DJI GO app disconnected but aircraft still flying

[coder2012]

I've been happily flying my Phantom 3 standard for about 10 months now without any issues. I'm a very cautious pilot but today I have become concerned.

Taking off with battery at 98% and a controller showing 3 green leds, perfect weather conditions everything was looking great. I flew around an area I'm familiar with which had previously offered little in terms of interference. After about 17mins in the air, the DJI GO app on my Android Samsung Galaxy S6 disconnects and everything shows as grey.

The aircraft is around 100m - 150m away about 90m alt. I'm waiting for it to return thinking it must have lost signal but I could see it hovering for maybe 5 seconds or more. Fortunately as I can see it, I manage to orient it toward the home point and bring it home safely.

I'm guessing it didn't initiate a RTH as it had a signal. I have a few questions:

1. Any idea why the app remained disconnected even when the craft was brought home?
2. Should I have attempted a RTH using the controller hardware switch?
3. What steps could I take to solve this problem?

My flight log states:

Last Known Location: 51.680526,-0.537736
at log time of 17m 01s
and altitude of 312.7 ft

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

Thank you

coder2012

 

[FlyGary]

This sounds very similar to what happened to me. Except I was on a P4, iPad and Go App 4.

Odd thing happened this afternoon

 

[tcope]

You did not lose the connection with the P3. The controller was still connected to and controlling the P3. So RTH was not started. Your app simply stopped working.

You could have initiated the RTH, it's up to you. Personally, I would have just shut down the app and started it up again. It will most likely reconnect and you are good to go.

If the app does not continue to stop working, I'd not worry about it. If it happens a few times I'd delete the app and reinstall.

 

[kndll]

my app disconnected today , continued to fly , reconnected on it's own , about 30 m away 25 m up , checked my flight logs later , when it reconnected it connected as an INSPIRE 1 , I now have P3S and INSPIRE 1 listed as AC !

 

[SoCalDude]

You don't need the app to fly. All you need is a RC-to-aircraft connection. You were in control the whole time.

 

[ChiefStealth]

Good reason to always know how your AC is oriented. If you lose connection to your smartphone/tablet, you still need to know which direction the AC is pointed. That way you can still fly your AC back to you without the map screen.

 

[coder2012]

Thank you so much for your replies. This gives me confidence that the hardware did not fail, and that the app or the OS was at fault.

As ChiefStealth pointed out, always good to remember the orientation of the craft.

I'm going to reinstall the app and ensure that the phone had been restarted with nothing else running in future.

 

[RodPad]

@coder2012

Lost signal (but not really)
Best Method to RTH?
Lost Signal, P3S Hovered Instead of RTH

I have many more....

Rod

 

[coder2012]

@coder2012

Lost signal (but not really)
Best Method to RTH?
Lost Signal, P3S Hovered Instead of RTH

I have many more....

Rod

Thank you very much

 

[Sebj92800]

Same phenomenon for me P4P iphone 6S video disconnected bird hovering unplug replug cable between RC and iPhone to get signal back.
I need to mention that I am using 3rd party cable will try now with Apple cable.
Has anyone discovers the root cause of the problem?

 

[isuzupup88]

Just had the same thing happen to me yesterday. Bought a new phone and mid flight the app crashed. Had a nice or stroke when I realized the quad was just hovering and not returning to home. Quickly restarted app and manually flew it back. Going to do some more testing tomorrow in an open field to see if the new phone is the issue.

 

[DeuceWheelsQuadProps]

Same thing for me, my app crashes at least twice per flight. Thinking about switching to the Litchi app...

 

[WilliamM]

My Go app is acting up too, right after updating to the new version. 3.1.4 I'm thinking.

 

[Scoot88]

I also had my current version android DJi Go app stop for the first time. Fortunately I had the AC close by readying to land
Glad it was then and not when it was 200m away.

 

[solentlife]

At any reasonable distance orientation of bird is hard to tell .... so the universal answer is to flick S2 switch back and forth couple of times and RTH.
While its flying home - you can then concentrate on restarting the app.
If it doesn't reconnect - just wait till bird is close and then hit S1 to cancel RTH and fly yourself to a nice landing.

Nigel

 

[reversevector]

I've had both DJI Go and Litchi crash and disconnect on Android. No big deal, just start the app again and the connection will resume. It freaked me out when I got a disconnect when the bird was a mile away but running the app re-established the connection.

Just don't ever, ever, turn off the remote control when that happens.

 

[Sebj92800]

Guys, thanks for your posts and answers about how to get in RTH. In my case it was in sight view so no panic, my point I tried the bird with the same config same place all afternoon and same issue after few seconds of flights or max 1 min. No internet interferences in the vicinity and I tried both freq from the P4Pro. RTH is a well known procedure but my point is how to avoid this occurs again??!! I want to shoot my video peacefully without having emergency procedure each minute.
Anybody knows about the root cause?
DJI GO 4 app updated yesterday on my iPhone will try with this new version AND a real Apple cable.

 

[bsartist]

I've had both DJI Go and Litchi crash and disconnect on Android. No big deal, just start the app again and the connection will resume. It freaked me out when I got a disconnect when the bird was a mile away but running the app re-established the connection.

Just don't ever, ever, turn off the remote control when that happens.

Just curious. Why never ever turn off the remote?

I've had this happen to me and restarting the app and restarting the wifi didn't get the app reconnected. Turning the RC off and back on did the trick. Of course that initiates RTH

 

[reversevector]

Just curious. Why never ever turn off the remote?

I've had this happen to me and restarting the app and restarting the wifi didn't get the app reconnected. Turning the RC off and back on did the trick. Of course that initiates RTH

I did it once and the bird initiated RTH and tried landing... In a ditch. Luckily the remote connected with the aircraft before it tried becoming a boat.

The GPS on the P3S can be off between one to five meters so I always do a manual landing unless I'm in a wide area with no obstacles.

 

[bsartist]

I did it once and the bird initiated RTH and tried landing... In a ditch. Luckily the remote connected with the aircraft before it tried becoming a boat.

The GPS on the P3S can be off between one to five meters so I always do a manual landing unless I'm in a wide area with no obstacles.

Ah yes. Quite agree. I was assuming the bird would be far enough away that the controller would come back on in time to take control back.

I always land manually too. And usually hand catch.