There is a maximum distance of 150m from the drone to the grid. I find myself making bigger grids than I need just so I can satisfy this requirement, then I crop out the data that I don’t need. For smaller grids, it seems like this maximum distance should be increased to alleviate this workaround
Dear Christopher,
we understand the frustration. This limitation was put in place as the drone need to keep a wifi link to trigger the image capture. We will look into making the requirement optional with a warning.
The good news is that DJI’s P3 and I1 will not suffer from that as their antenna has a much longer range.
best regards,
Well this is where I am confused. I have phantom 2 vision plus with fpvlr stage 4 long distance modification. I can fly 4 miles out with perfect signal. Today I was trying to fly a wetland area and kept getting “grid too far from home location”. It is right there… I can see it… like right there… I can’t quite understand how drone can be within say 200 meters x 100 meters grid and not be able to fly 50 meters to that grid. It is not like we are asking it to fly a kilometer or anything. I had a plan to fly 6 areas today. 1 mission failed because when it was coming back from last photo and turned… it said “do not turn off drone uploading images”. And then bam… pix4d file could not be created. Drone was RIGHT THERE… I hiked 10 kilometers over ankle deep flooded cow pastures to film one wetland and ended up not being able to film it whole. I flew it twice. On second flight I got 3/4 of wetland into my grid only because I moved closer to wetland standing in wet pasture. Have it been able to fly 150 meters first, I would have filmed entire wetland.
Hi Yaroslav,
Thank you for your feedback. The distance to the grid is only when starting the mission. The drone has to be less that 150 meters from the center of the grid to be able to start the mission. This is to prevent to launch a mission when the grid is too far away. It’s a security check.
If you want to launch a mission when the drone is further away from the center of the grid it is possible to ignore the check in the checklist by enabling the advanced mode of the app. This mode gives you access to advanced options.
To enable the advanced mode, go in the Settings of the app and scroll down to the advanced settings and enable the advanced mode.
Then when starting a mission, in the checklist, you can ignore the check about the distance to grid by pressing on it.
Unfortunately if the connection is not good at the end of the mission the p4d file will not be created. To improve the connection you can try to minimize the distance to the drone by making the end of the grid close to your position. So when the drone comes back after the mission and the p4d file is created, it will be closer to you.
Best regards,
Had the same story with Maric PRO/Android Pix4D capture. I saw the drone within a relatively small grid, and yet, it said "distance is too large. Was it a glitch in the Android app? Or order of switching the app/drone/control?
Hi Eugene,
The maximum distance from the center of the grid to the home point is set to 150 m on both Android and iOS. The home point is actually where the drone is turned on and acquired the GPS signal the first time. This distance is mainly for security reasons, to prevent an accidental launch of a mission when the grid is too far away and it is also limited to prevent connectivity losses. However, this can be discarded:
- Android: Home screen > Settings > section Advanced > check Enable advanced mode.
- iOS: Home screen > Grid / Double Grid / Circular Mission > Settings > tab Advanced > set the option Ignore home point to Yes.
Besides the home point distance limitation, there is also a safety lock that prevents the drone from starting if its current location is further than 250 m away from the center of the grid. The current location is either on the ground or in the air hovering (e.g. the drone starts a second mission right after the first without coming back to the user). To bypass this limitation, the user has to take off manually and fly the drone closer to the grid before tapping the green button to initiate the flight (in the takeoff checklist).
Regards,