Some annoying issues with my Phantom 4 Pro+

Scatterbrained · Jan 1, 2018

So I have two distinct issues that are annoying me to no end right now. First, whenever I put the phantom into tripod mode it immediate sounds a warning alarm and shows 0 distance to right on proximity sensor. I can still fly by the constant alarm is frustrating.

Meanwhile, whenever I try to download images off of my card my computer insists that the card needs to be formatted. The first time this happened I thought that maybe I had forgotten to format the card, but the second time I was certain I had formatted the card. I'm pretty **** about formatting cards in my cameras. This leaves me to download images from the drone via USB cable, not exactly convenient to be certain. If anyone has any thoughts I'm open to suggestions.

alokbhargava · Jan 1, 2018

The best way to format a SD card for P4 is to use Go 4 app, the next step is to ensure your laptop is able to read images from that formatted card. Somewhere something is missing.

It’s also desired that before you take out the SD card out of the P4, you really turn off the batteries.

ryantrax · Jan 1, 2018

As far as your sensor issue goes, are they clean? Have you tried calibrating them in the Assistant 2 software?

Meta4 · Jan 2, 2018

Scatterbrained said:
whenever I try to download images off of my card my computer insists that the card needs to be formatted. The first time this happened I thought that maybe I had forgotten to format the card, but the second time I was certain I had formatted the card. I'm pretty **** about formatting cards in my cameras. This leaves me to download images from the drone via USB cable, not exactly convenient to be certain. If anyone has any thoughts I'm open to suggestions.

It doesn't matter whether you format the card in a computer or the Phantom.
Downloading images via a cable is slow and awkward.
Simply pop the card, put it in an adapter and copy to your computer.

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

Meta4 said:
It doesn't matter whether you format the card in a computer or the Phantom.
Downloading images via a cable is slow and awkward.
Simply pop the card, put it in an adapter and copy to your computer.

That's the problem. My computer won't read the card, it insists that the card isn't formatted. Hence the USB cable. It's annoying.

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

ryantrax said:
As far as your sensor issue goes, are they clean? Have you tried calibrating them in the Assistant 2 software?

They are clean, but I haven't tried calibrating them yet. I just got this drone a few days before Christmas and it took me almost a week to get time to run all the firmware updates just to get it working. Once I did all the sensors displayed "Normal" so I took to the sky with it. I'll try to run through the calibration processes tomorrow and see if that helps.

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

alokbhargava said:
The best way to format a SD card for P4 is to use Go 4 app, the next step is to ensure your laptop is able to read images from that formatted card. Somewhere something is missing.

It’s also desired that before you take out the SD card out of the P4, you really turn off the batteries.

I'm using the P4P+ and formatting through the app via the remote control. I thought it was strange when I hit "format SD card" and it instantly gave me the "card formatted" readout. Meanwhile, I've never removed the card from the drone while it was on.

Meta4 · Jan 2, 2018

Scatterbrained said:
That's the problem. My computer won't read the card, it insists that the card isn't formatted. Hence the USB cable. It's annoying.

Perhaps you have a dodgy card?
Have you tried any others?

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

That's a good idea, I'll have to try the other, smaller card and see if it works.

Speedmeister · Jan 2, 2018

You could also try to format your sd card on the computer you are using and see if the phantom can read it. If not then you have formatting compatibility issue.

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

Meta4 said:
Perhaps you have a dodgy card?
Have you tried any others?

It's definitely a bad card. The original that came with the drone works fine. The 64GB Sandisk card shows 1mb of space.

Scatterbrained · Jan 2, 2018

Speedmeister said:
You could also try to format your sd card on the computer you are using and see if the phantom can read it. If not then you have formatting compatibility issue.

Yeah, tried to format it on my computer and saw that it was showing as a 1mb drive. Ugh. Time to call Adorama.