Is anyone else having trouble flying in areas where you have to tell the smart controller that you have authorization to fly there? When I tried to mine would take me to a webpage all in Chinese instead of English. Trying to fly in Mukilteo, WA USA. Went online when I got home and unlocked through my account and will try again tomorrow hoping it will work.

Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. When you are trying to Authorized to fly on the Authorization zone you need to have a working internet connection. Or if you having an issue you may use the scheduled unlocking on this link https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and as you mention you were able to unlock it. Please keep us posted. Thank you for your support.

DJI Gamora Posted at 1-29 15:07
Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. When you are trying to Authorized to fly on the Authorization zone you need to have a working internet connection. Or if you having an issue you may use the scheduled unlocking on this link https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and as you mention you were able to unlock it. Please keep us posted. Thank you for your support.

Is there a way to pair a cell phone to the smart controller to piggy back the cell signal to the smart controller?

If you can make your Cellphone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, then you should be able to log onto the Wi-Fi hotspot you created and use it to connect to the internet.  then just carry the phone with you to use the internet through the controller.

CRAIGMART75 Posted at 1-29 19:47
If you can make your Cellphone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, then you should be able to log onto the Wi-Fi hotspot you created and use it to connect to the internet.  then just carry the phone with you to use the internet through the controller.

Thanks yeah that’s what I figured I would have to do. Just wish there was an easier way to be able to say I have authority to fly there.

ZachC2009 Posted at 1-29 16:18
Is there a way to pair a cell phone to the smart controller to piggy back the cell signal to the smart controller?

Right! CRAIGMART75 is correct you can just create a hotspot from your mobile phone then connect the Smartphone for you to have a working internet but make sure first you have a working internet from your mobile device. Hope it helps. Thank you for your support.

CRAIGMART75 Posted at 1-29 19:47
If you can make your Cellphone into a Wi-Fi hotspot, then you should be able to log onto the Wi-Fi hotspot you created and use it to connect to the internet.  then just carry the phone with you to use the internet through the controller.

Thats not very "smart" for an expensive "smart" controller

Tried turning in on hotspot on phone and smart controller saw it but would not stay connected to it. Had to go somewhere else to fly today because of it.

Payne Field providing to be a pain (with commercial flight noise even more of a pain!)

I get stopped if there's a game at Husky Stadium!!!

DJI Gamora Posted at 1-29 15:07
Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. When you are trying to Authorized to fly on the Authorization zone you need to have a working internet connection. Or if you having an issue you may use the scheduled unlocking on this link https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and as you mention you were able to unlock it. Please keep us posted. Thank you for your support.

Is there a way to pre unlock an area using the DJI webpage, Logging that information into the smart controller.  Then when I am at that location be able to fly it without internet?  I do not have mobile hotspot.

djiuser_H6RuPB3wCFrL Posted at 3-11 13:33
Is there a way to pre unlock an area using the DJI webpage, Logging that information into the smart controller.  Then when I am at that location be able to fly it without internet?  I do not have mobile hotspot.

Hi there, thank you for reaching out. About your question, if your location is on the Authorization zone you can pre-unlock or schedule it here https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and choose the Self-unlocking, then scroll down you may see the schedule unlocking. See the screenshot below.

djiuser_H6RuPB3wCFrL Posted at 3-11 13:33
Is there a way to pre unlock an area using the DJI webpage, Logging that information into the smart controller.  Then when I am at that location be able to fly it without internet?  I do not have mobile hotspot.

Hi there, thank you for reaching out. About your question, if your location is on the Authorization zone you can pre-unlock or schedule it here https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and choose the Self-unlocking, then scroll down you may see the schedule unlocking. See the screenshot below.

I'm pretty sure I am selling all this hobbyist garbage and going back to just subcontracting out drone pilots for my shoots.

I got my Mavic 2 Pro, Smart Controller and 6 effing batteries a couple months ago in preparation for what is a $15K shoot all week this week and all last week while testing it out, I got locked out every damned time even with 5 pages of Skyward 50AGL approvals!

Now it is GO TIME with no room for re-shoots and I cant even get the stupid page to send a code to my phone!!! It just counts down and nothing shows up on my phone. Then, when do get it to pre-approve and while out in the field, the stupid thing says I have authorization and when I click send after clicking the boxes, it says FAILED!!!! And yes, I have wifi.

In my entire 32 year career shooting aerials and high end commercial jobs, I have NEVER seen such an unprofessional and kludgy approach to supporting ACTUAL WORKING PROFESSIONALS!!!!
For pete's sake, charge me $300 a year for some streamlined enterprise / professional way to get this thing off the ground, SOMETHING other than this sh_t show!!!

I have absolutely HAD IT with this, my reputation is on the line and your product just STINKS!!!!

KS-6 Posted at 10-14 19:05
I'm pretty sure I am selling all this hobbyist garbage and going back to just subcontracting out drone pilots for my shoots.

I got my Mavic 2 Pro, Smart Controller and 6 effing batteries a couple months ago in preparation for what is a $15K shoot all week this week and all last week while testing it out, I got locked out every damned time even with 5 pages of Skyward 50AGL approvals!

I second this, it's already cost me thousands in missed shoots and my reputation. Please offer something for licensed pilots to remove these geo unlocks permanently. The current self unlock and custom unlock is not the way. Especially with the smart controller that is buggy even when connected to my hotspot. I've spent over 7 hours at various shoots trying these unlocking methods   and none worked. It successfully unlocked one time and after my first battery switch out the drone was again locked.

I'm here contemplation if its worth the 3 hour round trip to go back to yesterdays shoot location once I do the pre unlock.

This is so frustration after dumping thousands  of dollars on multiple drones, batteries and controllers this is insane.  

I am so over the continual problems I have...one after another with this company.

Just happened to me today. To get set for a scheduled shoot at Vernon BC inside the authorization zone, I set up a scheduled 3 day authorization to fly in an area at the outside edge of the blue zone. Get there with the sun just right. Fire up. "Aircraft Cannot Fly"  That's happened before. I just hit the 3 foot hover takeoff button and another screen comes on showing my preauthorizations, I select one and go. Not this time. Job lost, client lost.

Great drone, utterly appalling people behind writing the manual who haven't a fucking clue of the goat shag they've created. Never hire Asian minds to communicate with western minds. It not a question of inferior intelligence, its a whole different way of thinking. It's not linear, and it doesn't anticipate by being in the shoes or head of someone actually using this thing. Authorizations are bull.... No one is ever refused an authorization for an authorization zone. Why all the James Bond .... Know the boundaries of the red, blue areas, be in the blue and press an authorization button.

Now we're going to have some whiny bastard come on and give some bull... theory of why this all has to be so complicated and abysmally organized. And, of course, he'll be "sorry".  I don't want a sorry person. I want someone who can fix the problem.

I am also having an issue with trying to unlock geozones on the smart controller.  It tells me I'm in a no fly zone, then when I try to self unlock, the dialog to self unlock comes up but when I hit yes, nothing happens.  This is happening repeatedly and costing me jobs.  And yes, I was connected to the internet via cell phone tether.

I bought a Mavic pro 2 with regular RC and a smart controller. I set the smart controller as the secondary RC. Side by side, the regular RC has no problem flying in the no fly zone but the smart controller gives ‘failure to unlock’ message when I tried to use it after accepting the full responsibility for an authorized flight. Of course, the smart controller has a hotspot connection. It simply does not work. Any new thoughts or ideas? Thanks..

Anybody from DJI? We need a firmware fix in order to overcome this issue. Otherwise, you need to have two controllers

Hi Guys,
Here is my understadig of the problem right now :
I believe that the smart controler should be unlocked by itself. The same way we fill which type of drone and which serial number in the custom unlock page, we shoudl add the smart controler as a device with a serial number. The problem is : therer is no "smart controler" in the devices category, so we end up beeing stuck here with a drone with is unlocked bu a Smart controler which is LOcked...
My turnaround so far is to use my Iphone with the "basic Mavic2 controler" and/or use the dji crystal sky.
My challenge with that solution is to be able to use DJi pilot PE (in order to perform waypoints missions) with the crystal sky as it seems that the crystal sky's Dji GO4 is connecting to the drone automatically and prevents DJI Pilot PE to connect to the drone...
Hope all this s%%^^^& makes sesne and Hope too that I will manage to use DJi pilot PE with the Crystal Sky and the Mavic 2 to perform my waypoimt mission in and AUthorization zone!!

Keep you posted!

Not unloading zone and it is requiring authorization in a area which does not require authorization.  Stay out of my way DJI!

Vc4HjPwovW13 Posted at 2019-12-12 11:45
I second this, it's already cost me thousands in missed shoots and my reputation. Please offer something for licensed pilots to remove these geo unlocks permanently. The current self unlock and custom unlock is not the way. Especially with the smart controller that is buggy even when connected to my hotspot. I've spent over 7 hours at various shoots trying these unlocking methods   and none worked. It successfully unlocked one time and after my first battery switch out the drone was again locked.

I'm here contemplation if its worth the 3 hour round trip to go back to yesterdays shoot location once I do the pre unlock.

I know this is an old post but I ran into that problem this weekend. I drove 2 1/2 hours and was only able to get GeoZone synced to one battery. I've been e-mailing them back and forth but have gotten NOTHING helpful. Have you figured out anything since this post? Thanks, I'm just so frustrated with Geo Zones and DJI's lack of help with the issues!

DJI Gamora Posted at 2019-1-29 15:07
Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. When you are trying to Authorized to fly on the Authorization zone you need to have a working internet connection. Or if you having an issue you may use the scheduled unlocking on this link https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and as you mention you were able to unlock it. Please keep us posted. Thank you for your support.

as of 3/27/2021 this feature does not work on the smart controller

It says that I need to retry to receive my verification code.  It has been 1.5 hours.  This is not acceptable

Tried to shoot a ceremony today, licence (self-unlocking from dji site)  and internet connection up but drone couldnt take off. When it finally activated the licence, the ceremony was over. This is just pathetic, looking for ways to hack the drone now, thanks a lot dji....

The hack I received from DJI is to sign out of your DJI account on the smart controller and sign back in when you get the failed to unlock message. Yes this requires wi-fi (I use a hot spot from my phone). Sign in/sign out works well. Connecting to the hot spot does not always work well. Can this be improved DJI?  Repair? Update?

DJI Gamora Posted at 2019-1-30 08:07
Right! CRAIGMART75 is correct you can just create a hotspot from your mobile phone then connect the Smartphone for you to have a working internet but make sure first you have a working internet from your mobile device. Hope it helps. Thank you for your support.

And what do I do if my SC wont recognize my Iphone? Or I only have one bar?  DJI says to do the setup at home so you wont need a connection in the field. I got to a job yesterday and could not unlock. It kept trying to send me to a webpage?  What for> I already had the info in the SC. I could not fly and now I have to go back and try again. Frankly, not sure if I'll get it to work next time. It's a horrible system designed by DJI that simply doesnt work well at all.

I am having a similar problem I had the traditional controller and I could accept the warning and it flew. I just got a smartcontroller today (cause I hate the way the standard one connects to phones and it is a pain in the A##). I can not get it to take off with the smart controller. It sees it but refuses to authenticate. Go back to the standard controller and it works flawless. I have a shoot tomorrow and assuming I will go with the old controller...I also leave for the Bahamas in 2 days and brought the controller for that trip,,,,now I'm afraid to bring it. And yes I did get authorization to fly in the Bahamas by the government. Any ideas what I am missing on the SC? I did teather it to my cell phone hotspot no go - I could get it to connect but will not authorize. I think it must be something basic I am missing.....

DJI Gamora Posted at 2019-1-29 15:07
Hi there, thank you for reaching out and we're sorry to hear about the trouble. When you are trying to Authorized to fly on the Authorization zone you need to have a working internet connection. Or if you having an issue you may use the scheduled unlocking on this link https://www.dji.com/flysafe/self-unlock and as you mention you were able to unlock it. Please keep us posted. Thank you for your support.

That does not work when using the smart controller. DJI needs to give us commercial pilot a way to deactivate  GEO fencing . It’s very hard to get work done. Please respond

DJI is ridiculous. I too am having this problem. I unlocked it on my computer, I get to the location, I don’t have wifi and I can’t fly.

I’m going to try the log out/in process. But it’s stupid that they’ve made a stupid smart controller.

Mavic 2 Zoom with smart controller. Hiked for over a mile to fly after obtaining pre-authorization to fly in restricted airspace. Brought a hotspot to jump through the unlocking process. Flown this area multiple times in the past, once with this very setup. Error 405 this time. After trying again, the app says 'Unlocked' but it will not take off. Please fix this immediately. Better yet, remove the unlocking process for licensed pilots.