I have a love/hate relationship with this forum.  One the one hand, there is a group of dedicated drone pilots, working hard to help others solve problems.  On the other hand, there's a group of angry, whiny, 1st-world-problem people who need to get a grip.

The amount of complaining about DJI is unbelievable.  Maybe someone should start a forum called "I'm pissed off and need to tell the world about it".

I'll second that.

Many believe that the entire point of having a forum is to whine, moan, and then demand justice for problems that could have been easily avoided.  

99% of the time they are the ones who believe themselves above reading the manual.  

That is soooo true

Sing it, brother!

Yep - some treat this like a Phantom Phacebook.  Spew on here so everybody can share in their difficulties they encounter in life.

To be fair though, this happens when people "new" to any product buys something. be it a phone, camera or a pack of biscuits. If it even slightly fails to live to the high expectations ( and and its fair to expect it to a certain degree ), they wigg out and since acting like gits to their friends and family is not always the best option, doing it anonomously on the Internet becomes a release.

We live in a world where some ( especially under 25's ) expect instant gratificaton to their every need and when that does not happen as they expect, there is no capacity at all to deal with it.. Welcome to the "Not So Social" world the likes of facebook and twitter have created. People grow up with no ability to deal with issues in any other way than "Jeremy Kyle" style  of bitching and moanign and generally being a d*ck to others.

This is why a lot of the old time helpers have left here.  They're tired of the whiners and moaners that think they are the most important person and wants help immediately.

Gerry1124 Posted at 2015-6-4 14:39
This is why a lot of the old time helpers have left here.  They're tired of the whiners and moaners  ...

I just skip their posts Gerry and try to help those who engage properly and offer up information instead of just moaning.

Lots of new users flying for the first time. Some, not all, need to realise that although the Phantom 3 is probably the best quadcopter available for the price, its not bulletproof and still requires you to read the manual and learn a little. But no, some just open the box and put it up as high and far as possible over water. They are easy to fly but just as easy to crash.

As one of the 'new people' I will agree with this.

In the end my logic goes along the lines of:
- I bought an expensive toy/tool.
- It is a very complex and capable toy/tool.
- It is inherent on me to research as much as possible before I throw 1.5KG of said complex and rapidly spinning toy/tool into the air 70m (strangely not 200 metres up and 3km out but I digress).
- It is, despite being expensive for a toy/tool, really good value for money for all the features (I researched a lot and GPS plus gimbal plus FPV at distance plus RTH etc. plus some proven experience the Solo is the only thing that MAY come close for bang for buck without building from scratch).
- It is not the PERFECT toy/tool.  It's got a bunch of different things causing real time adjustment in 3D while floating in the air.  That's right, this damn thing FLIES!  Can you believe it! (we take this non-trivial fact for granted it seems).  There's a LOT that can go wrong.
- I may crash it.  If so I will be ashamed.
- It may fail.  If so I will contact DJI and hope. If that occurs I'm expecting to have to wait a bit and be slightly annoyed at the fact that I was one of the unlucky ones, of a pool where a hopefully small percentage will inevitably be.
- I know only what I've read and watched. I'm not an aeronautical buff and I'm not an electronics whiz.  I rightly or wrongly will have to rely on the kindness of strangers on this or other forums.  I appreciate such kindness and feel I should respect it.

Lastly, or perhaps most importantly, I realised and calculated all the above BEFORE I purchased said toy/tool and made the informed decision considering the possible outcomes.

Caffeinated Posted at 2015-6-4 15:25
As one of the 'new people' I will agree with this.

In the end my logic goes along the lines of:

That's the way too look at it   -

Also when I refer to "new people" I by no means refer to people who are not capable. I just mean people new to flying RC's in general or new to Phantoms. Most users do what you do and have very successful flights. These same people might also have crashes due to no fault of their own.

I think one thing that needs to happen is people need to start seeing some "results" from the Phantom 3 having built in logging in the Tx and Aircraft that when random faults happen, DJI man up and sort these user out if its not user error. At the moment it looks like "cloak and dagger" where all people can do is send it away and we never hear about it/results again. When we get reports of DJI honouring warranty when things do go wrong, the people who just moan and criticize will have less ammunition.

We also need an easy way to view the onboard logs. No, DJI have not encrypted them so its not like they are trying to stop users reading them, its just that at the moment there is no way for average Joe to read them. When this becomes possible, a guide to what all the readings mean will be created and people will quickly be able to come to a conclusion themselves before even thinking of complaining to the forums or DJI.

I think as most of the people that were unlucky like myself, and got a defective Phantom 3 Pro we are not mad at the fact it was defective it is the customer service that is unacceptable to have to wait  5 to 6 weeks for something that was totally out of your control.   Should any of you be so unfortunate to go through the process you send the unit back to DJI and it takes 2 weeks to get it into the  que to be fixed, that is when the 5 to 6 week time limit starts.  So I totally get it people are upset and want that expensive toy back sooner.  However most of you are flying and enjoying you expensive toy and the rest of us are still waiting for ours to be fixed even when it was not crashed or abused.   So think about how you would feel if you were in our shoes.  Nothing like having 5 batteries, a hard case, new Ipad air, and a empty case with nothing to fly.  

joeglenn@zombie Posted at 2015-6-4 19:12
I think as most of the people that were unlucky like myself, and got a defective Phantom 3 Pro we ar ...

It quite often does lead to DJI's lack of customer support that frustrates people.  If we all took the attitude that buying this expensive toy is a crap shoot, it would make it easier when problems occour.  No surprises that DJI are busting at the seams to get these things out but lack the network to properly service them.  In their defense, I wouldn't want to be in their position of sorting the legitimate from the incompetent.

sploodge Posted at 2015-6-4 15:54
That's the way too look at it   -

Also when I refer to "new people" I by no means refer to peop ...

Right - the .DAT files are not encrypted, they are simply stream-written binary data.  I have the parsing definitions for some of the fields (xyz velocity, gps lat/lon, timecode...) and can take a .DAT file and:  get the count of data points written for the data types (timestamped position, velocity) but you must understand that when you perform a flying session, the P3 is dumping huge amounts of data at a pretty fast rate, even when you are hovering.  To somehow allow the lay-pilot a way to see or review this data in a meaningful way is not trivial to say the least.  DJI has done a fine job with the Pilot app flight log playback which contains data I do not have the specs for yet:  throttle and attitude positions with timecodes.  A lot of this angst about waypoints, ground station is due to the fact that DJI is rolling all of that into the Pilot app and their development team is to be commended for what they have done, given app AND firmware updates as well as adding new features - I bet that team has to work 7 days a week right now.  If DJI had rescheduled the P3 to coincide with the completion (90%) of the software, we'd still be flying P2s for at least another 9-12 mo.  IMO.