jdawson said:
First off that tweet was FAKE. I and over 500 other people follow DJI on twitter. If that tweet existed someone would have replied or re-tweeted it and they can't delete them. Also that is not a picture of Facebook on an iPhone it is a picture of twitter on an iPhone. So that example posted above was not taken from Facebook. (You may have seen someone post that picture on Facebook but the picture itself is a fake Twitter post.)
As for the theory and a potentially good theory on the WIFI issue of the phantom. That is based on the GoPro issue that DJI has agreed exists. You need to understand better why the WiFI issue exists with the GoPro.
First off as you know WiFI frequencies are all playing in the 2.4 GHZ spectrum so it is possible that we are looking at an issue here. That said the ability to cause interference has a great deal to do with proximity and the differences of having a transmitter one inch away from a receiving antenna vs a few feet is a HUGE difference.
The GoPro is transmitting WiFi within inches of the Phantoms receiving antenna taped to one of the legs. Even that is NOT an issue until you get your phantom more then 100' feet away... At some point after 100' feet the signal from your radio to the Phantom becomes weaker then the interference signal from the GoPro and if your lucky at this the phantom may do a Return to home or some other crazy thing.
My guess... Is that a home that has that much complex lighting has a very strong magnetic interference. Walk around it with a old fashion compass. Just walk around lots of places with an old Compass and you will see that power lines and many things cause compass problems. The GPS mode of all quads require good compass signals that don't often exist in urban environments.
People have been flying lots of RC and lots of Quads in urban environments for many years but only in the past few months since the Phantom have people been flying a unit that has a GPS mode in an urban environment. My advise to everyone who flys in urban environments is use ATTI mode and don't expect that a fail safe return to home on any device will work in an urban environment.
Several things here, first and foremost the GoPro has never been in WiFi mode, it has a blinking blue light and in every flight I preflight hover rotate to make sure LEDs and camera is on and filming ( this is because I actually have forgot to press record on one of my best wildlife footage flights before, an Elk will get you excited as it's strolling across at 70' away) seeing a blinking blue light at dusk would be obvious from 50' let alone 6'.
The home is surrounded by electrical mains 4' in the ground starting .65 mile away at the transformer on the connecting road. The meter base transformers are 100' away and on the opposite side of the home that I have 100 minutes of video circling around every inch of, high/low/inside/above, this event was obviously triggered by a wireless signal transmitted to a home router and my guess is since it was 4 seconds later the interference came from the router connecting to the ISY99i controller located in the center of an 11000 sq.ft. home which then sends the signal via power line to the light switches. The lights on the deck have RF antennas and are the last to ramp. Regardless if the Phantom did get interference thats fine and dandy, the fact it flew out of the range of the router and regained control and then re-entered the homes router range and was then controlled by a empty house and no wifi devices communicating leads me to believe that hidden somehow, somewhere in the Phantom a memory of some type that recognizes a recent signal and re performs its veering and fly away procedure. Spread spectrum 2.4 Ghz radios were designed to alleviate this issue. Anyone can side with DJI as an innocent company that is trying to mass sell a "supposedly" well tested product to millions of photographers, children, and youtube enthusiasts, but if this happened at a 3D helicopter/Ducted fan event and something traveling 200 mph where sent off veering into a crowd because of a smartphone or router, I think we would hear about it.
Better yet here's my 12' blimp we fly at professional sporting events with 13k - 50k people indoors and out all with smartphones not to mention Fox sports or competition and all their wireless equipment and we drop coupons and other oddities on the crowd, if you have been to a sporting event and seen this, chances are it may have been us
heres the controllers that sit in my pantry for quick access for my different wildlife filming aircraft
heres the planes that have been sweeping the forrest for hours that actually follow the path repeatedly in an attempt to recover the Phantom before the lipos burn down 100 acres/ 5 million dollars worth of doug fir forrest
And here's an old girl I built in 1994 that I'm converting to brushless, she reaches speeds of 100mph+
And all of these items have logged hundred of hours in the same exact place the Phantom went bonkers..........I'm guessing what is it I need to know about reliable RC and wifi again?
I have had one unexplained crash over a decade ago with an Ultimate Biplane ( if ever a grown man would have a reason to cry) and I don't have pictures of the pile of monocote that was left. I attribute it to the intense aerobatics we were performing and an RX battery somehow disconnecting, this was not on this property