Map Pilot 2.4.7 Crash and odd Behavior

Are you using the Drone Follow option that makes the map follow the aircraft position live or are you using a fixed map and the red triangle just moves around?

Hi Zane. I was using a static map and not the follow map. We also had the app crash during flight using an IPad mini 4 during a flight. It only crashed when we did multiple battery missions.

We are experiencing the same problems with a P4P and a mini 4.  All of our equipment has the latest firmware.  The app sometimes crashes during planing and almost always during flight of a multi battery mission.

Can you possibly take a video of you getting to crash? We have been trying all day on 5 different drones with 5 different mobile devices and we cannot get it to crash.

Does your iPad Mini 4 have data connectivity when you are getting these crashes? Are you operating with a cached basemap?

I'll see if I can get my client to video it. They are working on a project this week and planned everything with one battery missions. I believe when it crashed it was using cached map last week. Also they are using a Matrice 600 pro and X3 camera.

Yesterday when using the IPad Mini 2 I noticed it would crash on the second battery and the blue dots spacing was becoming very inconsistant. On the IPad it tried to turn everthing else off including all background checking, multitasking and anyting else I could see would use resources. Also we are using terrain mapping. I even set visible map to just vector maps and not raster image as background to help reduce load. Also I turned off the green image overlay area. 

Also when it did crash I was not panning or zooming as I know this will cause some pictures to be missed. Later in the day I adjusted the screen not shut off in IPad general settings. However I switched to just using single battery missions by then.

I talked with my client today and they were having problems with terrain awareness. On an area of no more than 80 acres and was a little more than one battery it took them 27 minutes to calculate the terrain profile while connected to the Matrice 600 pro and IPad Mini 4 32 gigs fresh install. Also the one flight that was just a little more than one battery the app crashed on them when at the end of the first battery the Matrice was returning to home. They left the drone in RTL.

On another note on my set up. I noticed earlier that when I opened a kml file from an email message the opening flash screen said version 2.2.0 even though I have 2.4.7. I decided to un-install both MME and MME for business and do a fresh install of MME for Business and see if this works. Its going to be a few days before I can try this out.

Since you can't seem to repeat the issues we are having that's the only thing I can think of that might be different in our set ups. 

We have released version 2.4.8 which may address some of the CPU issues on older devices. 

Also, please refer to the following article regarding Map Pilot Crashes or Slow Operation:

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002507683-Troubleshooting-Map-Pilot-Crashes-or-Slow-Operation

After reading this forum we downloaded 2.4.8 and tried to do serious mapping for a scientific project. Unfortunately we experienced still many crashes. After the crash of the app ( iOS version using an iPad air) the drone keeps flying the mission, but does not take pictures anymore. Needless to say, we followed all the recommendations mentioned in the support link document without success. When we did a similar campaign last year using MapPilot, we did not encounter these problems. The current version is simply not useful for serious work.

The iPad Air only has an A7 processor and falls under the category of "getting pretty old for doing serious work".

Please read this for tips on getting it to work:

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002507683-Troubleshooting-Map-Pilot-Crashes-or-Slow-Operation

We have done lots of successful testing on an iPad Air after following the steps outlined there.

As the drone equipment and capabilities have gotten more sophisticated, so should your mobile device. That device was released almost 4 years ago. The Phantom 1 was the new hotness when that iPad came out.

True, the iPad Air is reaching probably its end of life. But last year we used it for a similar project with MapPilot without any problems. And now, because of the many crashes, we switched to Pix4DCapture which offers a similar core functionality as MapPilot albeit with less bells and whistles. Worked flawlessly - not a single crash. 

If you follow the instructions on the link Tudor provided the older processor will likely work fine.

Hi Guys,

I'm reading this post and I'm with the exect same issue:

Mavic Pro, ipad Mini 4 (eliminate your thoughts regarding the old processor issue), with cellular data. App ver 2.4.8 (!)

The app completes the 1st battery in an excellent way. (pictures' interval is precise, as should be..).
However, after uploading the mission for the 2nd battery and taking off - the app crashes in a matter of minutes (there was no problem with the reception at that moment)
Further more, even before the crash, when the mission of the 2nd battery starts the "dots" for the images are not as accurate as before and instead they seem to be more random along the path.

When launching the app again - it looks as it gets connected to the drone, some data is accepted but there's no more picture triggers.
(BTW, closing the app at this point and launching DJI GO 4, shows that the mavic is in waypoint mode, so maybe your app doesn't realy connect, but only shows the missionthat the drone is performing without controling it)

Ran through this a couple of times now. it happens every time, 2nd battery.

(I added a picture in my next post, this is a 3 battery mission. crash ocured after the 2nd battery started. I left the drone to continue and it seem to skip these images.)

Gil

Another thing that may help you debug:
When launching the app after it crashes - it doen't manage the time as it should. look in this picture - my Flight time is 17:12 when max flight time is 17:00

Please try all of the things in this article before posting more issues. Also, make sure you are using at least 2.4.8.

https://support.dronesmadeeasy.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002507683-Troubleshooting-Map-Pilot-Crashes-or-Slow-Operation

Hi Zane,

Thank you for the quick answer :)
My app ver is 2.4.8 (build05192017).

I also rad this article before posting and would love to help with a couple of points that leads me (at least) to something else in the application.

1. My ipad mini4 was bought 3 weeks ago. it does nothing then being used for flying this drone so the CPU is basically free.
2. All other apps are closed when using Maps made easy.
3. If the lightning cable was the issue - all flight apps would have suffer from it and Maps made easy would have crashed even on the 1st battery.
4. Even minimizing the impact of Maps made easy itself, doesn"t come up with the fact that it crashes ONLY on multiple battery missions, and only past the 1st one.

* One thought I had: Can it have something to do with the fact that I have the default HD12345678 token? or you don't call it on 2nd battery?

If you need any more information from me - i'll be happy to assist
Thanks,
Gil

Zane,
FWIW I have done some more digging on this issue...

It seems that have something with the signal strength..
I'm attaching a couple of images.
Please note that the flight area has very good reception in general (this is a free flight over the whole area):

It is also very clear  that reception is OK during the 1st battery:

Then comes the 2nd battery and problems begins:

And from another test - 2nd battery:

I'd like to point that there is actually no reception problems at this area.

I'm not familiar enough with the DJI SDK, but it seems to me that some command you are using only after the 1st battery - has something to do with transmission and reception levels and maybe that whats taking it out of order.

Hope it will contribute a little :))
Gil

That is some good and helpful information. Thank you for sharing. We will take that into account in trying to figure out what the issue might be.

Are all of these issues happening on iPads that are not online at the time the issue is occurring? We are seeing a large step up in CPU when data is not available to the device. This didn't happen before and is maybe a new feature in iOS. 

Please let us know if you are experiencing this while online or offline.

Zane,

I ran into issues yesterday when mapping with 2.4.8. I only had 2 ipad software crashes (want to be clear not phantom crashes) and it is much faster at calculating terrain on subsequent flights. The area would normally use 10 to 12 batteries and I split the area up into 2. I fly 72 meters up taking pictures every 2 seconds with 80/70 overlap. I also using U3 San Disk micro SD card.

However as Gil has reported as more pictures are taken the more likely it starts to miss. I usually plan my flights so it starts furthest away from me so signal should only get better as it gets closer. I found if I just flew one battery the pictures worked out best. I did try using connectionless and it the app crashed on halfway through the second battery. The other crash I had was when I scrolled around on the screen by accident. I was running Ipad Mini 2 wifi with no data connection. I make sure it is the only app running and have turned off multitasking, geolocation and notification as well as following your list of things to do.

I did notice toward the end of the first battery it would start to miss taking a picture. Maybe 1 out of 20. So it might be an accumulation thing with pictures.

I'm going to buy a new Ipad 2017 with A9. I just wish they would update IPAD mini. I'm planning on testing this out tomorrow so I'll report back.

I forgot to mention my past reporting was happening when I didn't have connection to the internet. Tomorrow I'll test with and without internet. I'll also test with turning on airplane mode on the Ipad mini 2 to see if that makes a difference.

Hi Zane,

I had all my crashes when having cellular internet connection from my ipad.

Maybe another direction of thinking:
I think that my crash happen after 350 to 400 pictures are taken (maybe a little more)
Maybe the amount if information regarding the images that is held by the app has something to do with the crash so, the crash occures when there are to many pictures and we simply get there on 2nd battery, when actually it has nothing to do with the fact that it's a new flight?
Rob, do you remember after how many pictures you had the app crasheing?
Zane, correct me if i'm wrong: if I'll make a mission at a much lower altitude I should get to these images numbers on the 1st battery, right? Maybe it will give us a hint ....?

I would guess my first flight would capture around 300 pictures.

Spent some time trying to build a new mission with more then 330 images per battery but I couldn't reach that.
Along with Rob's reply it makes me feel the errors are from the number of images and not the battery replacing itself...

I'm going to test a flight later that will require multiple batteries, terrain. Awareness while watching memory usage with system status.. I plan to test with ipad mini 2 and ipad 2017 with 2 gig system ram. I'm also thinking this is more of a memory issue. I'll report back my findings.

Well I did some testing today but only with the Ipad 2017. This Ipad has 128gb of storage 2gigs of ram and A9 processor. Ipad was running lates IOS 10.3.2. Aircraft was Phantom 4 pro with latest firmware (can't remeber release number but I just updated this morning.) . While testing I had System Status running so I could see how much memory and processor was being used. 

Parameters of flight: Elevation 70 meters AGL with terrain awareness, 80%front and 70%sidelap, camera set to shutter priority 1/2000sec Picture rate at 1 every 2 seconds with Sandisk U3 64gig microsd card.

When the flight first start with no internet connection processor was jumping between 60 and 70% usage. With internet through my Samsung Note 5 as a hotspot on Verizon the cpu usage would drop down to 40 to 50%.

On the second battery and after 350 pictures the usage jumped by about 10% across the board. By the middle of the third battery with no internet the CPU usage as 95-100% and with internet 65 to 80%. By the forth battery with no internet it was 99 to 100% cpu and 75 to 90% with internet. Drone Pilot and the Ipad 2017 were able to keep up. By the end it was missing say 1 out 20 but still good. I would be worried the ap would crash at running constant 99 to 100% so for now I'm going to use active connect with a maximum of 3 batteries.

I also noted the memory usage

                 First Flight                Third Flight

Wired          360MB                       240MB

Active           931                           1,144

Inactive        175                           296

Other        180                               170

Free           313                              103

I tried to see if there was a difference between turning off my hotspot and turning on Airplane Mode on the Ipad and I did not notice a difference. However when I hit the home button and then only ran System Status on the screen Drone Pilot was running in the background and using only 70% cpu with no internet. I popped back into the app and it still took pictures. However doing this another time caused the app to crash.

If interested I took pictures from my phone of the ipad with system status and Drone pilot running.

I did not have time to do the same test with Ipad mini 2. But after seeing the CPU usage I can see why the app crashes.

I then ran two batteries using connectionless. I did change overlap to 70/60% and camera trigger to 1 every 2.5 seconds. I have found 1/2.5sec works better than 1 every 2 secs. The camera buffer never gets a break like active connect at the end of each leg so that might be why results are less than desireable at the faster shutter rate. The CPU ran under 50% on average and never went up on the second battery like active connect does.

Hi guys, Zane, based on Rob's results and upon doing some reading I came up with two questions that may help in the meanwhile:
1. Can I save a mission after each battery, close the app (maybe restart the ipad) and reload the mission in a way that will make it continue from where it was stopped? (I actually think that without anything to do with the current problem - this is a good feature as sometimes we want to continue a mission in the same light conditions and for that you have to wait for the next day. - i.e. taking a big area during sunset)

2. (I'm noobie to ipad..so don't laugh)  I saw that Ram can be cleared in iPad when holding the power button until the "swipe to turn off" message appears and then - holding the home button.
Will the app survive that action ?(during flights or between them)
Or will it make it unstable?

Thanks,

Gil

Hi :)
Any news? ... maybe the save option?
Thanks