Phantom 3 Pro Image Dropout at 3 ft.

[AJ Henderson]

I just picked up a Phantom 3 Pro from a friend because it had the bad USB board issue in the remote. Replaced with a new HDMI module and all seems to be mostly well. I took it out today using my Moto G5 Plus. I had great signal strength for control, but the image was super unreliable. I was getting fairly regular drop outs of video signal even when the drone was sitting on the ground 2-3 feet away.

Any ideas what could be causing this? All the available channels were extremely spikey and dropped out completely every few seconds. Could it be some setting on my phone that is causing interference? Something else environmental? It was a little bit better on the field, but it was still cutting out regularly at less than 12 feet.

 

[happydays]

Did it get better when you flew it further away?

 

[crash1sttime]

Firmware up to date on TX and quad ?

 

[AJ Henderson]

Did it get better when you flew it further away?

Hard to tell. I was mostly in training mode when I was flying it since I'm new to the drone so I didn't get more than 30 meters away. I didn't notice any significant changes in signal quality (in terms of drop outs) but I was more focused on flying than monitoring exact levels of signal for lightbridge.

Firmware up to date on TX and quad ?

Yes, updated to latest prior to first launch. Both were very out of date before I got it, but I had all modules showing latest before I took it out.

 

[happydays]

Had you the aerials pointed straight up and parallel to each other?

 

[AJ Henderson]

Had you the aerials pointed straight up and parallel to each other?

They were slightly off angle from parallel pointed slightly out to get clear of the phone mount. They were pointed up and slightly back making a slight V.

 

[MAXXX6808]

Ironically DJI plays best with iOS. DJI likes to control everything we do, similar to how Apple operates. I have used numerous tablets and phones running Android 7.0 and down and they all are the same. Poor video quality, pixelates, loses signal, crashes.... I switch over to an iPad air and the experience is so much better. Even though DJI claims to support Android its not very reliable.

Between constant issues and problems with firmware updates and Android I am about ready to get rid of this quad and buy different one from a better company.

 

[AJ Henderson]

Ironically DJI plays best with iOS. DJI likes to control everything we do, similar to how Apple operates. I have used numerous tablets and phones running Android 7.0 and down and they all are the same. Poor video quality, pixelates, loses signal, crashes.... I switch over to an iPad air and the experience is so much better. Even though DJI claims to support Android its not very reliable.

Between constant issues and problems with firmware updates and Android I am about ready to get rid of this quad and buy different one from a better company.

Other than the video drop out issue I haven't really noticed any problems so far. Also, if it is just an Android vs iOS thing, I'd expect that the problem would go away if I hooked up to the HDMI port directly. I'm not sure how the choice of phone OS would impact the radio transmission quality. I just mentioned the phone model in case of interference concerns (for example, maybe it has a particularly noisy wifi antenna that could interfere.)

 

[Oso]

They were slightly off angle from parallel pointed slightly out to get clear of the phone mount. They were pointed up and slightly back making a slight V.

The antennas should be parallel to each other for best performance, though at the short distances you mentioned it probably didn't matter too much in this particular case.

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[MAXXX6808]

Other than the video drop out issue I haven't really noticed any problems so far. Also, if it is just an Android vs iOS thing, I'd expect that the problem would go away if I hooked up to the HDMI port directly. I'm not sure how the choice of phone OS would impact the radio transmission quality. I just mentioned the phone model in case of interference concerns (for example, maybe it has a particularly noisy wifi antenna that could interfere.)

Well I am just telling you what I have experienced and I have used a lot. In fact my Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus won't even connect, crashes constantly (although I haven't tried it again and its been a few months, maybe its been fixed) I have uninstalled and reinstalled numerous times but it just simply won't work with DJI GO. If you read these forums and many others you will read several other threads from people that have experienced similar issues with Android. Like I said it just seems to run smoother with iOS.

 

[AJ Henderson]

Well I am just telling you what I have experienced and I have used a lot. In fact my Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus won't even connect, crashes constantly (although I haven't tried it again and its been a few months, maybe its been fixed) I have uninstalled and reinstalled numerous times but it just simply won't work with DJI GO. If you read these forums and many others you will read several other threads from people that have experienced similar issues with Android. Like I said it just seems to run smoother with iOS.

Fair enough. I wonder if they develop against AOSP builds. (AOSP being the main android open source project that all of the other Android builds are based off of.) The Moto G5 Plus is very close to pure AOSP, so that might explain the difference. The Galaxy S8 on the other hand bears almost no resemblance to AOSP and has been heavily modified by Samsung. Certainly for the level of specialty stuff they have to do in the app, I could see how it could be a nightmare to deal with the variety of variants of Android out there. If you stay inside Android's main APIs it isn't too bad, but with the USB drivers they are using, I'm sure it must end up being some pretty specialty stuff.

 

[AJ Henderson]

The antennas should be parallel to each other for best performance, though at the short distances you mentioned it probably didn't matter too much in this particular case.

I'll give that a shot tonight. I'm going to a park outside 5 miles from any nearby airports so that I can go out a bit further. My testing last night was constrained to below tree tops on a small field (made even smaller by the presence of a bunch of easily distractible elementary school soccer players on one side of the field) so my options were limited and I was focused more on learning/maintaining control of the drone and steering clear of issues rather than focusing on testing out more complicated features.

 

[Wolfiesden]

Fair enough. I wonder if they develop against AOSP builds. (AOSP being the main android open source project that all of the other Android builds are based off of.) The Moto G5 Plus is very close to pure AOSP, so that might explain the difference. The Galaxy S8 on the other hand bears almost no resemblance to AOSP and has been heavily modified by Samsung. Certainly for the level of specialty stuff they have to do in the app, I could see how it could be a nightmare to deal with the variety of variants of Android out there. If you stay inside Android's main APIs it isn't too bad, but with the USB drivers they are using, I'm sure it must end up being some pretty specialty stuff.

Well, to counter that, my 10k flight was done on a Samsung S5 (wasn't rooted at the time, is now).

I will say that the early versions of GO ran like crapacola on it. I fly only Litchi and its 100% solid as a rock on the S5 and nVidia Shield. Never crashed, not once.

 

[HWCM]

I am guessing you have a bad antenna connection inside the remote. I had a similar issue once. No image after a few feet.

 

[AJ Henderson]

It seems to be working pretty well after straightening the antenna to be parallel with each other, turning off wifi on my phone and pointing it perpendicular to the drone. I was able to fly out to about 2000 ft away without issue.

 

[Elbert Hill]

I just picked up a Phantom 3 Pro from a friend because it had the bad USB board issue in the remote. Replaced with a new HDMI module and all seems to be mostly well. I took it out today using my Moto G5 Plus. I had great signal strength for control, but the image was super unreliable. I was getting fairly regular drop outs of video signal even when the drone was sitting on the ground 2-3 feet away.

Any ideas what could be causing this? All the available channels were extremely spikey and dropped out completely every few seconds. Could it be some setting on my phone that is causing interference? Something else environmental? It was a little bit better on the field, but it was still cutting out regularly at less than 12 feet.

 

[Elbert Hill]

I was just having the same problem with the live video feed dropping out. Sometimes, before I even took off, and others during flight. It started just once ion awhile, then it became a regular thing. I racked my brain trying to figure out what it was, but everything I tried failed.

So I finally dig out my other "backup" P3P, and it did the same thing, and it was flying perfectly the last time I flew it. So that narrowed it down to thew controller. I noticed my antennas were sort of loose, so I ordered another set, havn'e received them yet.

HOWEVER.........I finally fixed it. It was the DJIO Go app on my Samsung Tab 4 that I guess got corrupted or something. I uninstalled and then reinstalled ther DJI Go app, and voila, no more drop outs.

It turned out to be such a simple fix, I still can't believe it. So that's what I would suggest.

But I'm not too sure, somebody mentioned a new DJI Go app is just released. It was just 3 or 4 days ago I downloaded the 3.1.11 version I think it was. But everytime DJI releases something, it scares to holy bejeebers out of me to even think about downloading it.

Good luck AJ