Pilot App Shut Down - ANDROID - That was a scary 4-5mins!

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So - Had the DJI Pilot app throw an error message then close on me - and it wouldn't re-open.
The P3 was approximately 350-400m away from me in distance, way out of sight, at an altitude of about 75m when this occurred.

I knew I had set the RTH alt. to 100m - but wouldn't you know it, when I hit the RTH button, and waited.... and waited.... nothing... the sweet sound of the drone was not anywhere to be heard.

At this point, a million things are going through my mind, like "Balls, my wife was right... now I have to listen to her say 'I told you so' ... I think I'll just kill myself instead" and "I don't care if I have to fly there and take it with force, but DJI will be replacing this!", amongst other more explicit words that make up my vocabulary.

Whilst I am cursing the POS who wrote the DJI Pilot app software for Android, I was also attempting to restart the app... which was a fail... just wouldnt open.

So my only option was a re-boot of the tablet.

Re-Booted, opened app - and screen comes up... and I am wondering what is going to happen... will it connect? Will it have no link? I had no idea what to expect.

BOOM - there it was - video feed shows me that the drone was just sitting there - hovering, as if nothing had happened. No idea why the RTH button hadn't worked, but it was like I had just stopped putting control input in and it was hovering like it should have.

Stands to reason that the TX was still in connection and I am glad I didn't go doing anything silly like control inputs etc... but yeh... freakky..
 
Also, I didn't have the SD card in and was not recording the flight this time unfortunately. Regretting that now, I would love to watch what happened from the drones POV.
 
Guys:
It happen to me also, trying to press the button and nothing happen...
You must press it for about 2 seconds until get green.....i know it because i made a controlled experience with the drone near me....
About Android:

You must clean "Services Googles" of all updates, and return it to factory. Also uso "Plane Mode".
And if you use a phone, remove all protection until the battery is on sight. It helps to cool down the machine...

Happy flights!
 
Also define a good altitude for the return, depending on the surroudings.....
 
Pressing the button a second times cancels the RTH too, which may be what happened..
I expect it was quite confused... :rolleyes:

It's worth getting fully familiar with this feature rather than having a panic when the app or device has a problem - not that unusual.
You could also turn the TX off which will have the same effect, and reconnects easily enough when back in good visual range.
 
Mine did almost the exact same thing recently with a cheapo non approved android tablet. the controller was still functioning but I didn't know it because it was out of sight and in the panic I forgot about having to hold the RTH button at first, so I turned off the controller and my drone came home, I could control it on the landing of RTH just fine, but still hadn't rebooted my tablet, partially because I don't usually use android tablets and didn't really know how to reset an app. that never happened with my mini ipad.
 
Im using android and already 2 times the DJI Pilot App Crash when the P3 in the sky..

Just dont panic because you still can move the P3 using your RC

Next time learn how to fly without looking at the screen so you will usually fly withouy the screen

Try to relaunch the DJI Pilot App is also a good idea..the P3 will waiting for you
 
Thanks for the reply's everyone - I agree with what a number of you have said above re: the RTH button and how long I pressed it. In the panic, I didn't press and hold, I just punched it a few times in the moment. Funny thing is, I had seen the DJI Pilot App Crash threads in the last few days on here, but hadn't read them, rather naively skipping over them having not had ny major issues up until this point (except for having the video feed slowly deteriorate, which I put down to overheating of the tab), passing it off as a "hasn't happened to me, next thead!".

If I had read the threads about this issue, I would have been far less panicked - I'm usually pretty cool calm and collected when flying, even when it all goes pear shaped - I'm an ex-military real world pilot and these days I fly high end aerobatic aircraft privately when I have spare time available, so its fair to say that I push the limits of what this drone is capable of in terms of the distances I fly it completely FPV and the more challenging terrain that I am flying in/over... more on that in another thread, you guys are going to think I'm insane when you read it! hahaha!

So when I lost the drone yesterday, you wouldn't have known it from my calm outward appearance, but honestly, I was a combination of F#%king disappointed for my loss, ready to wage war on DJI or whoever was responsible for the problem that had occurred and as outlined above, going through the only steps I knew were available to me in order to attempt to recover - regardless of how futile I thought it might be.

In response to the last post above - the drone was well out of sight, you'll understand the extent of which in my "You're going to think I'm insnane" thread hahaha.

Having spent a good deal of the night last night reading through this issue more thoroughly, I am actually really surprised how well my cheap little lenovo tablet has been working for this, especially given the fact that its also my business/personal tab and up until last night, it was loaded with the full suite of bloatware and google resource hogging privacy stealing badness!

It seriously could not have been a worse candidate for a suitable tablet to use for this given the issue at hand - but I have to say, this thing might have some merit to it... it was $99 at JB-HIFi (Australia) and the cheapest thing up from a Kindle hahaha...

Anyway, I am going to do some further testing with this thing, starting with cutting down the bloatware, uninstalling/disabling/rolling back the google items and other non-required apps as described in threads here - and the next thing I will do is a custom ROM (Probably Cynagenmod) without GAPPS loaded at all, I will sideload the apps by https://apps.evozi.com/apk-downloader/ instead - and do away with google's evil completely.

Will let you know how I go.
 
I've had my P3 Advanced for about 2 weeks and flown it for about 4 hours total, although a couple of hours with the battery on, using a Nexus 7 tablet to learn the Pilot app before I even started. Oh, and a few hours reading through these posts before I ever started the motors.
I gained a lot of good advice while reading but the best, I think, is "Don't panic"!
3rd time I was flying, making boxes in the air, trying to orient etc. the pilot app crashed at a point where my girl was farthest away from me. I *almost* panicked, luckily that phrase stuck in my head, and while she waited patiently, I restarted my tablet and the app and everything was fine.
So, take it from a noob... don't panic....
 

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