The phantom 2 vision was the biggest waste of money.
The firmware updates were junk and so was the app tools to do updates. The antenna lead broke off finally due to lack of glue since the access port is on the inside instead of an external port. The batteries are no good anymore. The camera video stream quit working. There is no fixes for these except to throw more and more money at a  poor engineering design and poor quality of materials. $1500 down the drain. It should have only sold for $200.
I have no doubt the quality will not improve and the planned obsolescence of products will continue.
You should refund my money, dji.  I never got the chance to fully enjoy the drone due to the ongoing problems your products have.

Wow thats a bit harsh

You paid $1500. for a P2 ?????

I had to do a double take, thought this was a thread started in the 70's

It must have been the Limited Edition Auric Goldfinger P2 version.....
Lovely colour, high bling, but flies like a lead brick.

Phantom 2 vision Released in October 2013......   What kind of return period are you expecting?   

$1500 for a drone that is 4 years old? Seriously?

P2? In 2018?  The P4 would have been the obvious choice in this day and age - and would have cost less than the $1500 you appear to have spent.

In other news, it turns out that Ford's Model T wasn't a very good car.
On the strength of that, I wouldn't recommend buying any of their more recent automobiles.

Hi there, could you be more specific about the difficulties of the drone? The P2 series has been discontinued for a long time, but we're still glad to offer technical support and see whether we can help.

IIRC, the P2V was either $1299 or $1399 new - back in the fall of 2013.  The product turned out to be an outrageous success for DJI.  It really put them on the map in that (I believe) it was the first UAS to have video and telemetery integrated into the system and everything was included off the shelf ready to go.  The aircraft was built like a tank, and it was perfect for what it was designed for at the time - photographers.  What DJI didn't expect was that everybody else wanted one too.  What DJI hoped was that they'd be able to break even on the product - their goal was to simply keep their competitors at bay - which looking forward from their view, was more important than making money - but demand was so high for the P2V, DJI made money anyway in spite of their goal.  

The above is paraphrased from a video I watched on youtube of an interview with Colin Guinn about three years ago discussing DJI's early successes.  It's no longer up.  

I still have my P2V.  Yeah I've had a few crashes, even had to replace the shell at one point, but it still flies, everything still works perfectly.  

Not harsh enough, Hellsgate. I had to edit inappropriate wording.

Yes, KM5RG-  I had also bought extra battery, gaurds, carrying case. Bought in 2014. $1500

Labroides, the model T was and is a very good car. My friend has one. Easy to work on and fix. And you can still get parts for them.

DJI Susan, thank you! I was under the impression from reasearch that support had been discontinued??
But the main problem is the video feed to the app just stopped working. Many people, I read, having this problem. Due to component failure due to heat on the board or just deteriorating over time and failing. Replacement board, I believe, can be bought for $250. But does not seem worth it.
The antenna lead to radio head I cannot fix since it’s a small brass fitting. I was able to get another RC that had the camera wheel built in, which was nice, for only $50. The batteries I have are puffed out now, but found a shop that has a lot of good ones for $35 each. We just wish there was an easy way to fix the video feed without pouring a lot of money into the drone that should be usable for years to come. The way electronics were built in the past that lasted a lifetime. We had to wait a year for a fix with the app and apples iOS playing nice with the ground base function causing the app to die when it was enabled.  We never found out what the problem was with the drone just suddenly falling out of the sky. Also, the drone would sometimes just start up and start flying away when the receiver was powered off. It also lost GPS lock once and went into auto land where it was. Luckily not over water. I could not manually fly it home.
I made the mistake of not reading the reviews on this drone before I bought it. I did for the DJI Mavic Pro. Which I will say, is one amazing drone. But I still have the fear of a crash or failure induced from using the phantom 2.
I basically donated $1500 to DJI for R&D so they could build future drones correctly. Wish I could have done a trade in of the phantom 2 for a discount on the Mavic. Or I should have asked for a refund under the lemon law back then.

So what would it take to get a wiring diagram of the failed component and the specs on the circuits that drive the video stream, DJI Susan?

Buy a spark up to date tech, $389 save yourself a few quid...

Hallmark007, you’re missing the point. My friends are tired of throwing money away on products that can’t be fixed when they break or costs more to fix than the product sometimes costs. Was not that way in the past. But planned obsolescence is what manufactures do now to keep you buying and taking as much money from you as they can. The people growing up today are not going to have any retirement because they spent all their money. I have friends with the testing equipment and scope to fix the components with the info that DJI has. Don’t want to have to reverse engineer it to figure it out. But may have to.
Still have not heard back from DJI on circuit fix. They probably buy after market and don’t know.

It's not planned obsolescence as much as continual, rapid technology improvements.    After all,  who in 2014 thought you could cram both US GPS and Russian GPS both in a small drone?

These things also operate in harsh conditions -- heat, cold,  lots of vibration, etc.

You can sort of compare it to manned aircraft.   You can still purchase very low time Cessna 150s from the 1960's.   However, many of the components, especially radios and instruments, are no longer available.  So owners are forced to upgrade to newer and more expensive units to keep their 50 yo Cessna flying.

I bought a P3S in 2015.   I'm still flying it, as well as my new Spark.    Like many technologies,  I expected it to be eclipsed fairly quickly -- especially in technology.  My Spark is more capable than my P3S.  When it finally dies, as all sophisticated electronics are inclined to,  I'll park the P3 and concentrate on my Spark.   Maybe at that point, the Mavic Air, or Pro will be cheap enough to acquire as my new, more capable aircraft.

As for fixing your P2V, it there is a big enough market,  someone in the aftermarket should pick up the support and manufacturing of replacement parts.   

One thing you might consider, is that there is a tremendous market for racing drone components.  Perhaps some of those could be adapted to your P2?

Sid

Dirty Bird Posted at 2018-3-30 19:22
Did I go through a time warp?

Perhaps you did!!!




Sid