That was weird - App crashed, drone landed

[Mike Gibby]

I was hovering at about 15 feet, filming cyclists at the end of an event, when I got a message on my Samsung phone screen, 'App crashed' or a message to that effect. - and yes, the app had crashed, and the phone showed its home screen.

First, I've never had that happen before, but the weird thing was, the P4 still responded to stick movements and I was able to make a controlled landing. Anyone experienced anything like that before, or suggest an explanation?

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

P3A/P , Yes a couple of times. Just reopened app and continued on. Unsettling, but happens.

 

[Mike Gibby]

Unsettling is the right word ! - I was down around 40% battery and near to people which made things 'interesting', but the weird part was it continued to respond to stick movements.

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

One thing I do is kill all other apps to free up cpu/memory. And disable all unneeded apps. That helps alot. I've rooted my Nvidia shield to take full control of it dedicating it's operations to only function as the Phantoms boss.

 

[Ixlr8]

I don't think you need the app to fly, the lites flashing and patterns will help.

 

[Mike Gibby]

One thing I do is kill all other apps to free up cpu/memory. And disable all unneeded apps. That helps alot. I've rooted my Nvidia shield to take full control of it dedicating it's operations to only function as the Phantoms boss.

Thanks for the tip. I only use that phone for flying, but I'll see what I can do to 'strip it down' of other apps, etc.

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

If you don't want to root it, just use a good task killer and try to uninstall/disable what you don't need.

 

[With The Birds]

I was hovering at about 15 feet, filming cyclists at the end of an event, when I got a message on my Samsung phone screen, 'App crashed' or a message to that effect. - and yes, the app had crashed, and the phone showed its home screen.

First, I've never had that happen before, but the weird thing was, the P4 still responded to stick movements and I was able to make a controlled landing. Anyone experienced anything like that before, or suggest an explanation?

You can fly the AC with no app- control commands will all work normally. There really is nothing strange about this scenario, one thing that might help you is that RTH will still function with no app running, this could be your only chance of recovery if by chance the app crashed where you didn’t have LOS of the AC.

 

[Mike Gibby]

You can fly the AC with no app- control commands will all work normally. There really is nothing strange about this scenario, one thing that might help you is that RTH will still function with no app running, this could be your only chance of recovery if by chance the app crashed where you didn’t have LOS of the AC.

Many thanks, that is very reassuring

 

[ArgenBrewer]

You can fly the AC with no app- control commands will all work normally. There really is nothing strange about this scenario, one thing that might help you is that RTH will still function with no app running, this could be your only chance of recovery if by chance the app crashed where you didn’t have LOS of the AC.

his only limitation is that he will not be able to film or take pictures

 

[BigAl07]

As noted above the AP isn't' where you get "Control" of the aircraft. You can take your phone/tablet off the transmitter and toss it in the lake and it won't affect being able to control the aircraft. The App (and display device) just enhance your capabilities and allow you to tweak certain aspects of flying the aircraft but even when the app/display die (if nothing else is going wrong) you still have full control of the aircraft in terms of flying.

@ArgenBrewer you can still take pictures and video w/o the Ap but you will have no way to "Frame" them as you are now flying blind or really flying by eyesight as opposed to the Ap. So long as they still put the "shutter/record" buttons physically on the Transmitter and not just "virtual" in the App we can still activate the camera to some degree.

When we teach operators how to fly one of the things we often do is walk up to them, while they are flying, and turn the tablet OFF and have them orient and fly the aircraft back and LAND IT without the device. This teaches them what to do when (not IF) the display goes black or the app crashes suddenly. This way the first time it happens it's in a controlled and comfortable environment and not about a bunch of spectators etc.