Thanks much for the detailed assesment, Ian. DJI has really been pathetic about this whole thing, including the lack of interactions during beta, and apparent complete disregard for customer input. I won't easily forget how long it took to get a few lines of code released, nor will I forget how hard you worked to get this done. Thanks again, and hopefully it won't be another month before this 80% solution hits the assistant.
Beta Testers requested to fix Compass Issue
- Thread starter terry.one
- Start date
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The way I see it is DJI spent about 4 days in the last 4 months actually working on this problem.
ianwood
Taco Wrangler
Looking on the bright side, it's still going to make a really big difference for those who've been suffering from the issue. And we were successful in driving a grass roots effort to get a fix even if it isn't 100% perfect and took way too long. Of all the possible outcomes, it's not bad.
While I am glad we got DJI to fix it, they don't get off the hook that easily. I didn't buy a Phantom to be a beta tester. If they want me to beta test, I shouldn't be paying for it. And they need to learn to communicate. They need to be transparent about the issues and what they are doing to fix them. They need to do release planning, publish a roadmap, set deadlines and provide status updates.
I don't think I am quite ready to step up to another platform; I just don't have the time. But if I did, it would have to be a vendor who is going to provide a much better customer experience.
While I am glad we got DJI to fix it, they don't get off the hook that easily. I didn't buy a Phantom to be a beta tester. If they want me to beta test, I shouldn't be paying for it. And they need to learn to communicate. They need to be transparent about the issues and what they are doing to fix them. They need to do release planning, publish a roadmap, set deadlines and provide status updates.
I don't think I am quite ready to step up to another platform; I just don't have the time. But if I did, it would have to be a vendor who is going to provide a much better customer experience.
It's probably my first and last quad as they are probably going to become a major annoyance to the general population it the very near future. I'm satisfied with the resulting fix even though I have not tried it yet. Probably wouldn't have been fixed at all till the next version Phantom if it wasn't for this effort.
ianwood said:
I fully agree with all of the above. For my purposes the TBE is fixed, the JHook is manageable and quickly goes away. The only serious shortcoming remaining (as you mentioned in an earlier post) is the invalid takeoff course lock. I can certainly deal with it but the takeoff course lock itself has no value.
It does boggle my mind how deaf DJI is to the customers need for frequent communications, especially in a situation like this. It would have been so easy for them to win over support from almost everybody - but they did almost nothing to keep us informed.
I am still going to enjoy flying my Phantom. I also have a positive view of public acceptance of these devises. A number of people have stopped to watch and some to chat as we flew it. Some took videos (so of course we put on a show) and some wanted their picture taken with it. Earlier this year an older gentleman walking with his wife and adult daughter suggested it would make a good Father's Day gift.
Thanks to Ianwood, the beta testers and all who have contributed data relative to their location and experiences.
John Shaw said:
if anything this has highlighted is that this is emerging technology. In 12 months you will be wondering what all the fuss was about. There many other manufacturers dipping into this market & solving the issues (ie reduncancy dual GPS kits & automated flight functions). It is still early days with much more exciting functionality to come. DJI will come to this party or just be one of the also players.
ianwood said:
Hugely disappointing after months of waiting. DJI, your give-away of dominant market share will become a Harvard Business case study in the not-too-distant future.
For those of you that believe that innovation and customer support are NOT mutually exclusive, suggest you start following the Eagle Tree Vector thread on RC Groups. Highly responsive company, highly configurable HW, FW, and SW. A bunch of multi-rotor and fixed wing studs are delighted with the platform. ET's customer support rocks. It's not turn-key out of the box, but by Christmas, I predict platforms such as TBS + SimpleBGC + GoPro 4 + Eagle Tree Vector will have left DJI in the dust.
Kelly
Thought the replacement of low battery/auto land with RTH would be a good thing. For novice pilots it makes more sense, rather than the aircraft landing where you don't want it (up a tree/in the water/ontop of people)wkf94025 said:
ianwood
Taco Wrangler
wkf94025 said:
Sounds interesting. I will have a look.
In other news, Terry got back today and asked that the other beta testers take a look. Beta testers should have an email from me. If you don't, PM me.
Damon, BBF, Landon, et al. if you guys want to join the test group, PM me your email address. If you do, I only ask that you stick with the basic rules and support the effort to get this done. I know some people have one or both feet out the door, but the rest of us are vested in seeing this through.
Anyway, I don't think there is much to test as it seems the same as before. We simply need to confirm it with more than just my one test. I still suspect this will be the official 3.05 if nothing else pops up.
Beginning to wonder how I became the QA department at DJI. I would like to discuss my salary/compensation! That said if they want me to test Lightbridge, Ground Station and an S800/S1000 I could be persuaded to spend the time if the equipment just showed up at my apt (hint).
I just got back from a test of the latest (2nd) beta release. As Ianwood said earlier, it is very similar to what I experienced with the 1st beta release. For comparison I did I copy and paste of my 1st beta report and will put my 2nd beta comments in bold where appropriate, otherwise it's still the same.
I updated my Phantom and headed out to a local soccer field.
I am slightly southeast of Seattle Washington USA
The local declination is 17 degrees.
I have a Phantom 2 Vision
I use NAZA mode & IOC as needed
I had noticed the declination problem on some of my first flights, my son and I commented when we saw it but we just ignored it as we were low on the learning curve. After ianwood published his intial testing, analysis and video it all made sense. I used a local soccer field since the lines and layout gave a good frame of reference. I was seeing significant TBE, left drift, and JHook that would improve with time. Using the soccer field as a calibration reference I determined my intial error was twice my declination. This also shows up in Course Lock and is most dramatically seen in Course Lock.
My testing today went great. Light winds and threatening rain clouds but it stayed dry. I did a compass calibration and took off. (today no threatening clouds but the winds were about 10 mph based on an anemometer reading)
Right from the start there was NO TBE. You could see some initial minor motion, I am talking about less than a foot, but it didn't swirl at all. ( I would say we saw slightly more motion today but nothing major)
I lined up with the sideline as best I could. The inital run had some left drift and just enough JHook to be noticed. I estimated that it was about 30% (very approximate) of what it was before. On the return, just by pulling back on the stick, I could tell it was dramatically improved. PreBeta even with more JHook away from me the return would JHook back over my head necessitating some control input to get it stopped. With the Beta software today it flew almost straight down the center of the field with almost no JHook.
My second run appeared to have almost no drift or JHook, likewise the return. Same on subsequent runs.
I then switched to Course Lock to see if the initial lock showed any effect. My impression was that there was still some Course Lock error proportional to the overall reduced effect. I then lined it up and and reset the course lock reference in flight. Course Lock then worked correctly and showed little to no error and could have been somewhat pilot induced (my error).
So today was nearly identical and after course lock was reset in flight I did a sideways high speed run down the sideline with the Phantom facing into the field and it worked perfectly
We tried some limited testing in Ground Station mode and it seemed to work similar and as well as the GS testing I ran yesterday with 1st beta - so no detrimental effect. We were going to do more but I we kept disconnecting and I am not sure why. Will try more tests later and hope to put up some videos but they won't be much different than 1st beta. With a growing number of soccer players gathering we decided to call it quits for the day. But I can report that no soccer players were injured during this testing (none even complained).
There was only an app update for iOC and I have android devices so we couldn't figure how we could do any app testing.
I updated my Phantom and headed out to a local soccer field.
I am slightly southeast of Seattle Washington USA
The local declination is 17 degrees.
I have a Phantom 2 Vision
I use NAZA mode & IOC as needed
I had noticed the declination problem on some of my first flights, my son and I commented when we saw it but we just ignored it as we were low on the learning curve. After ianwood published his intial testing, analysis and video it all made sense. I used a local soccer field since the lines and layout gave a good frame of reference. I was seeing significant TBE, left drift, and JHook that would improve with time. Using the soccer field as a calibration reference I determined my intial error was twice my declination. This also shows up in Course Lock and is most dramatically seen in Course Lock.
My testing today went great. Light winds and threatening rain clouds but it stayed dry. I did a compass calibration and took off. (today no threatening clouds but the winds were about 10 mph based on an anemometer reading)
Right from the start there was NO TBE. You could see some initial minor motion, I am talking about less than a foot, but it didn't swirl at all. ( I would say we saw slightly more motion today but nothing major)
I lined up with the sideline as best I could. The inital run had some left drift and just enough JHook to be noticed. I estimated that it was about 30% (very approximate) of what it was before. On the return, just by pulling back on the stick, I could tell it was dramatically improved. PreBeta even with more JHook away from me the return would JHook back over my head necessitating some control input to get it stopped. With the Beta software today it flew almost straight down the center of the field with almost no JHook.
My second run appeared to have almost no drift or JHook, likewise the return. Same on subsequent runs.
I then switched to Course Lock to see if the initial lock showed any effect. My impression was that there was still some Course Lock error proportional to the overall reduced effect. I then lined it up and and reset the course lock reference in flight. Course Lock then worked correctly and showed little to no error and could have been somewhat pilot induced (my error).
So today was nearly identical and after course lock was reset in flight I did a sideways high speed run down the sideline with the Phantom facing into the field and it worked perfectly
We tried some limited testing in Ground Station mode and it seemed to work similar and as well as the GS testing I ran yesterday with 1st beta - so no detrimental effect. We were going to do more but I we kept disconnecting and I am not sure why. Will try more tests later and hope to put up some videos but they won't be much different than 1st beta. With a growing number of soccer players gathering we decided to call it quits for the day. But I can report that no soccer players were injured during this testing (none even complained).
There was only an app update for iOC and I have android devices so we couldn't figure how we could do any app testing.
There's 2 encouraging reports, thanks John & Ian!
C'mon remaining beta testers, summer is wasting at +16 near Portland Oregon
Or email to me, I'll test it :mrgreen:
C'mon remaining beta testers, summer is wasting at +16 near Portland Oregon
Or email to me, I'll test it :mrgreen:
I've loaded both updates and am shovelling some more electrons into the batteries before going out to test it.
When I upgraded the phantom firmware and before power cycling the P2V my taco gimbal went crazy, pitching right over and facing backwards. It came good after the reboot. Those with gimbals might see something similar.
When I upgraded the phantom firmware and before power cycling the P2V my taco gimbal went crazy, pitching right over and facing backwards. It came good after the reboot. Those with gimbals might see something similar.
Here is a video documenting my "J hook" and "Elevation Sag" caused by Magnetic Declination (15.1). Please excuse the static in video. Unfortunately my DVR is hyper sensitive to any static even though the FPV only shows a slight flicker every once and a while.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/m27WKHX6WIU[/youtube]
[youtube]http://youtu.be/m27WKHX6WIU[/youtube]
3.05b2 test. Phantom 2/Zenmuse H3-3D
I installed 3.05b2. After the firmware installed, I got the prompt to power cycle the P2. At the same instant I got a warning saying something about an error with the Receiver and Compass. I didn't write it down (sorry) I power cycled the P2 but the error message stayed on the screen for a few seconds then went away. I ran the Firmware upgrade again. This time no error. I went into the Gains Tab and clicked Default. Next, I did the advanced imu Calibration. The usual Temp. warning error popped up but i clicked through it and the Calibration completed. Just to be sure I did another imu Cal. which completed with no warning message.
I Just got back from flying on 3.05b2.
There is still a tad bit of drift to the Left on the First straight line run. It cleared up after that and flew pretty straight while in GPS Mode. No T.B.E.
Atti mode still works fine.
Course lock didn't work at all for me! I tried resetting Course Lock while in a hover and everytime I would try to fly forward, the P2 would go forward and slide to the left. It did not yaw/rotate, it would go forward but Roll to the left (40 degrees) as it was flying. Maybe i forgot how to reset CL in flight? I switched S2 from Off to CL 5 times and saw the LED Indicators blink Yellow but No Joy..
Home Lock worked fine.
I did notice that the Yaw input was more precise and seem to work better with the H3-3D.
I did not run the battery down to critical levels.
Besides my problem with CL, I think it's an 85% improvement over 3.04.
I installed 3.05b2. After the firmware installed, I got the prompt to power cycle the P2. At the same instant I got a warning saying something about an error with the Receiver and Compass. I didn't write it down (sorry) I power cycled the P2 but the error message stayed on the screen for a few seconds then went away. I ran the Firmware upgrade again. This time no error. I went into the Gains Tab and clicked Default. Next, I did the advanced imu Calibration. The usual Temp. warning error popped up but i clicked through it and the Calibration completed. Just to be sure I did another imu Cal. which completed with no warning message.
I Just got back from flying on 3.05b2.
There is still a tad bit of drift to the Left on the First straight line run. It cleared up after that and flew pretty straight while in GPS Mode. No T.B.E.
Atti mode still works fine.
Course lock didn't work at all for me! I tried resetting Course Lock while in a hover and everytime I would try to fly forward, the P2 would go forward and slide to the left. It did not yaw/rotate, it would go forward but Roll to the left (40 degrees) as it was flying. Maybe i forgot how to reset CL in flight? I switched S2 from Off to CL 5 times and saw the LED Indicators blink Yellow but No Joy..
Home Lock worked fine.
I did notice that the Yaw input was more precise and seem to work better with the H3-3D.
I did not run the battery down to critical levels.
Besides my problem with CL, I think it's an 85% improvement over 3.04.
Ian seems to have permission to give it to whomever he wants as he did say "Damon, BBF, Landon, et al. if you guys want to join the test group,"landonkk said:
ianwood
Taco Wrangler
I don't have the permission. Leaking the beta is a really bad idea. Once it gets out, you can't take it back. Which means it needs to be supported even if it doesn't work properly. If for example, it had an issue in it that caused fly aways or crashes, you could be sinking a lot of ships.
You're also breaching a trust to both me and DJI. Some may not care about DJI but those of us who are sticking with the Phantom want to maintain that trust. I've asked everyone who is involved with the beta to not leak it. Please honor that simple request. The final will be released when it is released.
You're also breaching a trust to both me and DJI. Some may not care about DJI but those of us who are sticking with the Phantom want to maintain that trust. I've asked everyone who is involved with the beta to not leak it. Please honor that simple request. The final will be released when it is released.
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