Phantom Pilot App for Android really that bad?
- Thread starter King Luff
- Start date
One thing fixed all my Android lag/stutter and most Pilot app crashes, and I saw no mention of it in any of the 150+ posts in this thread, although it is discussed elsewhere in this forum because that's where I read about it:
By default, when the P3 is recording video, it streams the full-res. video to the tablet where it is stored as video files - the same as the video files being written to the Micro SD card. Having this on is a huge amount of unnecessary overhead for the tablet to deal with during flight. It was often pretty bad on my P3A - I can only imagine the pain with 4k video streaming mid-flight from a P3P!
With the flip of a setting in the Pilot App, the clouds parted and angels sang (I think it was a Lynrd Skynrd song), and they've been singin' ever since. ("He means, like no more tablet problems.. duh"). With the streaming disabled the 720p FPV is near-perfect. Even the app's controls and menu choices seem more responsive and disconnects less often.
The only other difference with streaming off is that when you get home, you just download the video files from the p3 to your computer Instead of from the tablet (I was doing that anyway, not realizing there was a copy on the tablet!). Oh, and I always use the USB port to access the micro SD data and never remove the micro SD Card, as Dji has warned of SDCard connector problems.
It might be argued that, in a flyaway situation, the video files from streaming to the tablet might help to locate a lost bird. That assumes the tablet would continue to receive the vid. stream during a flyaway right up to the crash, which seems iffy to me at-best, and certainly not a good enough reason to suffer with crappy stuttering FPV video.
I've been able to try a range of different 'droid devices and a few iOS tablets, and the sweet-spot for me is the Samsung Galaxy Pro 8.4
It is the perfect size - 'plenty big and bright without being unsteady in the controller mount. It's running 4.4.2 and thankfully had very little of the "value-added' crapware that Samsung usually adds, and it is FAST, fairly cheap, and has the coveted HDMI-out that I will play with some day. My only complaint is a short battery life, and it takes a long time to charge. I fall back on my s6 Edge phone in a pinch, which also works amazingly well.
IOS may handle the streaming a bit better, but I swear, with the streaming off the only difference I see between an iPad2 and the Galaxy Pro 8.4 each running Pilot is the missing flight simulator on 'droid. Both have great FPV with streaming-off for me, and FPV is mostly unusable and embarrassing with it on. (Note that this is with the Pilot app -- I have not used the new Go app yet, so all this may no longer apply -- but I'm sure one of the forum's d. trumps will set me straight. 'cause I'm a big dummy)
Also, I know it's probably not always practical for everyone, but I would strongly suggest dedicating a tablet to your P3, especially if a 'droid. The apps most people install for general purpose tableting and connectivity shall not reside on my "flyboy" tablet. Android apps are not as inherently well-behaved as iOS apps, and some are atrocious under the hood ("He means like really bad coding...duh").
Ok, that's enuf. Sorry for another too-long post. But there is some info here I wish I had read somewhere on day-one, so I hope it is helpful to somebody whose had the tenacity to read this far.
Also, it's really hard to be brief when commenting in a thread with 150+ posts. 'Just sayin'
Cheers
By default, when the P3 is recording video, it streams the full-res. video to the tablet where it is stored as video files - the same as the video files being written to the Micro SD card. Having this on is a huge amount of unnecessary overhead for the tablet to deal with during flight. It was often pretty bad on my P3A - I can only imagine the pain with 4k video streaming mid-flight from a P3P!
With the flip of a setting in the Pilot App, the clouds parted and angels sang (I think it was a Lynrd Skynrd song), and they've been singin' ever since. ("He means, like no more tablet problems.. duh"). With the streaming disabled the 720p FPV is near-perfect. Even the app's controls and menu choices seem more responsive and disconnects less often.
The only other difference with streaming off is that when you get home, you just download the video files from the p3 to your computer Instead of from the tablet (I was doing that anyway, not realizing there was a copy on the tablet!). Oh, and I always use the USB port to access the micro SD data and never remove the micro SD Card, as Dji has warned of SDCard connector problems.
It might be argued that, in a flyaway situation, the video files from streaming to the tablet might help to locate a lost bird. That assumes the tablet would continue to receive the vid. stream during a flyaway right up to the crash, which seems iffy to me at-best, and certainly not a good enough reason to suffer with crappy stuttering FPV video.
I've been able to try a range of different 'droid devices and a few iOS tablets, and the sweet-spot for me is the Samsung Galaxy Pro 8.4
It is the perfect size - 'plenty big and bright without being unsteady in the controller mount. It's running 4.4.2 and thankfully had very little of the "value-added' crapware that Samsung usually adds, and it is FAST, fairly cheap, and has the coveted HDMI-out that I will play with some day. My only complaint is a short battery life, and it takes a long time to charge. I fall back on my s6 Edge phone in a pinch, which also works amazingly well.
IOS may handle the streaming a bit better, but I swear, with the streaming off the only difference I see between an iPad2 and the Galaxy Pro 8.4 each running Pilot is the missing flight simulator on 'droid. Both have great FPV with streaming-off for me, and FPV is mostly unusable and embarrassing with it on. (Note that this is with the Pilot app -- I have not used the new Go app yet, so all this may no longer apply -- but I'm sure one of the forum's d. trumps will set me straight. 'cause I'm a big dummy)
Also, I know it's probably not always practical for everyone, but I would strongly suggest dedicating a tablet to your P3, especially if a 'droid. The apps most people install for general purpose tableting and connectivity shall not reside on my "flyboy" tablet. Android apps are not as inherently well-behaved as iOS apps, and some are atrocious under the hood ("He means like really bad coding...duh").
Ok, that's enuf. Sorry for another too-long post. But there is some info here I wish I had read somewhere on day-one, so I hope it is helpful to somebody whose had the tenacity to read this far.
Also, it's really hard to be brief when commenting in a thread with 150+ posts. 'Just sayin'
Cheers
It streams a compressed, down scaled version of whatever you're recording. The technology is not capable of handling a full res stream.
For anyone that wants to disable the feature, it's called caching in the app.
Been there...done that...hasn't helped. It was one of the first things people mention.
I'm in the Litchi beta app program now and guess what...SMOOTHER VIDEO FEED on the same hardware that lags horrible when i use the default DJI pilot app.
\
So this only reinforces my statement that this is a DJI issue and they suck at programming.
I see they just released the new GO app this morning...i'll try that out shortly.
You must have your tablet models mixed up. Samsung Galaxy Pro 8.4 - the same tablet I have - does not have HDMI-out. It only has one plug: microUSB.
Since there is a lot of confusion about terminology, let me ask this: if you take off, stop, and then press the stick to yaw in one direction continuously, do you get smooth video on the tablet the whole time? Or does it stutter?
If you do not get stutter, please check what tablet you actually have...
Thanks I will review that point and guess I'd better turn it on again and generate some tablet vids to check their res. If I remember correctly, they had the same filenames as the SD versions, which also led me to believe they were the same as the SD card, but I didn't compare file size/content.
If the tablet versions are sampled down, I wonder what the purpose of this feature and why it would active by-default. The the term caching generally implies temporary fast storage of repeatedly requested data, but it sounds more like a low-res backup to me. But those inner-working questions are fodder for a new thread.
Bottom-line, disabling streaming/caching did wonders for me, and with it disabled, the 'droid Pilot works as well for me as the iOS version, and I was surprised it wasn't mentioned earlier. Maybe it is a well-known thing, but it was big news to me.
I look forward to trying the new Go app when I can muster the courage to update my current stable mix.
Ah, I stand corrected and was mixing up my tablet models. Every time I see a mention of HDMI-out my brain says "You have a tablet that can do that, check it out some day". This time my brain pulled a "Brian Williams" (or a "Bill O'Reilly" if you prefer), and said "Your favorite tablet for the P3 can do that, check it out some day".
The HDMI-out port I was thinking of is on my ASUS TF300T, not the 8.4. But the TF300T is slightly too large to fit in the standard Controller tablet mount, and is a bit slower than the Galaxy - but it is a great multi-purpose tablet, once unlocked and upgraded from its original ICS to Jellybean (thanks xda-developers!), and I will check out how the HDMI-out works from that one day.
Since I am apparently suffering from some short-term memory issues and my bird is temporarily out of commission with a broken gimbal yaw arm, I'll take this opportunity to shut up until I have my bird back in-hand and can better confirm the finer details if what I have to say before I commit it to a post.
Thanks for questioning/correcting my mistake and for not 'reaming me a new one in the process.
No biggie at all. It is easy to mix up all this stuff. Please do let us know when you get a chance to do the "yaw video stutter test."
XDA helped me root my Tab Pro 8.4 and it helped a TON. After rooting, I uninstalled and disabled what I could and the tablet is quite decent. But if I fly faster, turn faster, the video stutters. It is not that fun to fly. This is particularly annoying if I try to line up a shot. It's like working by feeling instead of seeing; I move the stick what I think will be enough to line things up, and then a short delay later I see if I was right.
I finally had the time to conduct the back-to-back flight tests i promised, comparing the Nexus 7 LTE against the just-relesed Asus ZenPad S 8.0. So as to not double-post the exact same thing, I will just provide the link to the original posting:
http://www.phantompilots.com/thread...-work-well-with-dji-go-dji-pilot.48525/page-7
http://www.phantompilots.com/thread...-work-well-with-dji-go-dji-pilot.48525/page-7
Similar threads
