Hi all, I just took my P4P+ to New Zealand and captured some awesome scenery in both still images and video.
I had a couple incidents that scared the crap out of me though, because I almost had a fly-away both times. I'm asking to see what I did wrong, or maybe I have a defective unit...
In both cases, I powered on the drone and the remote control, I waited until there was GPS mode before taking off. I calibrated compass every time the controller requested that I do so.
What happened is this: I was flying around pretty conservatively and taking pictures and video, I'm into the drone thing because of the images and not for the "Let me see how far I can fly this thing before I lose it" thing. Anyway, I'm just doing my thing in the middle of nowhere (ie, not a single interference source anywhere near, I'm next to a lake or in the mountains). Next thing I know, GPS mode gets turned off and goes back to "Visual", and then I lose video connection. I cannot seem to get video connection back (does the P4P retry to establish connection? Is there a way to force it to?). Both times I still had RC control, so I eyeballed it back to land. Once it really scared the crap out of me because it was very windy next to a lake, and was a couple hundred feet up in the air when it happened, and I could not find nor hear the drone, so I had to fly randomly until I spotted it in order to land it manually. I was pretty sure I had lost the drone because right after it lost GPS signal, the strong wind pushed it really fast and a couple sends later I lost video feed.
What scares me is that I was in the least interference area I could imagine, and it really drains my confidence when I lose GPS signal completely flying a couple hundred feet up in unobstructed air. Making my suspicions of hardware problems even worse is that the drone seemed to start working again (GPS + video feed) after a power off cycle.
I did notice that my drone reverted settings (ie, all the shots went back to JPG instead of RAW, etc) when this happened the second time.
I've lost video connection several more times (without losing GPS), but the feed does get restored after a couple seconds. This happens when I have the drone sometimes in front of me, maybe 30 feet away at most, with the RC antennas lined up perpendicular to the drone (Facing the drone in parallel, NOT pointed at the drone), so in theory I think I should not be having any lost video feed, especially when the drone is flying right in front of me.
I'm a drone newbie, so am I breaking some sort of rule and I neglected to do something that caused these problems? There are some pretty cool shots I could be taking with the P4P+, but if I'll need to always be able to eyeball the drone back to me, I'll have to continue to not take risks, which will make the pictures really boring :-(.
Thanks!
I had a couple incidents that scared the crap out of me though, because I almost had a fly-away both times. I'm asking to see what I did wrong, or maybe I have a defective unit...
In both cases, I powered on the drone and the remote control, I waited until there was GPS mode before taking off. I calibrated compass every time the controller requested that I do so.
What happened is this: I was flying around pretty conservatively and taking pictures and video, I'm into the drone thing because of the images and not for the "Let me see how far I can fly this thing before I lose it" thing. Anyway, I'm just doing my thing in the middle of nowhere (ie, not a single interference source anywhere near, I'm next to a lake or in the mountains). Next thing I know, GPS mode gets turned off and goes back to "Visual", and then I lose video connection. I cannot seem to get video connection back (does the P4P retry to establish connection? Is there a way to force it to?). Both times I still had RC control, so I eyeballed it back to land. Once it really scared the crap out of me because it was very windy next to a lake, and was a couple hundred feet up in the air when it happened, and I could not find nor hear the drone, so I had to fly randomly until I spotted it in order to land it manually. I was pretty sure I had lost the drone because right after it lost GPS signal, the strong wind pushed it really fast and a couple sends later I lost video feed.
What scares me is that I was in the least interference area I could imagine, and it really drains my confidence when I lose GPS signal completely flying a couple hundred feet up in unobstructed air. Making my suspicions of hardware problems even worse is that the drone seemed to start working again (GPS + video feed) after a power off cycle.
I did notice that my drone reverted settings (ie, all the shots went back to JPG instead of RAW, etc) when this happened the second time.
I've lost video connection several more times (without losing GPS), but the feed does get restored after a couple seconds. This happens when I have the drone sometimes in front of me, maybe 30 feet away at most, with the RC antennas lined up perpendicular to the drone (Facing the drone in parallel, NOT pointed at the drone), so in theory I think I should not be having any lost video feed, especially when the drone is flying right in front of me.
I'm a drone newbie, so am I breaking some sort of rule and I neglected to do something that caused these problems? There are some pretty cool shots I could be taking with the P4P+, but if I'll need to always be able to eyeball the drone back to me, I'll have to continue to not take risks, which will make the pictures really boring :-(.
Thanks!