Man, did I have a frustrating day yesterday

I'm sorry that this might seem like a rant, but we had so many problems that it is hard to pinpoint one as the most important issue.

We flew a mission on an iPhone + DJI Air 2S. I'm training someone to use his phone to take data, so we transferred missions from my account to his. The problems we ran into were:

1) When you transfer the mission from one phone to another, the base map is not downloaded. It was only when we launched the drone that we realized that we were in place with no cell coverage, and we couldn't see how the drone was flying over the terrain.

2) We probably spent a total of 30 minutes trying to connect the phone to the drone. Every time we changed a battery, connecting would take minutes. We ended up rebooting the controller, drone, and phone three times (not sure whether that helped or not).

3) Four or five times the drone ascended to 29 m, and then just stopped. No error message, just a hovering drone. We'd bring it back home, reboot, wait a long time to reconnect, and then (at least once), the drone ascended again to 29 m and just stopped. There was no difference that I could see between the flights where the drone did the flight, and flights where the drone just stopped.

4) Twice after rebooting the iPhone, the drone started over with flight #1 of the mission, even though we answered the question saying to continue the mission. We finally figured out how to direct the drone to restart at a user-chosen continuation point. But something seems to be wrong with the process to restart at the last point photographed—it only worked some times.

Any help with any of these problems? Have others seen this "ascend to 29 m and hover" behavior?

And it would seem a very easy fix to download the base map whenever it is missing (or ask the user). I know that I can download it if I save the mission as a new mission, but since there is no indication in the app which missions have base maps associated with them and which not, it is very easy to overlook this until you are out in the field with no internet.

TIA for any advice.

Alan Harper July 24, 2023 16:27

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1 comment

We are sorry to hear you had a rough outing. There is a lot here but we will attempt to address them all. In the interest of having the response be usable for future searchers it is much better to post single topic issues one by one.

1. Yes, this is by design. We pay for every tile that is saved. Most operation is done with some internet connectivity so it defaults to using the standard Apple basemap, which is free. Most of the time users will know if they are going to be operating offline and it is their responsibility to make sure things are properly loaded ahead of time. We always recommend checking that all of your data is present before leaving for the field anyway. Some subscription tiers do not have access to saving the basemap data anyway.

2. Make sure all other drone related apps are fully closed. If it doesn't connect you can unplug and replug the cable to trigger a reconnection. If that doesn't work check your cable for bad connection. If that doesn't work reboot the aircraft and remote. If that doesn't work fully close and restart Map Pilot Pro.

3. This is a known issue with Virtual Stick flight that happens because of a incomplete disconnection and reconnection process. Likely related to issue #2. We have tried to get rid of it but it is part of an iOS bug that DJI won't be fixing so we have to do all sorts of stuff to work around it. It only affects iOS with Virtual Stick devices. Make sure you are using the latest version.

4. We try to keep any forward progress but in the case of a loss of this you can restart at any corner waypoint by tapping on it while the blue verification line is showing.

Zane July 25, 2023 06:31 0 votes