DJI reasoning behind new speed restrictions

[Joel_t]

Have been in contact with DJI lately about these stupid new speed restrictions with 3.04 and this is their response in regards to why they have done it.

"Because many user flying in high speed when running out of battery, which cause the phantom crash and claim phantom's fault. Please kindly understand us.

Thank you."

This has to be the worst company I have dealt with in regards to customer support and decision making.

Everyone is just downgrading to 1.08 which is removing all those other safety features they have been implementing over the past year.

Terrible decision with terrible excuse.

 

[Alib]

whats the speed difference between 1.08 and 3.04?

 

[Joel_t]

Max tilt angle on 1.08 was:

GPS - 25 degrees
ATTI - 35 degree

Now in 3.04 it is

GPS - 15 degrees
ATTI - 25 degrees

It makes a big difference to overall top speed

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Ive always kept up to date with firmware updates but this slow descent is awful and to be honest waypoints are as useful as tits on a bull so today its time for me to downgrade

 

[GMANNZ]

Have never moved from 2.00 ...... but seems may have too if I want the magnetic issues sorted, if they ever get that done .... but must say with all the weirdness in flying and lack any other need to upgrade has helped with the holding and correction skills

 

[DKDarkness]

I saw this video of a guy taking his DJI (550) to 3000ft (really stupid) and not being able to bring it down again because of strong winds at that altitude. The quad tried to maintain its GPS position but in doing so had to run rotors at full throttle, therefore not being able to decent. The less angle it can work with, the more lift it has to generate to maintain its position. It didn't come down until the batteries were depleted...
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxdeRx2fLA[/youtube]

 

[pyrophantom]

Sorry but what a stupid thing to do in a built up area !!!

 

[macheung]

Running out of batteries? That gotta be one of the worst reasons I can think of...
Reducing tilt increase the chance of battery expiration because it needs to fly for far longer if you need to fight a headwind to get back. I can accept a reason of something like people are overloading the phantom 2 so we have to reduce tilt to provide more lift for maneuvering margin, but then again many of us do not overload our crafts.

DJI, just make max tilt and descend speed configurable. Stop locking things down.

 

[kitari]

I'm still running 2.2, guess I should stick with that version. Is there any big differences between my version and 1.08? Haven't really played around with it other than to activate IOC and set the bottom atti mode to RTH.

 

[ProfessorStein]

You obviously haven't a clue as to product liability issues. DJI *HAS* to cover their butt. If you go out and hurt someone/something with a Phantom, you could theoretically claim that it was DJIs fault because they didn't build in safety measures like speed and performance limits. Now, either you're on the latest firmware, or you take the responsibility of flying yourself... taking them out of the liability discussion. That's just smart business sense. Not a "terrible decision".

Besides... why in the hell do you have to fly a Phantom faster than 3.04 will let you?? Seems plenty fast to me. Whatever.

And waypoints have been very useful to me, actually, Mal. Use em all the time. But then I'm actually using the Phantom for the purpose it (and waypointing) was designed... aerial photography. Far from tits on a bull... but that could be fun, too.

 

[ianwood]

If you don't like the restrictions, use manual mode. They are there for stability and DJI felt it necessary to keep the Phantom in a tighter performance envelop to maintain that stability. The knucklehead who got stuck in the clouds could have used manual mode to do a rapid descent and then recover into ATTI at a safe altitude. He also could have not flown to 3,000ft in the first place. Stupid.

 

[Joel_t]

You obviously haven't a clue as to product liability issues. DJI *HAS* to cover their butt. If you go out and hurt someone/something with a Phantom, you could theoretically claim that it was DJIs fault because they didn't build in safety measures like speed and performance limits. Now, either you're on the latest firmware, or you take the responsibility of flying yourself... taking them out of the liability discussion. That's just smart business sense. Not a "terrible decision".

Besides... why in the hell do you have to fly a Phantom faster than 3.04 will let you?? Seems plenty fast to me. Whatever.

And waypoints have been very useful to me, actually, Mal. Use em all the time. But then I'm actually using the Phantom for the purpose it (and waypointing) was designed... aerial photography. Far from tits on a bull... but that could be fun, too.

I have to strongly disagree with this comment.

Firstly I bought the Phantom for filming wake boarding and other fairly high speed sports and after I did all my research I came to the conclusion that the Phantom was perfect for what I needed to do. Now with this new update I am unable to keep up with the subjects I'm trying to film. Meaning I have had to revert back to 1.08 as this is the only downgrade option from 3.04. They have removed the ability to just go back one firmware update. So now I am flying with none of the safety feature added between 1.08 and 3.04 (which apart from the speed restrictions I would actually like). What makes you think you are using it how it was supposed to be used? Where does it say you can't go fast while filming? Aerial photography doesn't have to just be slow moving.

And slower is not always going to be safer. What happens when you're up in the air and the wind starts to pick up to the point where you no longer have the speed to come back upwind and land. Your Phantom floats off down wind and lands on someone. That is just one reason why you might like to have some extra speed up your sleeve, even though you hopefully will never be in that situation. Just cause it can go fast doesn't mean everyone is flying around at top speed all the time anyway.

And the part about covering their butt is crap. Everyone still has the ability to flick into manual and go stupid with these things with little to no control. At least giving people enough speed in GPS and ATTI will keep most people in control.

If you don't like the restrictions, use manual mode. They are there for stability and DJI felt it necessary to keep the Phantom in a tighter performance envelop to maintain that stability. The knucklehead who got stuck in the clouds could have used manual mode to do a rapid descent and then recover into ATTI at a safe altitude. He also could have not flown to 3,000ft in the first place. Stupid.

I prefer the safety and ease of flying in GPS and ATTI mode so would much prefer to be able to stay in those modes. I don't want to have to go into manual just to get the performance I initially paid for. Also I will not defend that guy at 3000ft. That is not why I want the old speeds back.

 

[DKDarkness]

Its not about going to 3000ft and losing control. It is about not being able to bring back your bird safely.

Say you take off at a safe distance from a residential area (to take some nice landscape photography?), and suddenly the winds pick up dramatically (despite what the weather forecast said - you checked before takeoff), and blows your bird directly in the direction of a kindergarden! Where there is openheart surgery going on. On Jesus! You can't bring your bird home, or even down, because the rotors are working full time to maintain or trying to maintain their GPS lock, and only are able to tilt your bird 15%. Say bye bye to baby Jesus :-(

*) Note: Not the rumored biblical Jesus, Jesus Martinez from down the block, of course. Poor kid.

 

[Joel_t]

Its not about going to 3000ft and losing control. It is about not being able to bring back your bird safely.

Say you take off at a safe distance from a residential area (to take some nice landscape photography?), and suddenly the winds pick up dramatically (despite what the weather forecast said - you checked before takeoff), and blows your bird directly in the direction of a kindergarden! Where there is openheart surgery going on. On Jesus! You can't bring your bird home, or even down, because the rotors are working full time to maintain or trying to maintain their GPS lock, and only are able to tilt your bird 15%. Say bye bye to baby Jesus :-(

*) Note: Not the rumored biblical Jesus, Jesus Martinez from down the block, of course. Poor kid.

Totally agree with you!

 

[dkatz42]

The quad tried to maintain its GPS position but in doing so had to run rotors at full throttle, therefore not being able to decent. The less angle it can work with, the more lift it has to generate to maintain its position.

From a physics point of view, this doesn't make any sense. All it takes to descend is less power to all motors, all other things being equal. It should be possible to hold position in higher winds while descending, since less thrust is required for altitude.

Of course, this isn't to say that the software does this properly...

 

[QYV]

they already had a speed restriction so you can't claim they "didn't have built in a safety measure" they're just changing the limits to ridiculous levels, putting restrictions on those of us that don't need them.

I personally am much more annoyed at the descent limit than the lateral limit, although to answer ProfStein's question having to fight wind is a valid answer for why one could need more speed. And now the fact that the motors have to work harder since the speed is further restricted helps explain why I'm getting less flight time on 3.04.

I also was hoping to make cool videos such as chasing cars around a track so the more they restrict the speed, the less I'm able to keep up. lame. I don't think I should have to go to full manual mode which I'm absolutely not comfortable with just to get the performance I want (and used to have).
What if a storm approaches or anything happens and I need to get back quickly? What if I need to dodge something? what if say, a police helicopter shows up and I need to get out of the area and/or descend quickly?

I'm fine if they want to make things like the lower lateral or descent speeds as a default for the out-of-the-boxers but they really should make some of these things user-configurable settings. Why are height and lateral distance user-configurable settings but not the descent rate?
it's just illogical and annoying

If people are flying too fast, crashing their birds and claiming it was DJI's fault then deny the fing claim, simple.

 

[Joel_t]

Agreed QYV,

I think the idea that it was restricted to prevent lawsuits against DJI is just stupidity. I've got DJI offering to remotely log in to my computer and downgrade my Phantom back to 1.08 so how can they be afraid of people going too fast if they are still offering both manual mode and downgrading to earlier firmware?

I'm imagining on 3.05 we'll lose the ability to be able to fly anymore. It's much safer :roll:

 

[Joel_t]

UPDATE:

Made a complaint to DJI about new speeds and that I think speeds should be returned to normal in the next update and got this reply:

Thanks for your advice.
I will forward your opinion to the Product Manager. There are other users also complaining about this issue.

It's good to know if enough of us complain about this issue that something might actually get done to fix it. Not holding my breath due to a lack of faith in DJI but would be great to see the old speeds reintroduced with new firmware.

 

[witold]

I saw this video of a guy taking his DJI (550) to 3000ft (really stupid) and not being able to bring it down again because of strong winds at that altitude. The quad tried to maintain its GPS position but in doing so had to run rotors at full throttle, therefore not being able to decent. The less angle it can work with, the more lift it has to generate to maintain its position. It didn't come down until the batteries were depleted...
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfxdeRx2fLA[/youtube]

You have a fundamental misunderstanding in how Failsafe mode works. In Failsafe, you do not descent at all and you do not go directly to your home point. Instead, the quad flies up to 20-ish meters - or stays at altitude if it's already high up - and first goes back above home point. Once it is above home point, it actually starts to descend.

Did you have OSD data to back up your impression that you are not descending? When you're that high up with no reference points around you, it is hard to tell visually if you're going up or down and at what speed.

 

[MStacey]

If you don't like the restrictions, use manual mode. They are there for stability and DJI felt it necessary to keep the Phantom in a tighter performance envelop to maintain that stability. The knucklehead who got stuck in the clouds could have used manual mode to do a rapid descent and then recover into ATTI at a safe altitude. He also could have not flown to 3,000ft in the first place. Stupid.

Introducing the reduced tilt angles thus reducing the maximum speed has for me,like a number of others ,restricted my use and enjoyment of the phantom. Marketing emphasis is placed on both the GPS and Atti modes available on the Phantom to aid in making the quad easy to fly and works just great. However the arbituary reduction in speed is not, A programable tilt angle much like we have a programable geofence would have IMO been a much better option.

The reduced tilt angle in GPS and Atti mode prevents me from getting the moving shots that were previously possible, following a steam train at speed, jet skiers, wake boarders etc. Additionally if using the ground station and flying a mission you can not fly in manual mode thus again your speed is limited and this in turn reduces the area you can cover within the safe margins of the battery.

Good integration of the GS with the P2 on DJI's part ?
Unfortunately In the ground station it is still possible to plan and set a mission with a max speed of 25m/s but the P2 WILL NOT fly at this speed even in no wind conditions thus the estimated time for mission completion is also out. Consequently it is possible for you to plan a mission which according to GS is feasible within your battery flight time BUT when you send the P2 off because it does not actually fly at the 25m/s anymore you can run out of battery before the mission is complete. A novice GS may be led into a false sense of security by the information presented by the GS and end up loosing a Phantom.

Yes I can fly in manual mode but in doing so you need to concentrate an awful lot more on the keeping the quad in stable flight and so have considerably less time for getting the shot you wanted. I would also guess that many who have enabled Naza mode also have the 3rd position of the switch set to failsafe and NOT Manual.

My tuppence worth if the tilt angle is to remain at the reduced levels in Phantom Mode then at least make it configurable in Naza Mode.