Working out when drone can lock up and how to avoid it...
So I posted this post when my drone, dronelink and dji fly all locked up and I could only regain control by restarting my controller..
So today when I was testing this manual 360 pano program (only rises 2m and drone spins around to let me know to pause plan and go in and change exposure to suit the day then carries on and does a 360 pano up to 19 degrees gimbal movement)
https://app.dronelink.com/andrew-busst/public/plan/wr3Jrf8LAPDyCvfiFBaH
So initially I did this and managed to lock everything up again (all on a dedicated Samsung S9 very few other programs loaded)
* Start up DJI Fly
* If you get the local USB connect message select DJI Fly and once only
* Clear my local airport restriction and calibrate compass if required (don't touch sticks)
* Turned on Dronelink (this is only the second time I have done this with both on)
* Proceeded to run the plan
* When the drone started to rotate I paused and set a manual shutter speed (exposure)
* The plan proceeded and after about 5 shots locked up
* Luckily this time I was only two metres above ground and grass was under the drone
* I was able to hold down RTH and the drone just landed where it was but sticks were locked.
So I then repeated the mission as follows...
* Start up DJI Fly
* If you get the local USB connect message select DJI Fly and once only
* Clear my local airport restriction and calibrate compass if required (don't touch sticks)
* Turned off DJI Fly (that was the last time I touched it)
* Turned on Dronelink
* If you get the local USB connect message select Dronelink once only
* Proceeded to run the plan
* When the drone started to rotate I paused and set a manual shutter speed (exposure)
* The plan proceeded to completion
* Mission Completed - Hit dismiss
* Then used the sticks to hand land.
* Repeated two more times and was fine.
Lesson learnt...
* At no time have both DJI Fly and Dronelink operating at the same time.
* After flight has started don't turn one off then the other on (trouble is you'll probably have problems connecting anyway)
* Those USB messages prompting to select DJI Fly or Dronelink seem to be important and necessary to connect to the drone.
* My main reason for going between apps is I needed to set exposure for a manual 360 pano as dronelink on the android version for Mini doesn't have a Histogram or Overexposure warning. I have resigned to just going by eye until one or both are available. Manual exposure panos are less likely to have banding.
* ONLY start with DJI Fly to check airport clearance and compass caibration, DON'T touch the sticks, don't takeoff, then turn it off and leave it off for the whole of Dronelink plan flight.
I repeated the above several times with no lock ups so hopefully that is the end of it.
Comments
4 comments
Thanks for the instructions!
Thanks Andrew. This is what I have done almost from the very beginning (= use only one drone SW opened simultaneously).
It just feels instinctively natural that the more SW you have opened to do the same stuff, the more problems you are bound to see. For some reason I don't succeed all of the times to connect the DroneLink to the drone. Then I close the DroneLink and open DJI FLY and waith that the drone has been connected. Then I close DJI FLY and now the DroneLink connects fine. It seems opening DJI FLY initializes something essential what DroneLink sometimes fail to do.
Andrew -
An excellent write-up.
I fly mainly with my IOS devices and don't seem to have those problems when I bounce back and forth between DJI GO or DJI FLY and Dronelink.
If you're inclined, that would be a great quick video to make - would be happy to post it to the site.
I'm not really into the video scene (mainly stills) but when I really understand this behaviour I will look at it.
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