two P3's in the air, major signal issues

[Julius717]

Yesterday me and my good friend @millertime510 flew all over the bay area California, while we both were in the air we had major major signal issues with our birds. Choppy video feedback, RC antenna losing signal. Made it very hard to fly at distance. If one person shut off their bird it fixed it.

I was under the impression you could fly a bunch of these in the same location without issue. At one point @millertime510 was 6000+ feet away I turned my bird on his screen went completely black and had to initiate RTH.
Wtf dji!?!

 

[jcknows0]

This is interesting. Wonder if there are issues with p2/p3 as well as I was planning that next month. Anybody else have experience, given the long range this could be a problem

 

[Steve Moore]

I dont know about the video side of Rx/Tx, but on the 2.4 gig side of the house you almost cant have a frequency issue. FAR too many channels randomly changing to see a speck of an issue. Yesterday we had as many as 4 Phantoms and an Inspire in the air at the same time. I personally had video issues, but the bird flew fine. At my 12o'clock was a VERY large metal building though, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I was flying within 150 yards of a cellular tower. Once I flew away from that area I had no more issues. No one else reported anything either.

 

[Julius717]

Yea it was definitely a signal issue. If one us flew with the other phantom off no issue, once the 2nd bird was turned on issues started.

I use an ipad air 2, he uses a galaxy tab 10.1. I've never once had signal issues flying solo. It happened at ever single location we flew at also.

The bird still flew fine but we were both beyond LOS at times and going black on the screen makes it a bit difficult to fly back.

 

[Steve Moore]

I dont have a good shot with several.. but here are a few. Every flight had at least two in the air.

 

[ianwood]

Light bridge uses a lot of bandwidth. Surpirsed it was that bad though. Did you try a manual channel selection?

 

[F6Rider]

Why didn't you go manual and pick different freq's to use? if the area was clear perhaps both birds picked the same freq and thus the interference.

 

[flyNfrank]

Why didn't you go manual and pick different freq's to use? if the area was clear perhaps both birds picked the same freq and thus the interference.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure there is a option in the app that references link controllers. When you select it it says something about using the other controllers around you.

 

[Meta4]

I don't remember any problems when I did a two P3 flight but I flew with a friend and a different quad and whenever the controllers got too close, my video would have problems.
In both cases we flew the drones closer than a metre apart but flight controls were unaffected.

 

[Mad_angler1]

if i remember with Lightbridge the controls link is frequency hopping but the video feed link is not, when it fires up it scans the channels and chooses the best one based on interference for video, i believe it then sticks to it, its conceivable both units selected the same channel especially if you stared up apart and then you had issues,

id move over to manual channel selection,

i beleive this is why it has lower output in EC than FCC as its not fully spectrum hopping, control link is but video is not.

 

[Mako79]

You guys crossing antennas?? Not your own but with each others?
On a serious note...
Are you guys locked onto a specific channel?

 

[Sammynels]

I flew at a RC field 5 planes and 3 quads were up no issues. I also happen to be a amateur radio operator solar flares can create many problems. We are always quick to blame DJI for this not saying that they don't have issues but these things are electronics with GPS etcetera something to think about. Here was this weekends solar report. It wiped out most radio communications at this weekends yearly field day event.
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/20...r-flare-erupts-from-region-2371-cme-produced/

 

[Julius717]

we were standing 30-40 feet away from each other, sometimes facing completely different directions also. I found it very odd, ive never had that issue before when flying with others. thought maybe it was just the first location but it did it through out the entire day.

I always leave it on auto as majority of my flights im well beyond LOS. I rely on my video feed and map for flying.

 

[flyNfrank]

if i remember with Lightbridge the controls link is frequency hopping but the video feed link is not, when it fires up it scans the channels and chooses the best one based on interference for video, i believe it then sticks to it, its conceivable both units selected the same channel especially if you stared up apart and then you had issues,

id move over to manual channel selection,

i beleive this is why it has lower output in EC than FCC as its not fully spectrum hopping, control link is but video is not.

I totally forgot about the CE & FCC setting. Is it part of the P3 and where is it located?

 

[Mad_angler1]

I totally forgot about the EC & FCC setting. Is it part of the P3 and where is it located?

You can't it's set by GPS location, in the EC under the 2015 regulations the requirements are it needs full spread spectrum channel hopping to use the full 20dbm output. As the P3 is only doing it on control link they had to drop to the lower amount to satisfy regulations.

It's also likely the video link scans one direction so I suspect both landed on the first available relitvely clean channel and it happened to be the same on both.

Just unlucky likely.

 

[robinb]

With the latest pilot app in iOS you can't change it to many channel but it would be worth looking at the channel assignments to see what is going on.

 

[flyNfrank]

You can't it's set by GPS location, in the EC under the 2015 regulations the requirements are it needs full spread spectrum channel hopping to use the full 20dbm output. As the P3 is only doing it on control link they had to drop to the lower amount to satisfy regulations.

It's also likely the video link scans one direction so I suspect both landed on the first available relitvely clean channel and it happened to be the same on both.

Just unlucky likely.

Well that would be nice to roll that back to the higher amount.

 

[robinb]

I totally forgot about the EC & FCC setting. Is it part of the P3 and where is it located?

Are you sure about that ?
I thought there were 2 controllers a CE and an FCC one and depending where it shipped you got a compliant one for your location.

 

[Mad_angler1]

Are you sure about that ?
I thought there were 2 controllers a CE and an FCC one and depending where it shipped you got a compliant one for your location.

Same P3 worldwide Output based on your location taken from GPS and position, what we don't know is it rc location taken from the maps or GPS in the P3 its self.

 

[robinb]

Same P3 worldwide Output based on your location taken from GPS and position, what we don't know is it rc location taken from the maps or GPS in the P3 its self.

Where did you get that information from ?

There was a discussion a while back about a power value stored on a file on the internal SD card on the PCB.