fansd9ad692a
lvl.3
Flight distance : 19928 ft
United States
Offline
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Well, I think the issues are well known, but I figured I would follow-up with my "experience"...
I received my Phantom 4 Pro on Tuesday, Feb 28th. I spent my free time that evening charging the batteries, going through videos, reading forums and installing the DJI GO 4.03 app.
About 8pm the batteries were all fully charged, so I hooked up my Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 tablet, started up the P4P drone without the blades, started the controller and went through the procedure outlined where you check for firmware and do an update before anything else. Well, once I hooked up my tablet to the drone I started the firmware update. It took it almost an hour to download the firmware, then it proceeded to get to 5% on the update and the DJI GO 4 app crashed. I restarted the tablet, shut off everything, went into task manager on the tablet and killed everything that was running, started up the controller and drone, it started up the DJI GO 4 app, went into firmware update, the firmware was already downloaded so it just started the update and BAM! 5% and the DJI GO 4 app just crashes once more. I try for another 40 minutes to get it to update via the DJI GO 4 app to no avail.
By this time I am tired, so I charge the batteries for the controller, the drone and the tablet and get some other stuff done before I call it a night.
Today I clear my schedule a bit so I can see about flying the P4P before I try the firmware update via the DJI Assistant 2 app. Around 1pm I finally get enough done to sit down in the front room (vaulted ceilings), clear off the coffee table, get the P4P setup and put the blades on it and get it started. Since I am in Beginner Mode I waited until it acquired the proper amount of satellite connections and then launched it.
It hovered great, allowed for a decent amount of forward/back/side-to-side motion and rotated in place just awesome. I played with a bunch of the camera settings while landed as well as in flight and went through 3 battery charges worth of flight time/playing around before I decided to shut it down, recharge everything and do a firmware update.
Now, the big thing I noticed while flying was when I tried to get it to land with the land icon, I was getting a bunch of "BRAKING NOW! RETURN STICKS TO MIDPOINT FIRST." warnings whenever I attempted to land. I was able to use the stick to lower the drone and get ti to land nicely (outside of the throttle-down shudder I noticed) and shut off the props without issue. I also noticed a ton of video glitching and drop-outs on both auto as well as playing with custom channels.
So, I charge the battery once more, I get DJI Assistant 2 installed on my Windows 7 laptop, hookup the drone and turn everything on. DJI Assistant sees it and shows the newest firmware (1.02.0304 I believe, I was on the 1.01.0203 to begin with), and I was able to update it without issue. I disconnected everything and went back downstairs to see if I notice any changes.
Well, I get it all set up (reset back to Beginner Mode and check all the rest of the settings), I get it launched and am just rotating it in place, when all of a sudden it starts moving around a bit forward and back and then all of a sudden it takes off backwards at a high speed. I am talking much faster than I could get it to fly in any direction before. It literally ignored any kind of obstacle avoidance and smashes right into one of the casement window frames. It drops like a rock and proceeds to still have the props going at high speed as it gets tangled in the solar shade cord and one of the props takes a few chunks out of the wooden window sill. I had to grab it and used my other hand to power it off. It dropped two houseplants and damaged the solar shade as well as the other damage I already mentioned.
Well, with that I promptly returned to my laptop upstairs, hooked it back up after removing the propellers, and reverted back to the 1.01.0203 firmware.
I will attempt another flight tomorrow, but I expect it to fly the way it did earlier in the day, correct and predictable. I already know the collision avoidance was working with the 1.01.0203 firmware since it wouldn't allow me to fly too close to the banister or walls.
I just think it is really poor of DJI to release a buggy firmware and apps the way they have. This is what, the 4th generation of Phantom drone with how many sub-models in-between???
These are not cheap tools, they are quite expensive and have quite the feature set, but to not even make sure that a firmware is useable??? Let alone an app that crashes as often as it does???
Also, I may add I even went through and stripped my Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 of ALL software I could outside of the DJI GO 4 app. I mean the thing doesn't even get e-mails anymore. There is no auto-sync of anything, no software checking, no nothing running on it. I will say I get a LOT of battery life out of the tablet with it running like that, and it is a dedicated platform for the Phantom 4 Pro now. It also has quite a high-end hardware setup in it, even though it is stuck with Android 4.4 KitKat, but it is VERY stable with the update Samsung released about a month or two ago. And the DJI GO 4 app is listed as only requiring 4.1.2 anyways.
I also have a Note Pro 2014 10.1 I can use as well as a Note Pro 12.2, but I would rather use the Tab Pro 8.4 because of the size. It is just about perfect for use with the Phantom 4 Pro. |
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