I have read that many people here have a signal problems after reaching 500m distance with Inspire 1, i have also experienced this today. I had a clear sight, no antenas or anything, and after 520m the iPad app started to warn me about weak signal.

Any response from DJI about that?

Thanks

Does your iPad have Cellular capability? If it does put it in Airplane Mode. That will decrease the interference from any Cell Sites in the area.

That's not it roger. I had it In airplane mode. I think the LB auto mode isn't great. I'm going to try another channel manually today.

Was the maximum distance switch in the app set to on?

It's not signal problem. It's an actual software lock to prevent users from flying the Inspire above 500m from where they are.

ghoonk Posted at 2015-1-10 23:28
It's not signal problem. It's an actual software lock to prevent users from flying the Inspire above ...

He was talking about 500 m horizontal distance, not 500 m altitude.

500m distance limit is not set unless you set it. Check you signal meter and make sure the environment your flying in is clear of unwanted rf.

This is not a software limitation. It's literally losing signal at around 500 m. I do not have a distance limit set for horizontal flight. My height limit is set to 500m. Today once I hit approximately 500 m, but it wasn't exact, the craft lost signal and control at the same time. No video, no ability to control the craft. It kind of went back in and out of that mode for a few minutes as the battery started to run down. I hit go to home, but nothing happened. Finally, I'm not sure if it started to come home by itself, or I got just enough control, but it started to come home. This is highly unusual where my phantom 2 in the same exact environment can travel three times as far. Something is wrong, it was scary. Unlike the phantom 2 analog signal, when this goes it goes and you have nothing.

Blade, I went into the transmission settings manually and picked a green channel that had nearly no noise on it. When the craft regained control, again, no noise was shown. I don't get it but it scared the crap out of me. How come the I1 has issues where the P2 has none in the same spot?
One more thing: flight recorder just ended once it cut off - at 459M exactly. It did not record remainder of flight. Something is up.

Other than that, it flew fine. A little latency but within the 500M circle it's ok. But this sudden cut off is troubling:

a) the warning sets in and then if you go only a few more meters you lose the craft entirely
b) it's far, far less than the P2 is seeing in the same flight conditions.

Nevermind the entire flight was full of jello because the supplied ND isn't strong enough... and there's an issue with the camera. The center of the frame is blurry and the edges are clear. It's the opposite of what should be, like a lens element is out of whack.

Can these things be returned?

What is the transmission mode set to?

Blade_Strike Posted at 2015-1-11 01:07
What is the transmission mode set to?

I had it on manual, I selected a clear channel. Auto did the same thing on another fight.

AnticipateMedia Posted at 2015-1-11 00:58
This is not a software limitation. It's literally losing signal at around 500 m. I do not have a dis ...

At what altitude were you at when you got this message?  I found that if you are low, say 20-30m then you can get that at 300m.  Try increasing your altitude to 50-75m and you should be fine.  Make sure that your antennas on the Tx are perpendicular to the ground.  I have flown to 1.9km and had very good signal.  I was at 68m.

Try channel 28 and image transmission set to 2Mbps. This will give us some insight on what's going on.

Tahoe_Ed Posted at 2015-1-11 01:09
At what altitude were you at when you got this message?  I found that if you are low, say 20-30m t ...

I was at 400 feet. (so 122M?). TX antenna were perpendicular to the ground.

Blade_Strike Posted at 2015-1-11 01:10
Try channel 28 and image transmission set to 2Mbps. This will give us some insight on what's going o ...

Thanks I will have to try later but thank you I will try and report back.

(The camera is definitely messed up, seeing blurry middle frame and sharp edges, but that's another issue. One issue at a time.) Thanks for the help.

Try the above and see, otherwise it does sound like you have a bunk unit.

As far as the jello, when I first flew mine I could see one of the motors vibrating. I replaced that prop with one of the spares it came with and that fixed the vibration. I see virtually no jello with the clear lens and have not needed the ND filter to get great results. I am very happy.

At 500m out, I am showing full signal on both radios.

chrisgeigerphot Posted at 2015-1-11 02:13
As far as the jello, when I first flew mine I could see one of the motors vibrating. I replaced that ...

And again I see a good reason to check prop balance if we could find one that works with the spin on prop style.

@AnticipateMedia i feel with you. Waiting for months for Inspire to arrive and then we get messed up and broken stuff, thats not good. Anyway, sure, by law you can return the item if it doesent meet the specs that where written on it.

Today i also reached 600m and lost control, the Inspire 1 started to return to home. So, should i just return the Inspire 1 or what to do? Tomorow i will go to a different location and try again, maybe that location has interference.

Okay after a few flights the furthest I could get without losing connection is 1500 feet that's 0.47 km. That's a far cry from 2 km. Extremely disappointed here's a photo of my area. (iPads set to airplane mode)

I'm going out and going to fly a few packs through mine on the .14 firmware. I will see if I see the same issue.

Well is isn't good and if this is the case im gonna cancel my order with DJI before my inspire ships.. Wait till they get this thing right.
Pv2+ is fine till then.

Blade_Strike Posted at 2015-1-11 03:43
I'm going out and going to fly a few packs through mine on the .14 firmware. I will see if I see the ...

So I tried channel 30 (sorry I didn't remember it was 28) and turned the rate down to minimum (2mbit?). And I carefully headed out, slowly. It started cutting out at 445m or so. I backed up. It came back. I went in another direction, to 475m. It started to cut out.  I backed off. It came back. I flew the other direction, and had to land. When the quad was at its limits, I looked at the channel graph. Clean channel, no issues. No noise. I'm dumbfounded.  Area looks just like the photo posted in this thread by someone else. Tested P2- went to 1500m. I was at 90m in both cases, pointing myself towards the quad, antenna perpendicular to ground. iPad and iPhone both same issue. I'm also in airplane mode on the devices.

I'll write about jello etc in other threads to keep this focused on distance.

Been having the same problem, although I haven't actually lost control, or video signal yet.  Yesterday I flew out to 1km, at about 400ft with clear LOS.  Was getting weak signal the entire time.  In the three separate locations I have flown so far, I have had weak signal every time, no matter what antenna position, and iPad Air is always in airplane mode.  I even leave my cellphone and keys in the car.

I may be a bit confused on how to read the channel noise level and how to pick a good channel.  Is higher the scale better, or lower?  I never seem to see anything looking steady green on any channel.  I don't think I specifically tried channel 28, but the couple that I did try, it would lose video signal completely.  Video quality is always on lowest setting.

I don't know why auto mode wouldn't be picking the strongest channel on its own anyway.  Based on where I see other people flying in their videos and not reporting any signal problems, I can't see that my locations can be causing so much interference.  Really starting to wonder if I have a defective unit.

Ozren Posted at 2015-1-11 02:30
@AnticipateMedia i feel with you. Waiting for months for Inspire to arrive and then we get messed up ...

I'm thinking of returning it. I want to love it but the distance limit seems very odd and scary. And the jello is realllly bad.

chrisgeigerphot Posted at 2015-1-11 02:13
As far as the jello, when I first flew mine I could see one of the motors vibrating. I replaced that ...

I aimed the camera at the motors to take a look. The gimbal plate was wildly vibrating just in a hover.

500m out I have a full signal too. But it cuts out anyway.

Just did a 1k run, didn't want to push it since its a new craft and new fw. Not one warning and at pretty low altitude.

Blade_Strike Posted at 2015-1-11 06:26
Just did a 1k run, didn't want to push it since its a new craft and new fw. Not one warning and at p ...

I sent a message to support. There's clearly something wrong with mine. I didn't test in a wide open space like that though... just comparing against my P2 in the same spot.

ETDroneHome Posted at 2015-1-11 05:41
Been having the same problem, although I haven't actually lost control, or video signal yet.  Yester ...

I feel the same way. I took the listing to mean the higher the bar, the worse the noise. Maybe it is the other way around. In any case, why does the P2 go so much further?

Are you maxing out around 500M?

This is at the city yard and does have 2.4 and 5.8 wifi active. When you say you fly at the same area as you do with the p2, does this p2 have LB?

Blade_Strike Posted at 2015-1-11 06:32
This is at the city yard and does have 2.4 and 5.8 wifi active. When you say you fly at the same are ...

No. It's stock with AVL-58.

I just got my Inspire 1 and was flying it above an empty vineyard plot near Silver Oak winery in Napa. Still within line of sight (and about 500M) away the RC light flickered saying the remote was losing connection to the Inspire.
Being a newbie I freaked out a bit, but the signal soon recovered and I started flying back. Obviously I am not the only one experiencing this loss of connectivity between the remote and the aircraft at much shorter distances than the specs indicate.
One BIG question - what does the aircraft do when this connectivity is lost - does it return to home point?

Yes it will RTH

AnticipateMedia Posted at 2015-1-11 06:35
No. It's stock with AVL-58.

no wonder! analog 5.8GHZ Video TX will reach farer away, the AVL-58 is a 500mw TX, its not legal. The inspire is alot weaker i think to get a CE sign. Thats why the Phantom Visions had that FCC/CE switch for their digital 2.4GHZ Video TX. More power means more distance and DJI had to stay within the laws with the inspire because its a RTF unit. On Phantoms you can install powerful video TX yourself but not legal in europe for example if its over 25mw.

Thats why i love the analog video TX, it dont cut off immediately

The inspire has 2km range.. just like the lightbridge.  If people are seeing less it's either bad hardware, flying location, anttennas pointing wrong and or smart device giving off some crazy rf.

HI Ozren & anticipatemedia,
have you tried the auto mode?
when you worked at manual mode, have tried 4Mbps mode and  6Mbps mode?

DJI-youzq Posted at 2015-1-11 15:29
HI Ozren & anticipatemedia,
have you tried the auto mode?
when you worked at manual mode, have trie ...

Thanks for helping. Yes, auto mode did the same thing. Have tried 2 Mbit mode and 4 in manual as well on clear channels. I had the same issue on 3 separate attempts.  The channels showed clear with no instability and very low noise.

The meter was reading a strong signal right up until it cut out.

What is the range we should expect? As Daninho helpfully pointed out, the AVL-58 has far more power (though at a frequency much more likely to cut out than 2.4 Ghz). Though I must admit I was also losing control of the craft, which I did not so close on the P2.

I am flying over tress and some houses in a semi-rural area, not densely populated.

I have a tried to contact DJI Inspire support for this and a number of other issues, but no one wrote or called back. I appreciate all the help.

peterbowers Posted at 2015-1-11 09:54
I just got my Inspire 1 and was flying it above an empty vineyard plot near Silver Oak winery in Nap ...

It does yes. The issue I had though is it was on the edge between having connection and not, and kept going back into a connected mode for just a moment, then out. I had to mess with it for a few minutes to finally get it to back off enough so I could press the RTH button (holding it down....) and it listened.

If I left the craft there, it would have landed, because every time it got a signal for a few seconds it resets the timer, as it were.

I also had an issue where the app (not the TX; I could see the quad) cut out and I held down the RTH button on the TX.. it never engaged. Of course it works without the app installed, but that doesn't help the distance issue obviously.

I will post video and photos ( at least) when I get a chance.

Are there two versions of the Inspire 1 produced like one the US market with FCC signs and more power and a weaker CE Inspire? Maybe there is a CE/FCC switch as well?

Guys,

Today i purchased ipad air 2, and connected it instead of iphone 6. I reached 2.3Km before connection broke. So in my case it was the iPhone, even in airplane mode, it made some interference. I dont know exactly, but with ipad, i flew 2.3Km and later again 1.3 Km with no problems.

Hope that helps someone and DJI.
@DJI-youzq thanks for the help, it works now in auto mode.

@AnticipateMedia, try different location and try without your phone, borrow an ipad or something.

Ozren Posted at 2015-1-11 19:16
Guys,

Today i purchased ipad air 2, and connected it instead of iphone 6. I reached 2.3Km before co ...

thank you, this is good to hear. DJI told us the latency is minimal with a strong tablet like ipad air2 but i never believed the range is influenced by the device as well. Did you switched off wifi or better said was the iphone in airplane mode? a smartphone dont make sense because even the I6+ has a tiny screen for flying and using the APP correctly.