Using internet while connected to wifi extender

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Am I missing something? DJI talks about being able to post pics and vids while still in the air, but don't you have to turn off your wifi to do it?

Not a big deal but with an updated app that will do waypoint flying supposedly coming, how is it going to get the satellite overlay of your location without being able to access the internet?
 
ryanhoelzer said:
Am I missing something? DJI talks about being able to post pics and vids while still in the air, but don't you have to turn off your wifi to do it?

Not if you have a phone with a data connection. I don't know of any phone that would have to turn off wifi to get cell data.
Maybe I'm missing something?

What are you using to connect to your Phantom?
 
Think about it this way. If you have a router that's not connected to the internet, and you connect to it with wifi, your cellular connections isn't going to work, and you're not going to be able to get to the internet.

I'm not an IP expert but it seems like there should be some type of bridging or something that would let both connections work at the same time?

My biggest question was just wanting to verify that everyone else sees the same thing. If you're connected to the wifi extender can you connect to email, facebook, etc??
 
Doesn't work by default, but it can be done with iOS devices like iPhone or iPad (probably Android, too but I'm not familiar with it). Requires a small, simple hack.

The Phantom Wifi extender normally acts as a DHCP server and dynamically assigns your phone's IP address, Subnet Mask, Router/Gateway address, and DNS address when you connect.

When you connect to the Phantom wifi, look at these settings and write them down.

Now edit the Phantom wifi connection entry on your phone:
- change DHCP to Static
- enter the IP address you wrote down (192.168.1.215 in my case)
- enter the Subnet Mask you wrote down (255.255.255.0 in my case)
- leave Router/Gateway BLANK
- leave DNS BLANK

Now your phone knows the Internet cannot be reached on this wifi connection. So it will now use 3G/4G data whenever an internet connection is required. But it will still maintain the wifi connection as a local network, and the Vision App will keep working.

It seems to me that DJI *should* have programmed the Wifi Extender's DHCP server to always provide BLANK addresses for Router/Gateway and DNS in the first place. It's not like you can connect to the Internet thru your Phantom!
 
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jimre said:
Doesn't work by default, but it can be done with iOS devices like iPhone or iPad (probably Android, too but I'm not familiar with it). Requires a small, simple hack.

The Phantom Wifi extender normally acts as a DHCP server and dynamically assigns your phone's IP address, Subnet Mask, Router/Gateway address, and DNS address when you connect.

When you connect to the Phantom wifi, look at these settings and write them down.

Now edit the Phantom wifi connection entry on your phone:
- change DHCP to Static
- enter the IP address you wrote down (192.168.1.215 in my case)
- enter the Subnet Mask you wrote down (255.255.255.0 in my case)
- leave Router/Gateway BLANK
- leave DNS BLANK

Now your phone knows the Internet cannot be reached on this wifi connection. So it will now use 3G/4G data whenever an internet connection is required. But it will still maintain the wifi connection as a local network, and the Vision App will keep working.

It seems to me that DJI *should* have programmed the Wifi Extender's DHCP server to always provide BLANK addresses for Router/Gateway and DNS in the first place. It's not like you can connect to the Internet thru your Phantom!

Wow, this is an excellent workaround, thanks so much for posting it. Definitely sticky material. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't also work on Android, since all the same properties can be configured.

This will make the waypoints maps work 100% better than trying to jump through caching hoops when it's released.
 
AnselA said:
varmint said:
I don't see any reason why this wouldn't also work on Android, since all the same properties can be configured.

I just have not succeeded to find where to tweak these in "my" Android 4.2.2 Any hints?

You can do this easily and you don't have to be connected to your phantom. On android got to settings, wifi, find the phantom in the list of your wifi addresses, long click on it and a new box will come up in which you can modify the details of the phantom ssid
 
That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks jimre.

Seems like that should be part of the setup instructions..
 
Hopping in on this thread.

Question: Should the Phantom's wifi connection to the extender be dropped when the phone tries to do something "Internet" realted such as getting map data?

This is what happens to me when I'm connected from my android 4.4 device to the Phantom's wifi extender/repeater. The moment I try anything "internet" related, the phone drops the extender wifi connection and connects to the internet via mobile data and then the connection to the Phantom is broken.

I"m assuming that an Android device can't be connected to wifi and mobile data at the same time?

Thanks
 
Nice!

I have found that sometimes my Android phone will maintain a data connection over it's 3G/4G while I'm connected to Phantom_xxxx, and sometimes it won't. Confused me how it could... but it did. It let me register and login to my Vision app account the first time I launched it while I was still connected to the Phantom WiFi. But then, other times, it won't let me pull up sharing or news. So I'm betting the settings above will at least make it more consistent.

As for the waypoints... it sounds like once you set those via the Vision app on your mobile device, they are actually stored on the copter... so no further communication with the app is necessary as it visits each waypoint autonomously (unless, of course, you wish to regain control). But, you're right, it's going to have to download the overlays during setup at least... while you're connected to Phantom_xxxx.
 
RScottCampbell said:
Hopping in on this thread.

Question: Should the Phantom's wifi connection to the extender be dropped when the phone tries to do something "Internet" realted such as getting map data?

This is what happens to me when I'm connected from my android 4.4 device to the Phantom's wifi extender/repeater. The moment I try anything "internet" related, the phone drops the extender wifi connection and connects to the internet via mobile data and then the connection to the Phantom is broken.

I"m assuming that an Android device can't be connected to wifi and mobile data at the same time?

Thanks

If you scroll over the area you wish to fly while connected to the internet and not the Phantom, the maps will be cached. This needs to be done in the app itself. I don't believe there is any way for your phone to be connected to the net and your wifi extender at the same time. I assume we are talking about ground station.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
jimre said:
Doesn't work by default, but it can be done with iOS devices like iPhone or iPad (probably Android, too but I'm not familiar with it). Requires a small, simple hack.

The Phantom Wifi extender normally acts as a DHCP server and dynamically assigns your phone's IP address, Subnet Mask, Router/Gateway address, and DNS address when you connect.

When you connect to the Phantom wifi, look at these settings and write them down.

Now edit the Phantom wifi connection entry on your phone:
- change DHCP to Static
- enter the IP address you wrote down (192.168.1.215 in my case)
- enter the Subnet Mask you wrote down (255.255.255.0 in my case)
- leave Router/Gateway BLANK
- leave DNS BLANK

Now your phone knows the Internet cannot be reached on this wifi connection. So it will now use 3G/4G data whenever an internet connection is required. But it will still maintain the wifi connection as a local network, and the Vision App will keep working.

It seems to me that DJI *should* have programmed the Wifi Extender's DHCP server to always provide BLANK addresses for Router/Gateway and DNS in the first place. It's not like you can connect to the Internet thru your Phantom!

Thanks Jimre, great info!
 
Just "chipping in",

I have a android phone sony z1 and a nexus 7, so one neat way is to use internet over bluetooth between them.
That is have the Nexus 7 (wifi only tablet) doing the DJI app over wifi and getting the needed data for gs over the bluetooth and using the internet on the phone getting it.
Did some speed test today on 3g and got 1,7mb up/down on the "nexus 7/bluetooth/sony z1/internet", that is enough for google maps and geo sat data from my empirical testing.

Tried to google some page that cover this and came up with this,
http://www.scaine.net/site/2013/01/andr ... bluetooth/

Had to enable data over gsm first the bluetooth and then the inet sharing on phone before trying to connect with the nexus 7.

I actually have not done a live test with phantom yet but I can not see any reason why this should not work.

OBS,
As some good poster (big kudoz) discovered before you most certainly have to set the phantom wifi connection to static and no router/dns as posted before for it to work with phantom app.

-Tomas
 
jimre said:
Now edit the Phantom wifi connection entry on your phone:
- change DHCP to Static
- enter the IP address you wrote down (192.168.1.215 in my case)
- enter the Subnet Mask you wrote down (255.255.255.0 in my case)
- leave Router/Gateway BLANK
- leave DNS BLANK

Hmmmmmm... I'm trying this on my Android phone (Galaxy S4 running Android 4.3) and it looks like Google, in their infinite wisdom, will not allow BLANKs for Gateway nor DNS. Leaving those fields blank in the config deactivates the Save Configuration button so you can't save those settings. Grrrrr.

Maybe there's a way to do the same thing through the admin pages of the repeater itself?

If I connect my laptop to the repeater, it immediately knows there is no internet connection. But maybe my phone isn't as smart as my laptop.
 
ProfessorStein said:
Hmmmmmm... I'm trying this on my Android phone (Galaxy S4 running Android 4.3) and it looks like Google, in their infinite wisdom, will not allow BLANKs for Gateway nor DNS. Leaving those fields blank in the config deactivates the Save Configuration button so you can't save those settings. Grrrrr.

I have the same problem on Lenovo / Android 4.2.2.
 
ProfessorStein said:
jimre said:
it looks like Google, in their infinite wisdom, will not allow BLANKs for Gateway nor DNS. Leaving those fields blank in the config deactivates the Save Configuration button so you can't save those settings. Grrrrr.
.

I ran into the same issue with Android 4.4. I tried to search on apps that might circumvent this "feature", but they all required root and they were all meant essentially for ganging internet connections for faster downloads. These apps didn't mention maintaining multiple connections outside of the download process.
 
I wonder if you could figure out what the dns and gateway for your cellular connection are if you could use them?

I don't have any android devices but a quick search showed an app called ipconfig, not sure if it works with the cellular connection or only wifi.

Another one called network info II.
 
ryanhoelzer said:
I wonder if you could figure out what the dns and gateway for your cellular connection are if you could use them?

I don't have any android devices but a quick search showed an app called ipconfig, not sure if it works with the cellular connection or only wifi.

Another one called network info II.

I have IpConfig installed and just tried your idea. I can get the Host Address, which appears to be an IP and the Host Name, which appears to be the IP for a DNS server.
 

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