iOS App Version 4.8.0

Flight - Discussion and Q&A
1

So flew yesterday with the new update 4.8.0 on an iPad Mini 5 and it was terrible. Obviously the need for an internet connection is starting to cause some major issues. Very slow and/or freezes throughout the entire process. I flew 3 sections of a 3 mile roadway and 2 of the 3 almost didn’t happen except through some perseverance.

Normal startup - iPad on, RC on and then Drone on. The drone was completely initialized before DroneDeploy ever finished loading the Dashboard. It was another 30 seconds for the selected project to open, 30 seconds for the flight plan to populate, 1 minute for it to check in and recognize that it was a linear flight in order to get permission to change the waypoints and then it froze. I shut everything down and repeated the process and it was pretty much the same behaviour with some minor differences and then the camera check failed.

*Even as I just opened the app to check the version it was slow and the interface took 15-20 seconds to accept any inputs. I have 2 bars of LTE, but am also on my home WiFi…

This is obviously a connectivity issue because I had just 2-3 bars of LTE and speedtests were less than 5mpbs. Something told me to turn on my phone hotspot so I did and rebooted everything once again. This time it went through, but it forgot all the changes I had just made in the field. Upon starting the mission I am starting to notice that the estimated time on the flight UI is way off. Is anyone else seeing this? I think I actually recognized it on the previous version.

All-in-all I got done what I needed, but wasted a couple of hours and had to reschedule the last job of the day.

2

That sounds very frustrating. BTW, Apple is showing v 4.9 as current. DD must be only testing the app with a gigabit connection. Sad.

3

How about version 4.9.0.? DD has been updated on my iPad 5 but haven’t flown yet. Have a 1600 acre project coming up at the end of the month. I’ve noticed similar issues with ver. 4.8, probably because of intermittent cell coverage.

4

Thanks @Dave my iPad is really strange about updates. I see that v4.9 shows from June 30th?! I can usually only tell when it has updated because it asks me to log in which it did yesterday. Makes me wonder if it was a late update to v4.8 or if I have been running it. I thought I had been on v4.7, but being that v4.9 is now two weeks old I dunno… I’ll try it in the morning.

5

There should be an option where data in optional especially when we go to rural areas with limited data connection.

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6

A data connection is not supposed to be necessary unless using Terrain Awareness. DD is not forthcoming about what the heck is going on that causes all this slowdown without a connection. Or simply come out and say and print that a data connection is required on v. 4.x and be done with it.

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7

We’re making a few improvements to how the app loads without connectivity. We anticipate this being released in about a month or so. Appreciate the feedback.

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