Phanton 4 Pro returned home for no reason with battery level above 60% (nothing pressed to initiate it)

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Today was the first time ever that my P4P was in the middle of the mission and it just came home and landed for no apparent reason with the battery at about 62%.  I let it land, I checked the battery indicator on the P4P and it was fine so I clicked on Resume and took off again.  It resumed normally and flew until the battery change was needed (as normal).  I did not press anything or touch the iPad screen at the time it came home.  It just did.

Posting this up in case someone else experiences the same thing.  

This was a small 1 acre job.  Flying at 75’ AGL.  Using iPad Mini 4.  Latest software on all devices.

2

Hi Tim,

From your another post on the community, I understood that you flew using the Safe mode of Pix4Dcapture to trigger pictures. You probably bumped into a known issue due to a 99 waypoint restrictions by DJI.

Indeed, in Safe mode, one waypoint is uploaded to the drone for each picture that will be taken. The SDK of DJI does not allow third-party applications, like Pix4Dcapture, to upload more than 99 waypoints at the same time. Unfortunately, this means the drone will go back to land even with a high battery level when it reaches the 99th waypoint or else, after the 99th picture is captured. 

Workarounds :

  • Planning a smaller mission and/or decreasing the image overlap.
  • Tapping Pause and then Resume when your drone stops during the mission. It will upload the next set of waypoints.
  • Switching from Safe to Fast mode. Fast mode does not rely on waypoints to trigger the camera so you can fly more lines before exceeding the 99-waypoint limit.

Best,

3

Thanks Gael!

I always use fast mode but tried safe mode to see if that would help with the problem of skipping images or bunched up images in Mapping  Thanks for the explanation.