UK No Fly Zone lock up

[Numone]

The simple truth is that no one outside of DJI knows what the failure rate is for their aircraft and controllers and whether it is bad electronics or bad firmware or a combination of factors. The DJI Care program is a partial admission that they do sell faulty aircraft and distribute flawed firmware. It would be remarkable if something as complex as a Phantom drone could be provided with new firmware to add new functionality or to restrict existing functionality and have these changes not result in problems. It would take sophisticated test engineers with automated testing tools that are running testing scripts and few companies take the time or incur the expense to do this.

There have been bugs with automobile firmware and commercial passenger plane firmware that have resulted in fatalities, and these did not run Windows so it demonstrates that even in a controlled well designed operating system there can be bugs in routines that are first discovered by customers. There were very good reasons why professional IT managers would wait for Microsoft to release Service Pack 1 and then wait another 30 days to be sure it did not introduced new bugs before doing a rollout on thousands of users desktops - a potential career killer to be sure.

The truth is that the DJI Care program is an admission of absolutely nothing, but is simply a way to dramatically increase revenue and PPU.
Your analogy of IT Managers waiting to introduce SP's also has nothing to do with waiting to see if flaws existed, but because of time, as it's was and still is a PITA to deliver the patches to the UD's without introducing downtime and disrupting productivity, which has been the major concern of every business for whom I've worked. And if there was a security patch, that was released immediately.
Additionally, the most significant flaws in MS SP's and patches surrounds TP software and the associated effects the SP has on their operational co-existence, which it would be unreasonable to expect MS to test. That is not the case with DJI platforms, as the FW has no TP conflict concerns. Finally, where are the 100's of 1,000's of global complaints from all the DJI customers as each of their UAV all fail to do one or more of the following...

• fails to start
• RC won't turn on
• can't connect GO to the AC
• have weak transmission signal/s
• can't move the gimbal
• the gimbal's not straight
• AC not as fast
• AC won't go as far
• AC won't go as high
• has juddery or stuttering video
• Intelligent FM not working
• the map has disappeared
• and finally of course, it fell from the sky

And all because of updated FW for NFZ/FW/Gimbal parameter/battery update/compass improvement et al.... hmmmmmm, really?

 

[jeffames226]

Looks like Numone and a few others on here are suffering from DDS. Its REAL and there IS help!

DDS-(DJI Derangement Syndrome)-The complete inability to comprehend or accept any possible blame or fault with DJI's products, service or ongoing updates.

 

[Numone]

Looks like Numone and a few others on here are suffering from DDS. Its REAL and there IS help!

DDS-(DJI Derangement Syndrome)-The complete inability to comprehend or accept any possible blame or fault with DJI's products, service or ongoing updates.

<sigh> I suggest you google "what is firmware" and "what does it do". Perhaps you'll then understand what I'm saying just might possibly be correct....

 

[Calsun]

Numone - your experience is extremely limited with respect to updates at any level. I have worked in mainframe and mini-computer (AS/400) and HP Unix shops and when patches were released there was an itemized listing of each patch and what it was for and what it could be expected to fix. We chose which patches to apply and which to not apply based on the environment and applications being used. We never applied 100% of the patches and even then it was done at most twice a year.

Anyone who has been around at all would recall vividly the problems with Microsoft Windows Service Pack 2 for Windows 2000 that was a disaster. Shops held off deploying it and waited for Service Pack 3 which they thoroughly tested before releasing to their users.

I get firmware updates throughout the year for my NAS devices and for the electronics in my computers (BIOS and drivers) and even for our routers and my home Sony LCD television (done wirelessly). Since September of 2016 DJI has released 3 major updates for the P4P aircraft so they are making changes on an ongoing basis as well.

The problem with the NFZ is that it is based on a database which is being maintained for DJI to use and it includes a wide range of facilities and locations that are not controlled in terms of airspace out to 5 miles and at any altitude by any federal or state or local agency. How many people would own a laptop if they had to worry about where they would be allowed to use it, or a digital camera where you could not take a photograph within 100 feet of a location that was "secret" or "classified". With my background of decades in IT I have zero trust in the accuracy of such databases which are all subject to human error and human interpretation.

I can see where a pre-602 drone may very well be selling at a premium in the years ahead if DJI continues on this tack.

 

[Neon Euc]

Heres my theory on what I think.....

DJI released bug free updates BUT.....

1) the APK code may not play nice with other APK codes on the phones causing conflicts

2) with so many android phones out there its hard to make them compatible. I mean.. I have phones that I am sure most of you haven't heard of like the umi iron and ulefone power 1 and 2

3) but it has to be said... With the latest Samsung galaxy phones there are still massive issues and yet they are still not fixed (check the app store reviews)

4) I phones hardly have issues due to it being sandboxed and restricted on what can be downloaded on the phone

5) android is a "free for all" download device. Download anything you want... And maybe... Just maybe one of them dodgy APK apps you got is what is causing DJI go compatible problems

Well... That's just my theory... And I always think outside the box [emoji12]

 

[KongWerks]

Well as much as we may see a Phantom as being from a single vendor it is simply a collection of parts supplied by many vendors, with many hardware revisions, manufacturing runs, assembly line tweaks, component batches etc.
The firmware that DJI writes and then uploads to your AC is based on a general tolerance of parts. Of course there are going to be updates that affect some AC negatively. To deny that is nonsense.
DJI understands this and plays the odds (like every manufacturer) that only a small percentage will be affected. Unfortunately for you, that percentage may be 100 % for your specific AC.
The problem is DJI's lack of ownership that this may be a possibility and for not having the back end of their supply chain up to snuff for returns, repairs and support. Again, they are playing the odds and will get away with it until some other company comes along and finds a way to do it differently and still make a profit.
While I appreciate that DJI is trying to be a leader with their NFZ's, it is not a sustainable model at this time and they should just drop it until some piece of technology is invented that will actually work rather than cause their end users problems.

 

[Numone]

Numone - your experience is extremely limited with respect to updates at any level. I have worked in mainframe and mini-computer (AS/400) and HP Unix shops and when patches were released there was an itemized listing of each patch and what it was for and what it could be expected to fix. We chose which patches to apply and which to not apply based on the environment and applications being used. We never applied 100% of the patches and even then it was done at most twice a year.

Anyone who has been around at all would recall vividly the problems with Microsoft Windows Service Pack 2 for Windows 2000 that was a disaster. Shops held off deploying it and waited for Service Pack 3 which they thoroughly tested before releasing to their users.

I get firmware updates throughout the year for my NAS devices and for the electronics in my computers (BIOS and drivers) and even for our routers and my home Sony LCD television (done wirelessly). Since September of 2016 DJI has released 3 major updates for the P4P aircraft so they are making changes on an ongoing basis as well.

The problem with the NFZ is that it is based on a database which is being maintained for DJI to use and it includes a wide range of facilities and locations that are not controlled in terms of airspace out to 5 miles and at any altitude by any federal or state or local agency. How many people would own a laptop if they had to worry about where they would be allowed to use it, or a digital camera where you could not take a photograph within 100 feet of a location that was "secret" or "classified". With my background of decades in IT I have zero trust in the accuracy of such databases which are all subject to human error and human interpretation.

I can see where a pre-602 drone may very well be selling at a premium in the years ahead if DJI continues on this tack.

With respect, you do not have a clue about my experience, or lack of it, with IT environments and I wouldn't have had the brass-neck to've assumed and then said the same of you. Moving on..... So, to be blunt, comparing "selective patching" on IBM and Unix boxes and the world debacle decades ago of the MS SP2 for W2K which, you'll no doubt recall, actually had mass TP manufacturer conflict issues which was their REAL downfall with that release, against that of a 2017 $20bn Drone manufacturer with its simple single platform FW realeases is, well, ludicrous. And forget the so-called "wait and learn" testing too; large corporations do no want the enevitable downtime cause by the implementation of a standard SU so delay them as long as possible. DJI provide an itemised listing of what each FW release contains so you have that choice too.
As for the NFZ - do you actually think that DJI randomly selects locations, and then implements them on a "best guess" basis? Do you actually believe that DJI deliberately set out to enforce NFZ to frustrate its customers, so they will tell everyone they know not to by their products and go seek an alternative? Do you actually think there is no contact with and input from, government/s, its agencies and large corporates, regarding these NFZ? Then you are somewhat naive on all points. Or maybe this is all just a huge commie plot....

 

[Calsun]

When friends would ask which personal computer to buy I would advise them to buy one of the top three brands. I did this not because they were the best from a hardware perspective but because the market share a computer manufacturer has the more likely that users will encounter problems with third party software or the computers themselves and the more likely that the problem would get fixed. It is impossible for a company making a hardware or software application for computers to have every model for every brand of computer and so they have very limited ability to replicate users' problems and develop fixes. But they would have an IBM and a HP computer and could test with these. So it was safer for end users to buy from these companies even if something from Sony or other company was in some ways better or less expensive.

There seems to be a similar problem with DJI owners who have Android phones. The most expedient approach would be to use an iPad instead with the DJI controller. The problem then becomes whether to get an iPad with cellular communications capability so as to be able to unlock no fly zones out in the field(s) by connecting to the DJI GEO web server.