"camera storing photo error" since MapPilot Business app update

Hi Zane, thank you for getting back to me. 

Yes after I started getting lots of  these errors (yes I did get the "Photo Error" pop up), I changed the SD card setting from 2 secs to 2.5 secs (Class U1), however I was still getting the card error pop up especially when using my Phantom 4 Pro V2.0. The cards had been freshly formatted in the DJI GO app before the mission. I did a series of flights on 11th Jan (I'm in the Falkland Islands UTC-3 hrs) and the 13th Jan. The flights using the P4 Pro V2.0 on both the 11th Jan and 13th Jan were both problematic with this card error. There didn't seem to be such an issue with the older P4 Pro (v1).  Is it a coincidence that I've started experiencing this straight after updating the Map Pilot Business application to the latest version (V4.1.5).

Many thanks in advance

What changed on your more recent flights?

The only thing that has changed is a newer version of MapPilot. The old version used to crash a bit, so I thought that the newer version would be more stable. Unfortunately it has given me this problem. It seems that you also can't "roll-back" versions of the app on the iOs, which is really frustrating, as I'd like to go back to the old version!  My flights yesterday with the issues were at 8m/s (I have it set to automatically slow the aircraft down to the optimum speed).. Would you recommend manually restricting the speed (to 7.5 or 7 m/s?)

https://www.mapsmadeeasy.com/map_pilot/missions/detail/D121920E-5626-4D95-A738-F111A13DDEA6/

I've also just looked at this mission online - this was using the P4 V2. There appears to be gaps where it hasn't even tried to take a photo?  I aborted the mission when I saw that it wasn't taking regular images.

Make sure you have all other drone related apps FULLY closed. It looks like sometimes it is working for you and sometimes it isn't. 

Hi Zane,

Thanks for your reply. I will ensure there are no other drone related apps open. Is there anything else you would recommend I try? If the issue persists, is it worth manually slowing the drone down using the 'max speed' setting?

Thanks Neil

Slowing it down will definitely help but that is the same thing as turning your SD card write speed down too. 

I had the exact same thing happen yesterday with the "camera storing photo error" I flew a mission I've flown at least 8 times before. The SD card write speed was at 2.5 sec / image, and my flight speed was 4 m/s. Nothing has changed from previous missions except the recent app update. I always close all other apps in the background before flying. In the mission view on the iPad it is visible how photos on transects are missing and then doubled up in other places. In the flight summary it took 99 less photos than it should have. Any advice would be appreciated.

I also had lots of photo storing error in the corners of the mission in the non Business app. It was in 4.1.1 or 4.1.2 version but they fixed the problem in 4.1.3 and later i think.

I haven't tested 4.1.5 yet.

My comment is about standard version, non Business.

Dirk: I can see all the failures in your most recent Flight Sync log. It looks like the image triggering was erratic (at best) throughout the data collection. 

The "photo error" comes up when the camera says it can't keep up. Make sure your SD card is mostly empty or freshly formatted with the Go app. 

Depending on what version of Map Pilot you are coming from your saved mission might have had a different camera selected which will give different image spacing parameters. 

Your plot isn't showing any big dropouts of signal but any time your RC signal is getting down towards 90% the image triggers are going to start being missed. 

If you are using the 'Show Image Footprint' setting turn that off. 

Thanks Zane - I have had issues in the past with RC signal being lost and missing photos, so now I make sure I'm as close as possible, and always have a direct line of sight between the aircraft and the RC. I always use clean SD cards, but haven't been formatting them regularly so I'll try that.

I'm using the 4.1.5 Business version, and I did get a "potential camera mismatch" warning when I was loading the mission - even though the settings are set on Phantom 4 Pro flight camera (and have never changed). I did update this prior to flying.

I did have on the show image footprint - so I'll turn that off and see how it goes.

Hi Zane, just some feedback for you and others on the "photo storing error". Before I flew my next set of missions, I had to reinstall the MapPilot app (I think it had become corrupt on the iPad as I couldn't get it to open). After the reinstall, I had lost all of my previously flown missions (I realise I had turned "mission sync" off). I guess I had lots of missions stored (maybe over 100). With the new install, and without all these saved missions, the app was much quicker/more responsive, and the photo storing error seems to have gone away. I don't know if the two are related, it may just be a coincidence, but I don't think I had appreciated that having so many saved missions in the app could slow it down so much. Thanks Neil

Neil: Interesting feedback. We will look into it. 

Is anyone else still getting these errors? I've had 3 flights ruined this week because of this problem. I have set the 2.5 seconds/image. I formatted the card with the Go App immediately prior to the flight. The max speed was set to 12.8 mph. I checked the read/write speed of my SD cards, it was around 18mb. I am using the latest app (4.1.8) but have been noticing this for several months/projects. Help!

If your card can't keep up it will start to drop images which is what throws this error. The SD card write speed basically tells Map Pilot how quickly to trigger images and the max speed is selected from there. 

A proper card should be able to keep up with the SD write speed set to 2 seconds per image. The cards DJI ship with the aircraft will work. Beyond that you have to do a little work to verify your cards. There are TONS of fake crappy cards out there with all sorts of slow performance. The output of having a slow card is that it doesn't work well with the DJI camera and reports back to Map Pilot that the camera is still busy writing the previous frame to storage. THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE WITH MAP PILOT. The only time the app might trigger to quickly is if you are flying straight down wind and the aircraft is traveling faster than it was supposed to be going, but you should be flying perpendicular to the wind, right?

If your card cannot keep up with the needs of the app you may need to slow the SD Card Write Speed down in the Settings, make sure it is properly formatted or verify its operation in DJI Go using the intervalometer. 

Are you suggesting that Best Buy, a major retail store, is selling fake name-brand SD cards that are rated at v30? I speed checked both of my cards, they had a read/write rate of over 18mb, is that not fast enough?

I had already adjusted the SD card setting to 2.5 secs (class U1), long before this problem started occurring. The only thing that has changed in my configuration since I first setup your app, has been your app.

I was flying all of these missions with the wind perpendicular to the craft.

I used the DJI Go app to reformat the SD card immediately prior to the flight on the last attempt. It seemed to help some of the problem, but not all of it.

Zane,

I tried a flight with the camera set to take a photo every 2 seconds, still having the problem.

Any ideas would be appricated. I've tried all of your other solutions.

One image every 2 seconds is faster than one every 3 seconds. You need to slow it down to one every 3 seconds. 

And yes, we see cards that are purchased from all over the place (BestBuy, Fry's, Amazon, Walmart, etc) that don't meet the specs on the labels. Your best bet it buying from a high end camera shop or using the card that came with your aircraft. 

The bottom line is how the card works with the DJI camera which is why we recommend testing with the DJI Go intervalometer. 

Logging into Maps Made Easy and enabling flight sync would allow us to debug the issue further. 

As mentioned higher up in this thread, also make sure you have all other drone related apps full closed. If you are using the 'Show Image Footprint' feature that shows the green rectangle for where your camera is looking you may need to turn that off if your device can't keep up.

Hi,

Just to add to this thread, I was using the drone this morning, and had some time to trial different settings to see how they affected the "camera storing photo error". It seems that the one action which made a significant difference was turning off the image footprint in the settings. I could then keep the card read speed at 2sec per image (U3) - I am using a U3 card - I'll be leaving this footprint setting disabled in futuree.

Thanks Neil