Lost connection with Phantom 3 Pro halfway through mission

Flight - Discussion and Q&A
1

Hello, strange incident today with my Phantom 3 Professional and the iOS version of DroneDeploy. I had set up a mission in the app over a small pond in a wooded area. I calibrated the compass before beginning the flight, and did not notice anything amiss when running preflight checks. Altitude was 290 feet.

The P3 began to fly the mission as usual, but I noticed that the gimbal never tilted from the oblique to the nadir position in the FPV view. I waited to see if this would be corrected.

About 7 or 8 minutes into the flight, the DroneDeploy app reported that it had lost connection with the drone. The app appeared to lock up and did not respond when I pressed the “return home button” (in app). Although the drone flew within easy eye-sight over my head, it did not reconnect to DroneDeploy. It did still continue to carry out the mission, although battery was running at about 65 percent and I did not want to continue the mission without direct communication.

I attempted to press the “return home” button on the controller, but did not get a response. I held the button on the controller for a longer period and the return home function was activated. The drone landed safely, after it was switched into manual flight mode.

After the flight, I found that the Phantom had shot no images - not unexpected, as the camera never tilted to the nadir position from the oblique angle. I suspect environmental interference was not the issue, as I would assume the connection would have returned when the drone flew back overhead.

Any ideas?

2

Hey Faine, sorry to hear that! We’ll take a look at your logs to see if there’s anything we can extract from it.

3

I had the same thing happen with my phantom 3 advanced a few weeks ago. However my battery was near dead and it crashed. Had to replace the camera but photos were still on card.

4

I just lost contact on a mission in could not reconnect to the craft (P4). I let the mission continue and it continued to photograph all the way until it was powered off. Kind of strange but all turned out well.

6

We are working with DJI to figure out a way to recover better from these disconnections. What is happening though is the signal is dropping and the matrices are failing to reconnect and send us updated data. We do want to fix this problem, but we are limited by the capabilities of the SDK and the DJI Drone.

7

I updated all firmware, and saw improvement. The connection would still drop for roughly a minute when the drone was over a certain area (in a wooded area), but it would continue the mission and would re-connect.

Now having a problem with the map imagery not processing entirely, but connection issue seems pretty much fixed…

8

Did you make sure to email support about the map imagery problem? Glad to hear the connection issues are improving.

9

Same problem Inspire 1
Am trying the DD to evaluate for AG and SAR. My Inspire is up to date with all firmware, batteries…check, calibration…check.

Connecting to Drone…DJI Go APP turned off. Check.

Connect with DD…takes a really long time.

Attempt to download flight plain made on desktop. Map pulls, run paths disappear and I have to start fresh. Not selling me on this so far.

Reconnect, new mission. Altitude, area to be mapped check.

Connected. All green. Good to go.

Take off.

DD screen IMMEDIATELY SAYS LOST CONNECTION! Sad as I watch my I1 fly away. Damn. now I’m really pissed.

Maintaining VLOS, drone does run and comes home…Thank you!

Absolutely nothing on the SD card. Blank. Almost lost my Inspire 1 for nothing.

Tired to contact customer service as I am evaluating this for online service and purchase. NOW HERE"S THE CATCH…

You can’t. You buy then get service and support. Can’t tell them about what happened on live chat.

If you are the makers of Drone Deploy…let me ask you this…

If you take a car for a test ride and it stops half way through and you go back to the dealer, would you buy the car if the salesman said…"well you gotta buy it first before we decide IF we are going to fix this?

Just being truthful. Sorry, sometimes better to get a slap from a friend than a kiss from an enemy. I have no financial skin in the game for maps, software, etc. Just an honest guy trying to help people with this where I live.

10

We do actively monitor emails to support@dronedeploy.com

The trial for users doesn’t have live chat enabled due to the volume of users we have and how quickly that is growing. You can post here on the forum or email support during the trial.

Anyways, if you lost a connection (out of our control, but we do try to connect) before the first waypoint, we don’t have the chance to start the camera so that it will capture during the mission. Sorry to hear that happened.

11

If the DJI go app is turned off and your app is turned on, can you explain how exactly this is out of your control?

Can you tell me how I could fix this?

If you are willing to talk to me, would you be willing to hear a potential solution to the DJI problem? Based on your videos and I have watched most…it seems like you are a little dependent on the previous settings loaded into the drone when the Go APP was used. Am I correct about this? If so, and you are running a “lighter” client, you are more interested in data transmission rather than video.

I am only hypothesizing… but if this is correct, have the user go into the DJI app, then to HD settings, and adjust the bandwidth parameters to favor data over HD. This will result in more transmission dedicated to the data you are streaming during the flight rather than an HD image.

I had forgotten I had the bandwidth set to HD because we just shot a commercial last week in 4K and the drone was never really more than 100 feet from us.

Thoughts?

12

We try not to be dependent on settings set in DJI Go, but if users have problems we do recommend they fall back to them (for camera, etc.). It’s interesting to hear about the HD Settings. I didn’t realize this. I’ll take a look to see if we can add this as part of our prep for the mission.

We have people available to help, and the plan is to bring back support for trial users when we are able to get enough resources. Things have been moving quickly here at the office lately :).

Thanks!

13

Under settings in DJI Go App, Select HD then where you have channel options, go from auto to manual or custom. It opens a slider bar to adjust the quality of video over the transmission distance of data.

I’m not asking you to reveal how you coded this but since I want to eval this product…some insight would help me help you.

You comments would lead me to believe I am at least somewhat correct. I am getting ready to try again, same course out in the country without obstructions. I’ll let you know if it works this time.

Arvada

14

I emailed our DJI contacts to ask about this. They are looking into it. They didn’t know about a setting like this in DJI Go either. They said there is something similar in lightbridge 2. They are looking into it for us to see if we could set something like this.

15

I do believe you are doing this. Just trying to get the DJI team to let us know how we can do it automatically.

16

I hear your frustrations Arvada, I’m also having another DroneDeploy / DJI week from hell - AGAIN!

17

This has happened to me once. Right after M100 launched my ipad overheated and was useless. Craft flew the entire 65 acre mission flawlessly only to come home to ZERO images on SD card. I didnt verify this until i had left the sight and gone home. Very frustrating. I believe because it didnt hit its first waypoint while connected to the DD app in iOS, it skipped the step to point the camera down and start collecting imagery. Unfortunately for me I have got use to the app crashing during a flight, but i have found that it atleast has to fly its first waypoint. After I land I usually have my files. My Process for Mission planning and execution: 1, if possible plan mission at home. 2, go to sight. 3, dji go checklist. 4, completely exit and close out DJIgo app. 5, open DD app and launch mission.

18

This happened to me twice today.

1/3 to 1/2 way through the missions the app became unresponsive. The live video window remained live, but the P3P’s position on the map stopped updating, the map would not respond to dragging or any screen action.

It continued flying the rest of the mission, no problems, except that it kept shooting images all the way through the landing sequence. And the app seemed unaware that the mission completed.

I had another issue also. Though maybe I should start a new thread. Basically, the app was unusable in landscape mode. It was almost completely unresponsive, locking up. I could not drag the handles for mission sizing. Unresponsive. For whatever reason, orienting the iPhone 6 in portrait was much better. The app suddenly let me drag the handles.

19

Same problem …

20

Just ran my first flight with DD, and had the same thing happen. P4 and it flew about 3/4 of the mission, then the position quit updating on the app, and couldn’t do much in the app, but video still updated. It continued to take pictures, including on the way home, and landed without incident.

Using the iOS app on my iPad.

Edit: it happened again today. Map quit updating halfway through an 80 acre field. If it wasn’t for the fact that the video was still updating and I could tell it was on course, i would have aborted. It is very nerve-racking to not know where it is. I could still see it, but wasn’t sure about battery level or how many passes were left.

21

Same problem here with my Inspire 1