what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures?

[Dirty Bird]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I've been pretty damned happy & impressed with my Vision+. I have 43 flights so far, many over large bodies of water, she has been more than 1/2 mile high, survived 30+ mph winds, and even a serious drenching in a thunderstorm. Thus far no crashes & no errors (I did have to downgrade the app from 1.0.40 > 1.0.39 due to video issues with the update). I haven't had a prop touch anything but air (and a few unfortunate bugs). The camera isn't going to record the next cinematic masterpiece at the box office, but it is fine & exactly what I was expecting. I think the vast majority of Vision+ units sold are performing admirably given a reasonably cautious & competent pilot.

We went through that period of a few days where several craft from know users vanished. Why? Who knows for sure the reason. Solar activity? GPS anamoly? We've also seen a lot of completely inexperienced pilots wreck their aircraft within the first few flights, mainly by getting ahead of themselves before they were ready. The gimbal is small & necessarily lightweight and, as with ALL motorized gimbals, it is going to sustain damage in a crash. Sometimes I wonder if some accounts are simply people trying to blame pilot error on the Phantom. The other day I saw one where a Vision+ had a "flyaway" yet the aircraft was recovered, damaged of course. Someone mentioned they should file a claim with their CC for a"defective product." So lets say you wreck your Phantom, then claim if flew away, or it just crashed by itself? Not saying anyone who thinks I might be talking about them is being untruthful but, If you are the manufacturer, how do you know? Unless you have independent video to verify the claim, or its an error showing up in most units, who knows?

The Phantom is considerably more complex than a typical RC airplane, so there will be failures. My experience has been, sooner or later EVERY RC aircraft experiences a crash. As someone once told me, "All RC aircraft has an expiration date." It goes with flying RC aircraft. The only way to be 100% certain you won't crash is to remain on the ground. If my bird went down, I would unquestionably repair or replace her.

 

[Flyer91]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Yup, I sent mine back for some intermittent flight issues, and took the refund this time.
I'll wait until it's significantly less a "luck of the draw" that you'll get a good one, before I buy again.

I see many people have no problems at all, and I see some that get really decent videos, while others (that I know are not new to flying quads/RC in general) have major issues, and the variances in the quality of videos being posted is beyond that of just managing the different camera settings and different environments.

These things are just not consistent enough in performance from one to the next for me to jump back in right now.
Hopefully DJI can(and will) settle this before they release another set of new, more featured ....... but still just "luck of the draw" products, so when you buy one you can have a reasonable amount of confidence that it will perform properly, and you won't be as subject to getting a pig wearing lipstick as you currently are.

I'm not sure if DJI has issues or you or your location are bad for UAV's. Looking back at your past post you returned 3 Visions and now 4 Vision plus's. At some point I believe I would look at myself as the cause.. Just saying.. Maybe you should stick with.. Hot wheels or something on the ground..

Actually if you 'really' read my posts you will see I have returned three P2V's and one Plus.
And as I also posted ..... the first of the 3 P2V's was because it was an "open box" that had parts missing when it got here (battery and other items) and that Amazon replaced it with a brand new P2V at no additional cost.
The first 'new' P2V had a very poor camera (as do many of them) and the second also had a less than optimum camera, but more importantly ...... the altimeter read from + to - 60' on the ground.

The Plus (as I also stated) would just go semi-nuts for a few seconds while the air (like it was settling under power) but did it in normal flight and in a hover.
It was only a minor annoyance at first but got both more frequent and progressively worse the more it was flown.
So I returned it for a refund.

As I stated in my post above ...... I 'do' see people with no problems whatsoever, but you would have to adopt an ostrich's approach to reality to think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw that you'll get a good one.

As far as my ability to fly RC aircraft ..... I have flown both planks and rotary since 1976.
I started my rotary hobby with a DuBro Tristar which was a no gyro, no collective pitch, .28cc powered, cyclic pitch only heli.
It was a real bear to do anything beyond getting out of ground effect, but I managed to persevere enough to graduate ti its bigger brother, the DuBro Shark .. hich did have collective pitch but still not gyro.

The picture below is a picture of my hobby room at old home in eh Bay Area.
The Bicentennial F15 is a Philip Avonds kit powered by a JPX propane turbine.
The helis are 30 to 90 powered glows, some gassers and a Mikado electric, kits from various mfg's.

I've written an article that was published in Rotary magazine, and judged contests at the Bayside RC club field for the Century/Heli-World Heli Jamboree.

If you think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw when buying one of these Phantoms, then you need to stick to eating more fish and smoking less crack. :lol:

 

[Flyer91]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

As someone once told me, "All RC aircraft has an expiration date." It goes with flying RC aircraft. The only way to be 100% certain you won't crash is to remain on the ground. If my bird went down, I would unquestionably repair or replace her.

I remember many years ago when a buddy was just starting and we were in a shop looking for some new servos for his trainer after a crash.
When the shop clerk asked if he wanted standard or premium servos, my pal said "well I don't know, I'm not out of the crashing stage yet"!
The clerk said "nobody ever is. :lol:

Back then we flew AM radios so it was certainly true.
Even up until the demise of PCM 1024 radios, the radio was the weakest link.

Now we have much better radios ....... but much more complex technology that can have its own double edged sword effect.
One of those effects is a much wider standard deviation from the nominal unit.
Meaning that if you plotted a bell curve for the overall performance for these as a flying camera, the distribution of their similarities to each other would be represented by a rather wide bell, defining a population that varies from each other by quite a bit.
For the layperson .... that means you get what the luck of the draw provides.

 

[Skipholiday]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Maybe time for antique roadshow.. maybe trade for a rocking horse..

Yup, I sent mine back for some intermittent flight issues, and took the refund this time.
I'll wait until it's significantly less a "luck of the draw" that you'll get a good one, before I buy again.

I see many people have no problems at all, and I see some that get really decent videos, while others (that I know are not new to flying quads/RC in general) have major issues, and the variances in the quality of videos being posted is beyond that of just managing the different camera settings and different environments.

These things are just not consistent enough in performance from one to the next for me to jump back in right now.
Hopefully DJI can(and will) settle this before they release another set of new, more featured ....... but still just "luck of the draw" products, so when you buy one you can have a reasonable amount of confidence that it will perform properly, and you won't be as subject to getting a pig wearing lipstick as you currently are.

I'm not sure if DJI has issues or you or your location are bad for UAV's. Looking back at your past post you returned 3 Visions and now 4 Vision plus's. At some point I believe I would look at myself as the cause.. Just saying.. Maybe you should stick with.. Hot wheels or something on the ground..

Actually if you 'really' read my posts you will see I have returned three P2V's and one Plus.
And as I also posted ..... the first of the 3 P2V's was because it was an "open box" that had parts missing when it got here (battery and other items) and that Amazon replaced it with a brand new P2V at no additional cost.
The first 'new' P2V had a very poor camera (as do many of them) and the second also had a less than optimum camera, but more importantly ...... the altimeter read from + to - 60' on the ground.

The Plus (as I also stated) would just go semi-nuts for a few seconds while the air (like it was settling under power) but did it in normal flight and in a hover.
It was only a minor annoyance at first but got both more frequent and progressively worse the more it was flown.
So I returned it for a refund.

As I stated in my post above ...... I 'do' see people with no problems whatsoever, but you would have to adopt an ostrich's approach to reality to think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw that you'll get a good one.

As far as my ability to fly RC aircraft ..... I have flown both planks and rotary since 1976.
I started my rotary hobby with a DuBro Tristar which was a no gyro, no collective pitch, .28cc powered, cyclic pitch only heli.
It was a real bear to do anything beyond getting out of ground effect, but I managed to persevere enough to graduate ti its bigger brother, the DuBro Shark .. hich did have collective pitch but still not gyro.

The picture below is a picture of my hobby room at old home in eh Bay Area.
The Bicentennial F15 is a Philip Avonds kit powered by a JPX propane turbine.
The helis are 30 to 90 powered glows, some gassers and a Mikado electric, kits from various mfg's.

I've written an article that was published in Rotary magazine, and judged contests at the Bayside RC club field for the Century/Heli-World Heli Jamboree.

If you think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw when buying one of these Phantoms, then you need to stick to eating more fish and smoking less crack. :lol:

 

[Skipholiday]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I love hearing the success stories. Lots of doom and gloom and very few take credit. Thank you for your post..
No major water flights for me but all successful with Vision and Vision plus. Only close to a crash I've had was a slow takeoff and I rototilled a second. :-/

I've been pretty damned happy & impressed with my Vision+. I have 43 flights so far, many over large bodies of water, she has been more than 1/2 mile high, survived 30+ mph winds, and even a serious drenching in a thunderstorm. Thus far no crashes & no errors (I did have to downgrade the app from 1.0.40 > 1.0.39 due to video issues with the update). I haven't had a prop touch anything but air (and a few unfortunate bugs). The camera isn't going to record the next cinematic masterpiece at the box office, but it is fine & exactly what I was expecting. I think the vast majority of Vision+ units sold are performing admirably given a reasonably cautious & competent pilot.

We went through that period of a few days where several craft from know users vanished. Why? Who knows for sure the reason. Solar activity? GPS anamoly? We've also seen a lot of completely inexperienced pilots wreck their aircraft within the first few flights, mainly by getting ahead of themselves before they were ready. The gimbal is small & necessarily lightweight and, as with ALL motorized gimbals, it is going to sustain damage in a crash. Sometimes I wonder if some accounts are simply people trying to blame pilot error on the Phantom. The other day I saw one where a Vision+ had a "flyaway" yet the aircraft was recovered, damaged of course. Someone mentioned they should file a claim with their CC for a"defective product." So lets say you wreck your Phantom, then claim if flew away, or it just crashed by itself? Not saying anyone who thinks I might be talking about them is being untruthful but, If you are the manufacturer, how do you know? Unless you have independent video to verify the claim, or its an error showing up in most units, who knows?

The Phantom is considerably more complex than a typical RC airplane, so there will be failures. My experience has been, sooner or later EVERY RC aircraft experiences a crash. As someone once told me, "All RC aircraft has an expiration date." It goes with flying RC aircraft. The only way to be 100% certain you won't crash is to remain on the ground. If my bird went down, I would unquestionably repair or replace her.

 

[tpeterson421]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

On my second v2+. first one had a gimbal issue after the firmware update. would go crazy and never stop moving. returned it and got another. flew fine until the update again. took it out after the update to show the kids how it worked...started up just fine, gps lock, compass calibrated, fresh battery, no wind and sunny skies....easy flight...nope....started to climb and at about 25 feet it just stopped and fell to the ground. im going to try one more and after that if i still have issues, ill wait for something else. this is a horrible experience. ill take the chance on the next with no updates as well.

 

[Flyer91]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I love hearing the success stories. Lots of doom and gloom and very few take credit. Thank you for your post..
No major water flights for me but all successful with Vision and Vision plus. Only close to a crash I've had was a slow takeoff and I rototilled a second. :-/

Ya know ... I've heard that if you have pilot skill problems that result in you rototilling it, you just might want to stick to Hot Wheels ...... :lol:

 

[Skipholiday]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

tou·ché

I love hearing the success stories. Lots of doom and gloom and very few take credit. Thank you for your post..
No major water flights for me but all successful with Vision and Vision plus. Only close to a crash I've had was a slow takeoff and I rototilled a second. :-/

Ya know ... I've heard that if you have pilot skill problems that result in you rototilling it, you just might want to stick to Hot Wheels ...... :lol:

 

[offtosleep]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Yup, I sent mine back for some intermittent flight issues, and took the refund this time.
I'll wait until it's significantly less a "luck of the draw" that you'll get a good one, before I buy again.

I see many people have no problems at all, and I see some that get really decent videos, while others (that I know are not new to flying quads/RC in general) have major issues, and the variances in the quality of videos being posted is beyond that of just managing the different camera settings and different environments.

These things are just not consistent enough in performance from one to the next for me to jump back in right now.
Hopefully DJI can(and will) settle this before they release another set of new, more featured ....... but still just "luck of the draw" products, so when you buy one you can have a reasonable amount of confidence that it will perform properly, and you won't be as subject to getting a pig wearing lipstick as you currently are.

I'm not sure if DJI has issues or you or your location are bad for UAV's. Looking back at your past post you returned 3 Visions and now 4 Vision plus's. At some point I believe I would look at myself as the cause.. Just saying.. Maybe you should stick with.. Hot wheels or something on the ground..

Actually if you 'really' read my posts you will see I have returned three P2V's and one Plus.
And as I also posted ..... the first of the 3 P2V's was because it was an "open box" that had parts missing when it got here (battery and other items) and that Amazon replaced it with a brand new P2V at no additional cost.
The first 'new' P2V had a very poor camera (as do many of them) and the second also had a less than optimum camera, but more importantly ...... the altimeter read from + to - 60' on the ground.

The Plus (as I also stated) would just go semi-nuts for a few seconds while the air (like it was settling under power) but did it in normal flight and in a hover.
It was only a minor annoyance at first but got both more frequent and progressively worse the more it was flown.
So I returned it for a refund.

As I stated in my post above ...... I 'do' see people with no problems whatsoever, but you would have to adopt an ostrich's approach to reality to think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw that you'll get a good one.

As far as my ability to fly RC aircraft ..... I have flown both planks and rotary since 1976.
I started my rotary hobby with a DuBro Tristar which was a no gyro, no collective pitch, .28cc powered, cyclic pitch only heli.
It was a real bear to do anything beyond getting out of ground effect, but I managed to persevere enough to graduate ti its bigger brother, the DuBro Shark .. hich did have collective pitch but still not gyro.

The picture below is a picture of my hobby room at old home in eh Bay Area.
The Bicentennial F15 is a Philip Avonds kit powered by a JPX propane turbine.
The helis are 30 to 90 powered glows, some gassers and a Mikado electric, kits from various mfg's.

I've written an article that was published in Rotary magazine, and judged contests at the Bayside RC club field for the Century/Heli-World Heli Jamboree.

If you think that you are not subject to the luck of the draw when buying one of these Phantoms, then you need to stick to eating more fish and smoking less crack. :lol:

Well said Flyer91!

Those owners who have never had a problem have a difficult time understand those of us who have had a problem (despite our previous experience/piloting skills).

 

[flydji]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

This is really good question. I have always admire DJI to come up with Phantom. I had the first one which I had no problem but when I got the PV Plus, it fails...I guess I got the defective one. If you have no problem throwing $1500 away then it would be worth the money to spend. The main problem is the DJI has no customer support...it is almost impossible to get hold of them or even get any response via email. This forums is really helpful but in my case I still have no response to the problem with our Ranger Extender which seem defective.

 

[quadcopter]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I couldn't be happier with mine. I've got about 40 flights out of it so far and had one problem - an uncontrolled descent which was totally my fault.

Have you done all the updates of firmware? Are you at the latest rev or did you leave it as you received it?

 

[Flyer91]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Well said Flyer91!

Those owners who have never had a problem have a difficult time understand those of us who have had a problem (despite our previous experience/piloting skills).

Thanks!

Yeah .... I think that the folks that do have winners might understandably take offense to posts suggesting that there apparently is not the type of statistical process control at DJI that would narrow the gap between good ones and the (undoubtedly much smaller) population of not so good ones.
Not only can it be considered a bit of a slap to the face for these happy owners, it can also possibly be received as devaluating their property.

But the fact remains that, even if you discount all of the flying issues people that report having, just by cruising the YouTube and Vimo viddys that people post, you can 'see' there is a huge gap between the quality of the cameras, that is well beyond what the camera settings in the app, or the environment they are being shot in can account for.

IMHO: It's just totally unreasonable for anyone to think that these variances in the cameras are limited to only the cameras, and that the rest of the Plus' performance is immune to the same degree of variances from one Phantom to the next.
After all it's still just a technology that can have a total brain freeze issue that's fixed by simply rebooting.

Much to the point made by Skipholiday, I too like to read reports that people are having no issues at all, and getting to see the outstanding videos their cameras are producing, as it does demonstrate that DJI 'is' capable of producing a **** near perfect Phanton, they just need (IMHO) to implement some sort of improved statistical process control to narrow the gap between the good, the bad ..... and the ugly 'every' time, for me to shell out $ for it again.

 

[Skipholiday]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Well said Flyer91!

Those owners who have never had a problem have a difficult time understand those of us who have had a problem (despite our previous experience/piloting skills).

Thanks!

Yeah .... I think that the folks that do have winners might understandably take offense to posts suggesting that there apparently is not the type of statistical process control at DJI that would narrow the gap between good ones and the (undoubtedly much smaller) population of not so good ones.
Not only can it be considered a bit of a slap to the face for these happy owners, it can also possibly be received as devaluating their property.

But the fact remains that, even if you discount all of the flying issues people that report having, just by cruising the YouTube and Vimo viddys that people post, you can 'see' there is a huge gap between the quality of the cameras, that is well beyond what the camera settings in the app, or the environment they are being shot in can account for.

IMHO: It's just totally unreasonable for anyone to think that these variances in the cameras are limited to only the cameras, and that the rest of the Plus' performance is immune to the same degree of variances from one Phantom to the next.
After all it's still just a technology that can have a total brain freeze issue that's fixed by simply rebooting.

Much to the point made by Skipholiday, I too like to read reports that people are having no issues at all, and getting to see the outstanding videos their cameras are producing, as it does demonstrate that DJI 'is' capable of producing a **** near perfect Phanton, they just need (IMHO) to implement some sort of improved statistical process control to narrow the gap between the good, the bad ..... and the ugly 'every' time, for me to shell out $ for it again.

well said, but I still see hot wheels in your future

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[pyrophantom]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Have both the P2V and the plus and have had no problems apart from the shitty apps !!

:|

 

[Flyer91]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

well said, but I still see hot wheels in your future

I sure wish you had seen them in my past!
Some of those **** things are worth a fortune now!!

 

[Drone-Outlaw]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Firmware issues...
Moose

★An expert's opinion. Not mine.....

 

[Phantom_Menace66]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

Ok, well I am 'one of those' people who had a brand new P2V+ on just it's 4th flight fall out of the sky. Without going too deep into it, all pre-flight checks were performed as required. It was in the air 40-45sec climbing slowly and moving forward. No trees, no buildings, nothing. Just open space & (I believe) the motors stopped for some reason. If not completely, long enough for it to hit the ground. Had it been 100+ feet up who knows, it may have regained power.
Of bigger concern to me, is the fact I have sent 6 emails & photos to DJI customer support with absolutely NO RESPONSE. There is no DJI dealer/stockist here so I had to purchase it through the DJI website direct. If they ever read my emails I can guarantee they will blame pilot error (Of course).
I have ordered a new one, but I will keep up the fight with DJI until they replace the damaged one, refund my $1500AUD or prove to me satisfactorily that it was not a fault of the unit.

 

[Skipholiday]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

well said, but I still see hot wheels in your future

I sure wish you had seen them in my past!
Some of those **** things are worth a fortune now!!

I bet I loved those little cars, they were built rugged.
I remember tweaking the axles to get more lift..

 

[D_Tshudy]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I couldn't be happier with mine. I've got about 40 flights out of it so far and had one problem - an uncontrolled descent which was totally my fault.

Have you done all the updates of firmware? Are you at the latest rev or did you leave it as you received it?

When I had the uncontrolled descent I was on firmware 3.0 which is what was received from the factory. I am now on the latest of everything.

 

[Gustavo10]

Re: what is the general consensus as to the rash of failures

I've been flying my P2V+ since May 17, and an FC40 since April. In all that time, beside operator error, I've had one problem; my gimbal on the P2V+ isn't perfectly level (off by 3 degrees).

But...
I opened my phantom, checked the connections and placed silicon on some questionable connections.
I've switched to NAZA mode.
I've set altitude and vertical distance limits (when I was using firmware 3.0, I now fly 1.08- no limits)
I've tested my s1 and s2 switches for malfunctions (seems to be a problem with some peope).
I switched my s1 to enable manual mode, and learned to fly manually very well, to protect against GPS errors.
I calibrate my IMU after any bump or hard landing.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, Joe, you've done what eventually we all have to do. But my case is pretty factual:
1 I was flying the P2 on ideal whether
2 Batteries fully charged
3 GPS on
4 Was bringing it back towards me when it started to fall, not like a stone but more like a leaf from a tree
5 It took some 3 to 4 seconds to disappear behind a building about 150 metres away (but still not found)
6 Only when I realised it wasn't recovering did I try giving it more throttle, to no avail
From those facts I conclude:
I didn't do anything wrong and nothing I could have done would have made any difference, because:
not dropping like a stone indicates that some rotors but not all were still working
A quad cannot glide, so that wavering was due to a fight between the rotos to raise it without the fourth one, impossible
If not all of the rotors stopped, then it must have been an internal fault of the quad

I am sure that DJI would dismiss any claim from me, since I have no proof; even the video I was taking with a small Vivitar dig cam stuck to its belly would be insufficient, but it would coorroborate my story. Pity it is lost too.