We are using a Phantom 4 Pro V2 and a IPad Pro. We have been using drone deploy with this ipad and drone for months. All of the sudden the ipad started overheating. Nothing has changed on the drone or the ipad. It appears to only overheat when flying a mission. Has anybody else run into this. Would this be a problem with the battery going bad? Can’t figure out why it would all of the sudden develop this problem.
The last two versions of iPad Pro’s have been known to run hot with continuous use so it’s not surprising, but also that the DroneDeploy app has continued to gain functionality and has been more demanding of the hardware over the last couple of months. I haven’t noticed anything specifically in the last couple of weeks to a month except that the ambient temperatures are rising. I’m in Texas so it won’t be long before I am having to cool mine often.
Depending on what version you have these would be a good idea.
That’s cool. Do they make something for the controller to hold that monster? I use an 8th Gen iPad.
Yes. I don’t remember if they sell it with the tablet or if it’s an add-on when you’re in the cart but there is a rectangular metal plate that mounts to the back that fits on the controller like a phone.
Yes I too have been experiencing overheating during mapping only. My real issue is that this is leading to high power consumption and drain to the RC. I have had to resort to charging the RC while mapping with the Ipad. This is also destroying my RC battery. Hope they solve this soon. The new app updates are dangerous to iOS and Android.
So your RC and iPad are overheating? What’s the deal with the RC? Are you flying so much that you are just trying ot keep it charged? We can get about 3-4 hours of flight time without recharging as long as it was peaked the night before. Recharging while flying will increase the temperature as the circuitry is not design to I/O at the same time. All it is basically doing is maintaining the charge that is there which in an emergency can keep it from dying.
I was doing an 8 battery map yesterday and the ipad got down to 60% ish and the rc got down to 1%. The overheating over clocking is not necessary. This demand is destroying my rc battery. I noticed at about 4% rc and immediately rth. It was plugged in but couldn’t keep up with the ipad demand.
I found a posting on the internet about fixing Ipad overheating. One of the suggestions was to drain the battery on the ipad so it shuts off by itself. We left ours on till it died then charged it back up and it has not overheated since. Don’t know why, maybe it reset something?
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The RC shouldn’t have had any problem with 8 batteries. Our typical day is 8-10 (3-4 multi-battery missions) and we have never gotten to the last LED. You might want to check your battery or replace it. Besides that a single 8 battery mission is really pushing it for allot of these drones. Do you ever temp gun the inside of your drone after a run like that? More specifically the main board and ESC leads. If you’re doing that often you should probably be flying another aircraft.
Over the week, I think I noticed the over heating, excess battery drain, is only on cross hatch. I mapped the Crosshatch of a building, hot a f, then started lawn mower plans of the parking lots and everything cooled down and the RC started to regain charge. I will keep an eye out for this going forward.
Did you have Live Map on? I think sometimes that even when I turn it off that something is churning in the background.
That is interesting, I do turn it off on every plan, but I have seen options revert back on their own just as I load the flight plan.
I’ve honestly have never used live map because I thought it an unnecessary waste of data transmission for my work so I wouldn’t even know what it looks like to see it working in the background. I can see how it could be a useful feature for a small niche but not to their primary user base and not for any of the jobs they sell.
Yeah we don’t use it either. An inaccurate ortho does little for us. I am interested in hearing about the Gen 3 Live Map though to see what they have done to it.
Back to the problem. I might have missed it but what device do you run? It seems to me that one of the last times I did run a normal Live Map (a long time ago) that there was a little jitter/lag in the interface and if it is working the processor that hard then imagine what happens when you throw obliques at it. It could be an entirely different process altogether but I wouldn’t put it past a function to use resources when “turned off”.
I recently had this but with my iPhone, it seems to over heat then the screen dims but not me dimming it with the bar. Unsure why this is an issue? is it Apple?
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It is that time of year again for us. We had to start using the iPad cooling case about 2 weeks ago. It seems once we hit 85-90F possible flight time starts to diminish because of the iPad overheating.
Same for us here in Tucson with the iPad Mini 5; I start using the X-naut cooling case in the mid-80’s, then once it gets to the upper 90’s, have to keep in front of the vehicle A/C vent. That presents a new set of VLOS challenges - not to mention fuel consumption…
It makes a big difference to keep the tablet in the shade (which I normally have do just to see the screen), but if I have to walk around a site to keep VLOS, the afternoon sun will overheat it very quickly.
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We’re getting to those temps again too and just had our first shutdown yesterday. This one didn’t have the X-naut so guess what’s coming. With the way it happened yesterday though it appeared to be an unsubstantiated amount of power that was being drawn so we will keep an eye on it and let everyone know if we think it’s the app again.
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Hi guys, if you are looking around for iPad cooling solutions, do check us out - www.getwombatware.com. We currently have a cooling case for the iPad Mini 5 but will be releasing Cooling Cases for other models soon. Here’s how it looks on a DJI mini 2 controller:
Mounting The Cooling Case To a DJI Controller - MavMount + WWMM Adapte – Wombat Ware
Cheers,
Jules
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