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Another maps problem thread

Jesse_M

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Hey guys/gals! First off just want to say hi to the community. I am new here but a long time pilot since the days of my P1 with a gopro...I came over from Phantom Pilots.

I hate to start a new thread on this but after hours of searching I am coming up empty handed so maybe my problem is unique to my equipment.

I am using a Samsung Note 4 with no sim strictly for the GO app and nothing else. The app and Mavic have worked well for my first few flights but I noticed yesterday (probably shouldn't have been noticing mid-flight) that my maps section is black...no map loaded and I'm not even sure I had a home-point set. (I should know better)

I have only done a few flights with the Mavic but I know that the first few had a HP and maps were working.

So I tried to revert to an older Go app version hoping that would help. I went back 2 versions and nothing changed. I was using the APK manager site that was recommended on @msinger page...needless to say I'm afraid to try that again because my phone crashed bad last night and had a heck of a time getting it back up and running. Maybe that is unrelated but it didn't seem to like downloading old versions of the app from that APK site.

Am I missing something? On my P3P with the Go app and a Samsung tablet I was always able to see my maps and flight path in airplane mode (no cellular or anything)

Thanks to anyone who can offer some advice!
 
Hey guys/gals! First off just want to say hi to the community. I am new here but a long time pilot since the days of my P1 with a gopro...I came over from Phantom Pilots.

I hate to start a new thread on this but after hours of searching I am coming up empty handed so maybe my problem is unique to my equipment.

I am using a Samsung Note 4 with no sim strictly for the GO app and nothing else. The app and Mavic have worked well for my first few flights but I noticed yesterday (probably shouldn't have been noticing mid-flight) that my maps section is black...no map loaded and I'm not even sure I had a home-point set. (I should know better)

I have only done a few flights with the Mavic but I know that the first few had a HP and maps were working.

So I tried to revert to an older Go app version hoping that would help. I went back 2 versions and nothing changed. I was using the APK manager site that was recommended on @msinger page...needless to say I'm afraid to try that again because my phone crashed bad last night and had a heck of a time getting it back up and running. Maybe that is unrelated but it didn't seem to like downloading old versions of the app from that APK site.

Am I missing something? On my P3P with the Go app and a Samsung tablet I was always able to see my maps and flight path in airplane mode (no cellular or anything)

Thanks to anyone who can offer some advice!
Howdy from Wyoming @Jesse_M , welcome to the community, plenty of fine folk and excellent information here.
 
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Hey guys/gals! First off just want to say hi to the community. I am new here but a long time pilot
Welcome!
I am using a Samsung Note 4 with no sim strictly for the GO app and nothing else. The app and Mavic have worked well for my first few flights but I noticed yesterday (probably shouldn't have been noticing mid-flight) that my maps section is black...no map loaded and I'm not even sure I had a home-point set. (I should know better)
Without a WiFi connection, at least, the map will indeed be empty, completely data-free. The drone will still set and record its home point (as long as you don't launch & buzz away too hastily!), so RTH will work regardless.

Am I missing something?
You're missing the maps. :p

On my P3P with the Go app and a Samsung tablet I was always able to see my maps and flight path in airplane mode (no cellular or anything)
The map data must have been loaded and cached (probably via WiFi) before you went into Airplane Mode. The DJI apps most certainly do not include internal maps, only web access to whatever maps you request at flight-time. Without web access (for whatever reason, including but not limited to Airplane Mode), the map feature has no data to display.
That said, DJI Go 4 will cache one location when it's open and web-connected (more than one, if you're using Android), and that location will be available later when you're offline. I'm going to guess that's what your prior experience was based on, because as I said, DJI apps have no internal maps.
In any case, without a live web link (cellular, probably), you never get satellite imagery when you're offline, even if you cached the location. :(
 
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Appreciate your reply!

I was under the impression that a GPS enabled device allowed the maps program to work even while 'offline'. Am I mistaken on that then?

And you mention the cache...how can I best get the most amount of 'cached' maps? I fly only for photography so I don't really 'plan' to fly but do so if I am out and about (often times far away from home) and see something I want to capture.

Thanks again for your help.
 
I was under the impression that a GPS enabled device allowed the maps program to work even while 'offline'. Am I mistaken on that then?
Kind of. If you cache a location (or multiple locations, using DJI Go 4 on Android), that map will be present when you fly that location, even if offline. If you have not cached a location that you want to fly, and you are currently offline, your map will be empty on that flight.
And you mention the cache...how can I best get the most amount of 'cached' maps? I fly only for photography so I don't really 'plan' to fly but do so if I am out and about (often times far away from home) and see something I want to capture.
You'll want to use the "Offline Maps" feature, available from the "hamburger" menu in the top right corner of the DJI Go 4 home screen on an Android device. Cache what you can (the feature is not unlimited), and again understand that the cached data does not include satellite imagery. Apple users have it worse.
I really hope DJI gets their location-caching act together. I don't care about the storage footprint; I can buy storage. I want offline access to detailed location data, including satellite imagery!
 
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Kind of. If you cache a location (or multiple locations, using DJI Go 4 on Android), that map will be present when you fly that location, even if offline. If you have not cached a location that you want to fly, and you are currently offline, your map will be empty on that flight.
You'll want to use the "Offline Maps" feature, available from the "hamburger" menu in the top right corner of the DJI Go 4 home screen on an Android device. Cache what you can (the feature is not unlimited), and again understand that the cached data does not include satellite imagery. Apple users have it worse.
I really hope DJI gets their location-caching act together. I don't care about the storage footprint; I can buy storage. I want offline access to detailed location data, including satellite imagery!

Fully agree! This needs to be easier because many of us use offline devices. I will give this a go later when I get home. Thanks again for your help!
 
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Fully agree! This needs to be easier because many of us use offline devices. I will give this a go later when I get home. Thanks again for your help!
just try think about it this way your looking at where your going to fly before you fly I have my iPad set to store 16 gig of maps space .. I just do a quick scan with the app before a flight and alls good
 
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... I have my iPad set to store 16 gig of maps space .. I just do a quick scan with the app before a flight and alls good

All is good provided A) your flight was preplanned, B) you don’t need the satellite view, C) you’re only flying one location (Android users get to cache several locations, but with limits (A) and (B) still present, and the cache limit is ~8 or 9 locations.)

Limitation (A) has no software solution: even an ideal caching scheme can’t account for unplanned flights in unexpected places. That’s fine.

Limitation (C) has a partial solution in DJI Go4, but only for Android users.

Nothing I’ve seen so far even tosses a fig at limitation (B), and there’s the rub: where I fly, a “roadmap” is pointless. There are no roads, so the ‘map’ is a featureless green block. I need satellite imagery.
 
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...Am I missing something? On my P3P with the Go app and a Samsung tablet I was always able to see my maps and flight path in airplane mode (no cellular or anything)...
...You'll want to use the "Offline Maps" feature, available from the "hamburger" menu in the top right corner of the DJI Go 4 home screen on an Android device...
... where I fly, a “roadmap” is pointless. There are no roads, so the ‘map’ is a featureless green block. I need satellite imagery.
You should be able to download the offline map for Colorado and then use it while in airplane mode. Hopefully you have some roads nearby to make it useful as was noted there is no satellite view.
 
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Yeah that would be awesome if I could basically do the whole state. I guess I'm just frustrated because I never had to 'cache' anything on my old Samsung tablet/P3P setup, I always had a map and also I kept my whole system 'offline'...Hopefully I can cache-in (get it? $$$ lol) and get setup for a large area here in Colorado.
 
Yeah that would be awesome if I could basically do the whole state. I guess I'm just frustrated because I never had to 'cache' anything on my old Samsung tablet/P3P setup, I always had a map and also I kept my whole system 'offline'...Hopefully I can cache-in (get it? $$$ lol) and get setup for a large area here in Colorado.
If you had any maps ever, it’s 100% certain that your P3P system was not always offline. Again, DJI apps don’t have any internal maps at all. Zippo, nada, zilch. At some point, the app pulled the map(s) you saw off the internet, full-stop, case closed. :D
If you cache too large an area, smaller roads will probably be absent. And if you plan to fly a trackless area (a lot of the good stuff!) a roadmap will be useless to you.
Who cares about the map anyway, if you have zoom it so far out—say, to show the nearest intersection—that a 2-mile flight is a small smudge, 95% obscured by the “Home Point” icon and the flying wedge representing the drone? o_O
This is the reality for pilots in the Great American West: roadmaps in the DJI Go 4 app, or any other controller app, are often useless.
 
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Well, I cached a big chunk of the State, as much as Google Maps allows. I could drill all the way down on the roadmap offline, at least in Google Maps.

I had qualified success with the integration of that offline map in DJI Go 4. The map wouldn’t fully load unless I pinched way out. Then I could zoom in as usual.

The caching of satellite imagery is a mess. If you get anything, the resolution is widely variable, and mostly way too coarse to be of use in flight. Even within the same cached locale, resolution in various “patches” (the squares of data) ranges from 2-miles per pixel, to ultra-high half-meter! But I can’t seem to reliably get full resolution satellite data for a specific square mile area.

Still working on it!
 
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Yeah I guess at some point I had done that without knowing on my old setup because I flew all over this state and never had to 'load' any maps. I wasn't able to fly this weekend to test it but hopefully I got a large amount stored now...
 
I just got back from vacation and I flew a lake that was out of cell service, so no map. I flew anyway, and ended up flying into the trees on the shore. the bird was out of sight, and without the map I had a interesting time locating it 7 hrs. later I had it. sent it to dji today for repair. Now this is 100% pilot error, and I learned a lot with this experience. If I had a map I would've known how close I was to the shore, and this would've, probably, not happened. I have the dji crash plan, so I'm glad for that. I don't usually fly without a hotspot, so I can get maps on the iPad. in short, maps can be very important when flying bvlos especially if you have a crash.
 
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Glad you recovered it!
 
I think that is the biggest problem. If you don't have a map loaded how could you find it if it went down? Is there any other way? Does the mavic have a 'find me' function? I came from a P3P which obviously does not but I thought I have heard of the 'find me' function somewhere...?
 
I had to leave the area, and get cell/Wi-Fi I used Google earth and entered last know coordinates and it was very accurate to the physical drone. I should note this worked because his cell carrier has signal there. if not it would have been more challenging. good experience, and not too costly.
 
I had to leave the area, and get cell/Wi-Fi I used Google earth and entered last know coordinates and it was very accurate to the physical drone. I should note this worked because his cell carrier has signal there. if not it would have been more challenging. good experience, and not too costly.
his=my brother.
 
Well I flew Tuesday in a new area and did the cache process beforehand at home...zoomed in and out in the area I knew I'd be flying. It didn't work. I had no map details on my screen when I flew. Just a blue dot and arrow while flying. Like I mentioned my frustration is that I never had this issue with the older Go app on a P3P. Seems like this is a huge weak point with the Go app. I really hope it never leaves me hanging if I really need to view the map details for some reason.
On a side note the Mavic is really a sweet drone!
 
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Well I flew Tuesday in a new area and did the cache process beforehand at home...zoomed in and out in the area I knew I'd be flying. It didn't work. I had no map details on my screen when I flew. Just a blue dot and arrow while flying. Like I mentioned my frustration is that I never had this issue with the older Go app on a P3P. Seems like this is a huge weak point with the Go app. I really hope it never leaves me hanging if I really need to view the map details for some reason.
On a side note the Mavic is really a sweet drone!
Apparently you have to leave the go4 app open, after caching the offline map, until you fly. Seems like a huge weakness in the software. I have not completely tested or verified thus, but got the information from other users after running into the same problem while flying without data service.
 
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