Pix4d Capture decided to sign me off after reaching remote location.

PIX4Dcapture PIX4Dcapture Questions/Troubleshooting
1

Dear Pix4d community,

I have an issue with Pix4dCapture and I decided to ask the community first, before opening a support ticket.

I’m using Pix4d in glaciology for multiple purposes. Currently I’m deployed in Antarctica, collecting data for a project. As you can imagine, working here means quite poor internet connection at the Station and no internet connection at all during field work. Recently after reaching a remote location and preparing my drones I realized that Pix4dCapture on iOS randomly decided to require sign-in on launch despite working perfectly fine for more than 20 days. Of course that was impossible and the precious day of work was ruined.

Therefore I would like to at least know - what exactly are the requirements for the re-sign-in (sign-in session validity) for Pix4dCapture on iOS? How often do I have to re-sing-in? I just wouldn’t like to be surprised like this again and have my work delayed due to such issue.

Thank you very much in advance for all the answers.

Best regards,

/Marek

2

Hello Marek,

Thank you for your feedback and sorry to hear about your bad experience here.

Normally, the application remains logged in and closing Pix4Dcapture, restarting or switching off/on the mobile will not log you out. Like you, few users reported that the app was asking them to log in again but we had very few feedbacks about this particular issue.
For now, we have not been able to reproduce this issue and it does not seem to have any patterns, it is random. It is quite difficult to test it so we can not guarantee that it won’t happen even if it is very rare.

To reduce risks, if possible, I would suggest you have several devices that you can use in case of something occur on the field without internet.

Overall, I agree that there should be a solution to login without the internet in case the user has been logged out unexpectedly. I have shared your feedback to the developer’s team so that they consider to find a solution to this specific issue.

Best,

3

Hello Gaël!

Thank you very much for the feedback and suggestions.

Now I’m always prepared with additional devices. It actually happened once more, but it was a non-issue as I was still in range of the Station’s wifi.

I’m trying to observe the chain of actions that lead to the behaviour but unfortunately there is nothing out of the ordinary I can report. There is no reboot or cache clean-up involved. The only apps I’m using on those particular devices are Safari, Pix4d Capture, Freeflight Pro and DJI Go 4.

If there is any way I can help your dev team to pin down the issue, please let me know, I’ll be happy to help out.

Best regards,

/Marek

4

Dear Pix4d team and Community,

After a few more weeks of extensive work with Pix4d I might have found at least one repeatable scenario in which the problem described in the original post, when re-sign-in is required, occurs.

The issue happens on iOS when prior to launching Pix4dCapture connection to Parrot Sequoia WiFi interface is estabilished. There seems to be a logic in the software that assumes that active WiFi connection means internet access and the software is not able to distinguish between “offline WiFi” like a control interface of the device and “online” internet access points.

To avoid this particular scenario make sure to disable WiFi on your mobile device prior to starting Pix4dCapture.

From the development side I would suggest implementing logic that would test internet connection before presenting the login screen. Also I would recommend implementing list of known SSID’s that are broadcasted by supported devices, like “Sequoia-*” or “Bluegrass*” by Parrot products.

Best regards,

/Marek

5

Hi Marek,

Thank you very much for your feedback and for sharing your investigations about this particular issue. I will share them with the developer’s so that they consider to implement a solution to do not bump into this issue anymore.

Hope your projects in Antarctica are going fine.

Best,