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I had a strange day today.

Sparky2018

Active Member
Join
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
25
Age
47
Today was the first day I was able to fly in about 3 weeks. I checked my battery levels and they all registered 3 out of 4 green lights. I always fly on full batteries so I charged them all up to full along with the remote. I also topped off the Ipad 4 mini as well.

On one of my last flights I was able to go just over a mile (otg) with no signal problems of any kind.

Today, I was only out about 2200 feet and began experiencing "transmission signal loss", which I thought very strange since I was able to double that distance no problem before.

I also noticed that the camera view seemed awfully dark. It was mostly sunny conditions today but I have flown in full sun and never had that darkness before. I could tilt the camera at the ground and regain vibrant color but it would still fade in and out of dark.

The last thing that almost made me crap myself on another flight, the drone was about 300 feet away, height around 120-140 feet and got the "aircraft disconnected" warning and the screen went black. The Spark began returning to home and after about 8 to 10 seconds the aircraft reconnected, video transmission restored, and I cancelled the RTH and was able to fly back to home and land safely.

The conditions were near perfect for flying. Mostly sunny, no breeze at all. UAV Forecast stated all good to fly. I'm just wondering if I need to do some updates or something. When I get more time, I'll definitely look into that... but boy, what a strange day.

Oh, one last thing... recording the flights through the DJI app. I flew 5 flights today. 4 of the 5 flights recorded for approximately 20 seconds on average and then quit. I know it may be possible to accidentally shut off recording maybe one time but not 4 out of 5. I don't know if maybe that is another sign I need to update or what but I was very surprised I didn't have any video footage at all, other than the first 20 or so seconds which wasn't even enough time for the take offs.
 
Last edited:
I had this problems before when i didnt turned the bluetooth off of my device. BT is a big disturbance! However i dont use OTG at all. So thats the only thing thats missing in my story, but all the other problems are similair then i encountered that day.
 
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I had this problems before when i didnt turned the bluetooth off of my device. BT is a big disturbance! However i dont use OTG at all. So thats the only thing thats missing in my story, but all the other problems are similair then i encountered that day.

Well, you just jogged my memory... I did get a bluetooth warning now that you mention it! I didn't understand why it said that at that moment because it is always turned off. BUT... when I was messing with my Ipad Mini 4 last night to turn on wifi and see if the tablet or the DJI App needed an update, I did notice the bluetooth WAS ON! That would explain a lot of my troubles then if you had a similar experience. From now on I will double check that the bluetooth is off and as always be sure I am in airplane mode as I tend to fly OTG.

Thank you so much for your input!

Doug
 
Oh, one last thing... recording the flights through the DJI app.

Just a suggestion, don't use the DJI GO4 cache recorder, use the mini4 screen recorder.

It records the whole flight plus telemetry whether taking pictures, videos, or just flying around and saves it to the camera roll.
 
Just a suggestion, don't use the DJI GO4 cache recorder, use the mini4 screen recorder.

It records the whole flight plus telemetry whether taking pictures, videos, or just flying around and saves it to the camera roll.

I'm sorry, I misspoke. I do actually screen record through the iPad. So much was going haywire yesterday afternoon that I thought I had forgotten to press screen record for that flight. After I landed, I look for that flight on the iPad and thought for sure I hadn't pressed record since I didn't remember pressing "stop recording" but I was pleasantly surprised to see that indeed all 5 flights were screen recorded but somehow 4 of the 5 flights were only 20 or so seconds long (of actual 1080) and missed some good quality footage. But on the bright side, the most important flight (where I disconnected) I had both the actual footage and the screen footage. I absolutely love the screen recording of the iPad so you have records of all the telemetries when crap goes south on you.

Thank you for your comment,

Doug
 
Just a suggestion, don't use the DJI GO4 cache recorder, use the mini4 screen recorder.

It records the whole flight plus telemetry whether taking pictures, videos, or just flying around and saves it to the camera roll.
With mini4 screen recorder you mean the build in screen recorder in iOS 11?
 
With mini4 screen recorder you mean the build in screen recorder in iOS 11?

Yes, I think you double tap the round button and that little menu pops up. It has a 3 second countdown timer and then begins recording. You can also control things like airplane mode, wifi, and yes, the dreaded bluetooth!
 
The dreaded Bluetooth. It has never given me that many problems, only because of 1 scary time. Luckily I was not far away & landed the spark at my feet in seconds. Now if I get a Bluetooth warning I am quick to rectify it. They say that multiple wifi signals can cause interference, but it has never caused a problem for me. Bluetooth is the worst.
 
With mini4 screen recorder you mean the build in screen recorder in iOS 11?

Yes.
I have found in the past that if the Microphone is turned ON while recording, as soon as DJI announces Home Point or Take Off, the recorder mutes the entire flight until you close the Go4 app, and then it works again.
I guess it detects it as a phone conversation and mutes the call for privacy?

However, if the microphone is OFF, it doesn't record your voice but does record all of the audio DJI prompts, beebs, and shutter click sounds.
 
The bluetooth thing can sneak up on you. I've had the signal go bad and gotten the bluetooth warning and sure enough somebody had wandered over to chat with me and presumably they had a phone in their pocket.
 

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