhone 8+ utilized its dedicated cellular connection. I did not attempt to to fly with the iPhone using a wifi connection as it was working in cellular mode and I did not have any batteries to spare for testing purposes. Both devices were running DD 4.2.1 and iOS 13.3.1.
So I am fairly certain that the problem is either related to iPads in general (or more specifically the Mini 4?) or, as another possibility that I have not seen discussed, to utilizing a wifi connection vs a dedicated cellular connection to run the app (both were 4g).
Given the problems people have been having I thought I would share this ASAP even though I’m not sure it provides a definite answer. One thing’s for sure, I will be mapping with my iPhone until I see that this issue is resolved.
It’s an interesting observation, but with the exception of Terrain awareness (or raster maps if not cached) the flight app should not need ANY internet connection to fly the mission.
My ipad mini 4 was purchased new a year ago, but is apparently obsolete with respect to the drone deploy app. If I can get approval to spend the money, what should I be looking for as a replacement?
I like the mini form factor, it fits nice in my case and doesn’t seem overly big or overly small for field work. I am not an apple person, the ipad mini 4 was the newest mini at the time I recommended the purchase. The only thing we’ve used it for is flying our phantom 4. Right now I’m racking up wasted hours trying to figure something out on my own. I don’t want to buy something new, just to discover that wasn’t really the problem in the first place or I got the wrong thing again.
Do I need an ipad with a paid for cellular connection? Does the iphone work better than the ipad? I have been tethering my ipad off my (android) cell phone when I fly for an internet connection and that seemingly had been working fine. Now I can’t even get the DD app to work when I’m on fast wifi at the office. If someone can tell me (with short easy sentences please!) exactly what I need to buy to guarantee solid DD app performance, I can try to get the purchase approved, but I don’t want to just randomly guess at things.
BTW, I flew a 3-battery mission yesterday with the pix4d capture app on the exact same ipad mini4 and that was flawless and snappy … but feature for feature I prefer the DD app when it is working and I was hoping to use the terrain awareness feature for some of the areas we fly.
I understand. Even though you purchased the M4 as new, it was probably manufactured 4-5 years ago. I won’t necessarily call it a blunder on Apple’s part that they hadn’t updated the form factor in 5 years, but when it is a popular device among a subset of users it can make it tough for us. I think one of the reasons that we are having trouble at this point is because DroneDeploy is adding new features that other softwares don’t have. An example would be that Pix4D does not have terrain following or Linear flight. The additional telemetry and complexity of the interface are using more resources and they probably didn’t do full testing on these “older” devices. My 7th gen iPad is an oddity because it is a brand new device, but Apple chose to use the old chip. We are above the requirements of your average iPad user and a small group in the grand scheme of things so I don’t think they had us in mind. The Mini 5 is the latest.
I am using the new iPad Pro, and it works fine ( expensive enough, so it should… )
If it’s worth the money for you, I can recommend it.
The small one still fits in my normal iPad holder.
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts with the mini 5. I’ve been putting off ordering one since the weather hasn’t cooperated for over a month now. Thank you!
The last time I used DD was in November I think. Before the weather turned. It had the latest interface (which was alien to me), I was using the latest iOS for the time and was on my Pro 2017.
I don’t recall it lagging, but I do remember it getting incredibly hot and I only managed two drone batteries worth of use before an entire iPad battery (fully charged) had depleted. Explains it getting hot I guess. A problem with memory?
The only other thing I remember was that one of the counters towards the top right corner (time remaining perhaps) wasn’t working. Something like that.
I do hope my Pro 2017 isn’t already obsolete in DD’s eyes.
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