Firmware 1.04.010 Will not work currently!

Flight - Discussion and Q&A
21

The pilot app has different restrictions. You only need to be about a meter in the air.
Posting a version the the play store now that does this takeoff for you and sets waypoints once it is hovering 10 or so meters.

1 Like
22

That is good news:-) I just flew 4 missions successfully. But I noticed that on the last 2 missions the camera wouldnā€™t pan down, just straight forwardā€¦

23

And are you using the latest firmware?

24

Yes, 1.4.010 firmware on the Phantom 3 pro.

25

Are you sure it didnā€™t point down for the entire flight? Sometimes it can continue to take images on the way home with the gimbal facing forwards.

26

Hey guys,

Here is a link to an APK which should work better for 1.04.0010. We will be doing more testing and posting it to the Play Store Monday hopefully. Just posting this here for any users who are currently stuck on 1.04.0010 and need to fly.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/79dd1ww0a7uv3v3/dronedeploy.1.2.0.release.apk?dl=1

Things to be aware of:

  • It now takes off and then sets waypoints while in the air. It will go to about 15 meters or so in the air and hover. You will see a message if the waypoints fail to load, otherwise it will go on its mission.
  • We can no longer detect you are not in ā€˜Fā€™ mode before takeoff. Now it warns you after it takes off and is at 1 meter. We canā€™t send it any higher without switching the mode unfortunately.
  • You might see a new option to use a different form of waypoints which is disabled. This is something weā€™re working on to get around some of the issues with waypoints and hopefully this is enabled in the Play Store version.
  • I would still recommend not flying very large missions or anything with a very large number of waypoints. Since we load them in the air you donā€™t know if waypoint loading failed until after takeoff.

Thanks,

Chase

3 Likes
27

In my test today I was doing well until the app kept getting stuck at waiting for enough GPS. However when I close out and check the DJI Go app I see there are 16. Any ideas why this is?

28

I have to rerun the app over and over during testing and Iā€™ve seen this sometimes. I reset the controller and app and itā€™s fine. Not sure why.

29

Thanks for the response. Just FYI for your research Iā€™m on a Phantom 3 pro with 1.4 using Samsung Tab 4.

30

I did not have much luck with the .10 firmware using the APK file. I would take off and it would just hover at 45 feet and I would return to home. I am going to pick up another Inspire that has not been updated and give the .06 firmware a try.

31

Yeah. that can happen. The waypoint writing has become much less consistent and has to happen in the air.

32

chase

I hate to say this but this isnā€™t scalable on any long term relationship. If the relationship between dronedeploy and dji isnā€™t improved Iā€™m not sure I can ever reliable use this product. Lets take a look whats AGAIN going to happen in less than a month. With the release of the new X5 Gimbal and camera it will yet again force ANOTHER DJI GO update. This inevitably will once again kill dronedeploy. How can I justify to my clients this downtime? and I mean like EVERY time. Its not really your fault as these changes are made at DJI but something must be done to your relationship to ensure flyabilityā€¦forking over 99-500/month to you guys for a product that will perhaps break on a regular basis and NOT be reliably working for a week or two isnā€™t what I like to believe is a viable product relationship for the long term. Can you help shed some light on where you see this going?

Worriedā€¦
-chris
ARM Imagery, LLC

33

I understand your concern and it has been true up to this point. One of the primary issues weā€™ve faced has been with the groundstation changes DJI has been making. Weā€™ve been working on an alternative method to what we do now so that we will have two.

Weā€™ve also been in contact with DJI to help them improve their release process, at least how it relates to 3rd parties. We obviously donā€™t have as much control over this as things in our own app but theyā€™ve been responsive and it sounds like things are often very chaotic over there. Weā€™ve visited DJI HQ before and we might be sending some more devs there in the near future. If youā€™re not in China itā€™s difficult to get things done.

Iā€™ll make sure to forward your concern to others in the company. The hope is that when we announce the app is no longer in beta it will be more stable.

Thanks,
Chase

34

I agree with icmotions. I have been just holding off, waiting for emails from the forum to show up with subjects that look like things are getting better. Seems like itā€™s going the other way so I havenā€™t tried again in probably at least a week now?

35

Thanks for your patience through this process. As Chase mentioned weā€™re working with DJI to try and improve their release process and the way the develop concerning 3rd party apps. Weā€™re also developing some back-up plans which will require a greatly reduced set of SDK functionality to try and provide an app which will be more robust to SDK updates.

The SDK stability is the main reason our app is still in beta, and the primary reason we havenā€™t released an iOS version (two things to fix instead of just the one). We also havenā€™t been charging any of our beta users for this functionality because these issues exist from time to time.

Hopefully our efforts will mean this happens soon.

36

If anyone is having these troubles, I would love to enable the data processing aspect of DroneDeploy for any set of uploaded imagery.

I know this is small consolation as you will have to fly the lawn-mower pattern manually - but you can at least upload this imagery and get your data processed as you would before.

Send me a PM with the email account used on DroneDeploy and Iā€™ll enable this for you and send across instructions.

37

Jono, Chase, and the Rest of DD Staff,

When signing up to be a Beta Tester, I expected things like this could happen and I think that icmotions nailed the frustration that comes with it. When you see the promise of DroneDeploy get hindered by DJIā€™s FW updates.

With harvest now approaching on our farm, I will be no longer be able map and test as I was before. I just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity and commend you for your customer support and response to us end users. As you grow, I hope you donā€™t lose this as it seems to be a rare asset today in the software/tech world. Iā€™m excited to see where you go from here!

Thanks,
Jon

2 Likes
38

Hi Chase & all the DD team,

Thanks for the APK for 1.04.0010! Itā€™s actually the best version Iā€™ve used to date despite all of the firmwareā€™s limitations, although Iā€™m not recommending it to others who have had the sense not to update to 1.04.0010, yet. (I had no choice, unfortunately). Iā€™ve run a few missions today and have the following feedback [THIS APPLIES TO THE APK on 1.04.0010 ONLY]:

  • When you start mission, I1 takes off and climbs to around 15 metersā€¦but at around 5 meters offset. Is the offset intentional? I notice it sits there whilst it uploads waypoints and then returns to directly over take off point before continuing onto mission. As a safety feature, I think itā€™s great, but not sure why it needs to return to T/O point before starting mission?
  • I often get failures on test photos. In fact, even though the first couple of missions passed OK and all mission eventually passed the camera test the I1 didnā€™t take any pictures at all on any missions. Iā€™ll run some more tests on this, tomorrow.
  • I ran missions up to 19 waypoints OK and couldnt start missions over 21 points, so I guess 20 is the limit? I was within the 500m waypoint and 5000m mission limits.
  • I let the battery drop to 19% on one mission and got warnings but not RTH. Iā€™m not sure if you have this set, yet? Iā€™m sure I saw it mentioned in a thread somewhere but canā€™t find it, now.
  • I no longer have any of the previous issues with failure to proceed to mission after take off or failure to start missions. In fact, I successfully launched several missions one after another with no issue, including continue missions. The home point seems to be more accurate, as well, although it is less windy at the moment.

Some suggestions on future enhancements:

  • Ability to override orientation of flight path - some times I have something like a road as a boundary to the site being surveyed and Iā€™d rather just run one leg down the road when I know it is clear instead of having to continually monitor the situation over many minutes.
  • Ability to re-launch a crashed app and continue flight.
  • Ability to display battery discharge cicle notifications that appear in the Pilot App. I donā€™t
  • +1 for imagery at multiple heights (already in suggestions thread). Also oblique option for tall structures and cliffs.
  • For visual line of site I often work from the highest point, but I also often work on cliffs and deep pits where the majority of operation is below the t/o height. The ability to operate below t/o height would be useful. +1 for this (already in suggestions thread)
  • Ability to merge multiple maps ourselves
  • Jono has already covered this but Iā€™d love to be able to use the data processing aspect of DroneDeploy to upload imagery recorded through other means as I have a couple of other mapping apps that are able to fly mission grids as well, so I can get the imagery and it would be good to process it on the DD platform for rapid feedback - particularly for quickly iterating through a series of NDVI settings.
  • Ability to fly non-linear paths - curved corners for increased speed / efficiency, ability to curve around terrain or orbit targets. e.g. mapping a curving road / river. At the moment you can only do this through a fairly inefficient flight path.

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

39

Last week during the ā€œBirds of a Featherā€ DJI Q and A during the InterDrone meeting in Vegas with DJI reps, I along with several others expressed concerns about what we felt was a poor ā€œwaypointā€ implementation that requires pilots to first fly a mission to set way points. We also brought up how badly this will break anyone who needs to truly implement autonomous flights for mapping. Good luck, everything was working so well until DJI hosed the last update.

40

Thanks for the feedback @rogerpearson, both for the app, and future suggestions - we will take it into account as we prep for a proper release and develop in the future.

Regarding the RTH on low battery - this is a setting you can change in the Go app (we havenā€™t implemented this in our app yet).

For anyone looking to use the dataprocessing only aspect of DroneDeploy, please fill out the Map Engine Beta Questionnaire, and Iā€™ll enable access soon after.