Phantom 3 Professional Firmware v1.6.0040

[gppms]

It really depends on your situation. If it's cold where you live (below freezing when you fly), then YES, get the update. The risk of over current draw is higher in cold climates, potentially causing the voltage to dip below 3V on one of the cells, which will trigger the battery to SHUT OFF using the old F/W. This is a real liability in the previous f/w revs if you're in cold climates. You'll just have to live with the reduced performance for now, maybe forever with the P3. But if you live in warmer climates, and enjoy fast acceleration, then you may want to wait, assuming you're OK with the drift in 1.4 (I lived with it for months, it wasn't that big of a deal) then stick with 1.4. Or if you're OK with potential vibration issue in 1.5, you might want to stick with that, preferably in warmer climates that are above 45F.

I upgraded because I got a new Ipad Air2 with IOS9.1 for Christmas. My former iPad Mini2 IOS was 8.4 running an old app and older 1.4 firmware. Since I had to load a new APP onto the new iPad Air2, I wasn't sure about compatibility with my old 1.4 firmware, so I opted to upgrade everything to the current version. I'm OK with it, I'm just really disappointed. It's like buying a Corvette with a supercharger and having a fun time driving it for 6 months, and then the authorities say sorry bud, no super chargers allowed in this country. What a letdown. You may ask, do I need a supercharger? Maybe not, I'm not sure yet, but I PAID FOR IT! And now it's gone.

Fortunately I didn't see a vibration issue in my craft after the upgrade. That's what I worried about most when deciding to upgrade, but it didn't appear in two batteries of flight. Now I've got a sluggish Phantom 3P, however it's way cool and far ahead of the competition. Yes, I'm still in love with this bird, and my new Ipad Air2 is the bees knees, pretty nice.

I might go back to 1.5 just to see how I like it. I never tried it before, but I'm in So. Calif, warmer climates, I should be OK.

Ok John thanks for the info.

 

[shockwave199]

It really depends on your situation. If it's cold where you live (below freezing when you fly), then YES, get the update. The risk of over current draw is higher in cold climates, potentially causing the voltage to dip below 3V on one of the cells, which will trigger the battery to SHUT OFF using the old F/W. This is a real liability in the previous f/w revs if you're in cold climates. You'll just have to live with the reduced performance for now, maybe forever with the P3. But if you live in warmer climates, and enjoy fast acceleration, then you may want to wait, assuming you're OK with the drift in 1.4 (I lived with it for months, it wasn't that big of a deal) then stick with 1.4. Or if you're OK with potential vibration issue in 1.5, you might want to stick with that, preferably in warmer climates that are above 45F.

I upgraded because I got a new Ipad Air2 with IOS9.1 for Christmas. My former iPad Mini2 IOS was 8.4 running an old app and older 1.4 firmware. Since I had to load a new APP onto the new iPad Air2, I wasn't sure about compatibility with my old 1.4 firmware, so I opted to upgrade everything to the current version. I'm OK with it, I'm just really disappointed. It's like buying a Corvette with a supercharger and having a fun time driving it for 6 months, and then the authorities say sorry bud, no super chargers allowed in this country. What a letdown. You may ask, do I need a supercharger? Maybe not, I'm not sure yet, but I PAID FOR IT! And now it's gone.

Fortunately I didn't see a vibration issue in my craft after the upgrade. That's what I worried about most when deciding to upgrade, but it didn't appear in two batteries of flight. Now I've got a sluggish Phantom 3P, however it's way cool and far ahead of the competition. Yes, I'm still in love with this bird, and my new Ipad Air2 is the bees knees, pretty nice.

I might go back to 1.5 just to see how I like it. I never tried it before, but I'm in So. Calif, warmer climates, I should be OK.

I'm torn on this one. We get cold days here in the north east but there is some awesome days to fly and sights to film. Plus I love the absence of people all winter long. However, all you have to do is a search here on cold flying to see no one has reported issues. The lack of specific cold weather battery trouble threads and reports makes me question what the heck caused this adjustment by dji. I have flown a few times in 32-34f temperatures, before this firmware release and hinting of impending doom if you do it and when cold temperature problems weren't even on the radar of problems (like three weeks ago!) and it was perfectly fine. Now for some reason I have to bite my nails like I'm tempting fate to fly in the cold??? I'm just perplexed and although I want to get everything up to date, I don't want to ruin my great thing going right now.

Maybe those in the know could provide some further clarification. Is this all about cold weather or has it been too associated with just that scenario from limited release notes? Is this an overall fix of battery troubles regardless of temperature?

 

[John Locke]

I'm torn on this one. We get cold days here in the north east but there is some awesome days to fly and sights to film. Plus I love the absence of people all winter long. However, all you have to do is a search here on cold flying to see no one has reported issues. The lack of specific cold weather battery trouble threads and reports makes me question what the heck caused this adjustment by dji. I have flown a few times in 32-34f temperatures, before this firmware release and hinting of impending doom if you do it and when cold temperature problems weren't even on the radar of problems (like three weeks ago!) and it was perfectly fine. Now for some reason I have to bite my nails like I'm tempting fate to fly in the cold??? I'm just perplexed and although I want to get everything up to date, I don't want to ruin my great thing going right now.

This happens mostly when the battery is not 100% charged when taking off (say 60% or less), cold, and the pilot uses full throttle for a long period. It can trigger battery protection and SHUT DOWN all power mid-flight in an effort to save the battery! Yes, this is obviously a flawed design, I admit. You don't see many reports, but they are real, this can happen. If you always start with a full charge, your battery is relatively warm when taking off, and you don't GAS IT really hard toward the end of your flight, you should be OK. There's not a lot of people having the issue, however when the stars line up and you do these wrong things together, you can lose your craft using the old firmware. The new firmware was created to be dummy proof, throttling your craft back so you can't drain so much current at once, which could drop your voltage on a single cell below 3V, which SHUTS OFF the battery (slight lack of design wisdom). To my knowledge the battery protection is still enabled, since there was no announcement of it's removal.

 

[dirtybum]

This new bat firmware is a fix for a faulty 1.5.30 bat firmware. I would be surprised to know if anyone had this power failure running 1.3 or 1.4!
The problem is not only running a less than fully charged bat but it does increase your likelihood of triggering the shutdown. Many of us have lost there bird flying 100% fresh charged bat! Most times the shutdown occurred seconds into flight during full throttle ascent and thrust situations. The first thing dji customer service wanted to know is if we were using 1.5.3 that seemed to be more imporntant to them than other details of the crash. So as mentioned before if you are running 1.5.30 batteries do not use full throttle senarios and have your batteries topped off and voltage displayed on the screen.

*** if there is anyone who had this battery failure phenomenon on batteries running 1.3 or 1.4 please share and i'll admit that i have no grasp of this situation and i'll go back to fhe drawing board!

 

[shockwave199]

This new bat firmware is a fix for a faulty 1.5.30 bat firmware. I would be surprised to know if anyone had this power failure running 1.3 or 1.4!
The problem is not only running a less than fully charged bat but it does increase your likelihood of triggering the shutdown. Many of us have lost there bird flying 100% fresh charged bat! Most times the shutdown occurred seconds into flight during full throttle ascent and thrust situations. The first thing dji customer service wanted to know is if we were using 1.5.3 that seemed to be more imporntant to them than other details of the crash. So as mentioned before if you are running 1.5.30 batteries do not use full throttle senarios and have your batteries topped off and voltage displayed on the screen.

*** if there is anyone who had this battery failure phenomenon on batteries running 1.3 or 1.4 please share and i'll admit that i have no grasp of this situation and i'll go back to fhe drawing board!

There was no battery update with the 1.5.3 update as far as I know.

 

[John Locke]

This new bat firmware is a fix for a faulty 1.5.30 bat firmware. I would be surprised to know if anyone had this power failure running 1.3 or 1.4!
The problem is not only running a less than fully charged bat but it does increase your likelihood of triggering the shutdown. Many of us have lost there bird flying 100% fresh charged bat! Most times the shutdown occurred seconds into flight during full throttle ascent and thrust situations. The first thing dji customer service wanted to know is if we were using 1.5.3 that seemed to be more imporntant to them than other details of the crash. So as mentioned before if you are running 1.5.30 batteries do not use full throttle senarios and have your batteries topped off and voltage displayed on the screen.

*** if there is anyone who had this battery failure phenomenon on batteries running 1.3 or 1.4 please share and i'll admit that i have no grasp of this situation and i'll go back to fhe drawing board!

This is news to me, thanks for sharing. I made the assumption that since winter is upon us and it's getting cold in areas, and lipo batteries are known to pull more power when cold, it seemed logical the battery firmware since April hadn't been fully tested in the cold. Hence this revelation of birds falling from the sky upon full throttle.

 

[David Dorman]

I have read through most of the posts in this thread but I still have a question. I am still on version 1.4 with my P3P. Do I need to upgrade to version 1.5 before going to the new 1.6 or can I leapfrog and go to 1.6 directly from 1.4?

 

[ml92760]

Seems version 1.6.0040 was released today, see Phantom 3 Professional - Specs, FAQ, Tutorials, Downloads and DJI GO | DJI
Can't see release notes yet.
Who will be the guinea pig? ;-)

Direct link: http://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/phantom_3/P3X_FW_V01.06.0040.zip

I attempted the upgrade yesterday and both times I got a failure however when I rebooted the aircraft the DGI app did not show me I needed an Craft / Battery update?? so I'm not sure what happened there... I did a short flight afterwords and appeared to have no problems...

 

[tcope]

I'm torn on this one. We get cold days here in the north east but there is some awesome days to fly and sights to film. Plus I love the absence of people all winter long. However, all you have to do is a search here on cold flying to see no one has reported issues. The lack of specific cold weather battery trouble threads and reports makes me question what the heck caused this adjustment by dji.

Not sure what you have been (not?) reading..

 

[tcope]

I have read through most of the posts in this thread but I still have a question. I am still on version 1.4 with my P3P. Do I need to upgrade to version 1.5 before going to the new 1.6 or can I leapfrog and go to 1.6 directly from 1.4?

Firmware is not incremental. If you update with the latest, you always get everything in between.

 

[ml92760]

On the App I have 2.2.4 and Craft 1.5.30+ and the RC 1.5.70... as mentioned I attempted to upgrade yesterday but got failures twice anybody got any suggestions?

 

[David Dorman]

Firmware is not incremental. If you update with the latest, you always get everything in between.

Thanks tcope.

 

[tcope]

On the App I have 2.2.4 and Craft 1.5.30+ and the RC 1.5.70... as mentioned I attempted to upgrade yesterday but got failures twice anybody got any suggestions?

There are many guides and videos on how to install firmware. Place the .bin file in the root directory of the SD card. Put the SD card in and turn only the phantom on. Watch the LED on the front of the camera. It should blink red and green. When it's done it will just be green. You may need to let it blink for 10-20 minutes.

 

[Chris P Duck]

So can anyone confirm if the 32 channel hack remains (or can be re-applied) on IOS?

I've seen a few say they had to re-install the app and lost it while ch isn't a surprise, but can it be re-applied?

 

[TrynFlyn]

So can anyone confirm if the 32 channel hack remains (or can be re-applied) on IOS?

I've seen a few say they had to re-install the app and lost it while ch isn't a surprise, but can it be re-applied?

Yes it can be re-installed.

 

[TrynFlyn]

On the App I have 2.2.4 and Craft 1.5.30+ and the RC 1.5.70... as mentioned I attempted to upgrade yesterday but got failures twice anybody got any suggestions?

The AC and RC are current, but the current version of the GO app is 2.4.3 for both IOS and Android.

 

[4kskyguy]

can I ask a question - if your not having any problems -WHY FIX WHATS AINT BROKEN ?? hMMMM

 

[jorgeszabo]

On the App I have 2.2.4 and Craft 1.5.30+ and the RC 1.5.70... as mentioned I attempted to upgrade yesterday but got failures twice anybody got any suggestions?

Latest version of DJI go app is 2.4.3 (Make sure you update to the latest)
Aircraft will show 1.5.30+ in the about page right after the upgrade. In my case, it only changed to 1.6.40 after a power cycle and connecting the remote while connected to the Internet - YMMV
Latest RC version is 1.5.70

After you update the app you'll be almost done. Lastly, you need to upgrade the batteries. Just leave the .bin file for this latest firmware in the root directory of the SD card and turn on the aircraft with each one of your batteries. If an upgrade is required, it'll do the upgrade beeping sounds, gimbal flash red and green and be done within a couple of minutes. Once done it'll be a solid green gimbal light and completion beeping sound.

 

[dirtybum]

can I ask a question - if your not having any problems -WHY FIX WHATS AINT BROKEN ?? hMMMM

When you think it Aint broke because youve had a so many successful flights and it falls to the ground after routine takeoff, then you realize it was broke you jus didnt know it. Thats what happened with so many pilots on dji's faulty battery firmware 1.5.30

 

[Vision]

So can anyone confirm if the 32 channel hack remains (or can be re-applied) on IOS?

I've seen a few say they had to re-install the app and lost it while ch isn't a surprise, but can it be re-applied?

Mine was still active when I upgraded to the new firmware. I'm using android.