Flyaway on Waypoints - DJI support and offer is terrible

[7thstring]

I assume you know about Litchi - if not, now is the time to look into it. I have the MA and therefore don't have waypoints as an option in GO4, so I can't say anything on how good or bad it is. But I have used Litchi, it is really good.

Thanks Doppler I know Litchi but never used it - because I (how ironic!) tend to trust more DJI own software.
Getting back to other comments, if a similar issue happened with Litchi, wouldn't I be receiving a whole different treatment (e.g. more "hostile") by DJI? Just out of curiosity...

 

[Justin Playfair]

If the car had a feature for an autonomous trip, and I programmed one that was within its performance capabilities, and ended up with a wrecked car; yes! I absolutely will blame that on them. What are you insinuating here? That the OP wrecked his Mavic and is now blaming DJI for it? What led you to that conclusion?

Only in this case, there is no car with data that could be used to determine who was at fault. Are you saying that you think you'd be likely to get a replacement or at least that you think the dealership SHOULD provide one in that scenario?

 

[Deleted member 94047]

if a similar issue happened with Litchi, wouldn't I be receiving a whole different treatment (e.g. more "hostile") by DJI? Just out of curiosity...

With The Birds answered that. They will most likely refuse the Litchi log as evidence and tell you were out of any warranty claims since you were using a third party app.

We should mention however that DJI won’t accept a Litchi log for analysis (even if it records the whole flight).

 

[7thstring]

Only in this case, there is no car with data that could be used to determine who was at fault. Are you saying that you think you'd be likely to get a replacement or at least that you think the dealership SHOULD provide one in that scenario?

Gents fingers crossed I sent an "expedition" to recover the drone (also by fellow drone pilots who will "scan" the area from the sky) so our curiosity might be satisfied. The only issue is that it was the penultimate day of my holiday and I didn't have enough time to recover it.

 

[Deleted member 94047]

Only in this case, there is no car with data that could be used to determine who was at fault. Are you saying that you think you'd be likely to get a replacement or at least that you think the dealership SHOULD provide one in that scenario?

I can think of a million other things to do than answer this. Good day to you sir!

 

[7thstring]

With The Birds answered that. They will most likely refuse the Litchi log as evidence and tell you were out of any warranty claims since you were using a third party app.

Thanks. Although - on a second thought - Waypoints are fully resident on the drone itself, so it shouldn't matter whether you set them via GO4, Litchi or injected them manually. If the drone was recovered and deemed to be at fault.

 

[Justin Playfair]

I can think of a million other things to do than answer this. Good day to you sir!

That's what I thought. Good day to you too, sir.

 

[WithTheBirds]

Thanks. Although - on a second thought - Waypoints are fully resident on the drone itself, so it shouldn't matter whether you set them via GO4, Litchi or injected them manually. If the drone was recovered and deemed to be at fault.

While DJI has demonstrated they won’t accept a litchi log for analysis you are bang on- if the AC is available and the dat file reveals hardware/firmware failure they will honour warranty. It would be stupid for them to argue litchi or any third party app automatically voids warranty where they supply the SDK to developers.

 

[sar104]

Okay. 30% seemingly sorted. Can we now please focus only on the fact that the app loses all waypoints on disconnection? And the fact that DJI doesn't allow us customers to set waypoints (not that I would want again to after what happened) on the app as standalone?

Did the aircraft disconnect or did the app crash? Or both?

With The Birds answered that. They will most likely refuse the Litchi log as evidence and tell you were out of any warranty claims since you were using a third party app.

DJI will not refuse warranty service just because you use a third-party app like Litchi. Litchi itself is pretty solid, and much better than the DJI Waypoints capability. Where it lacks is in logging - it records a custom csv log that misses a lot of relevant data. At least on iOS it also records the standard SDK txt log - identical to the GO 4 txt log. But it does not record a DAT file, which is a huge gap in the data.

 

[WithTheBirds]

That's what I thought. Good day to you too, sir.

Btw- welcome to the forum. Will be interesting to see how you go around here.

 

[Meta4]

What I have seen often is DJI employees on their forum emphasize some aspect of a flight (e.g., over water) prohibited by their manual as justification for not offering a free replacement. In fact, they sometimes will post the relevant portion of the manual in their reply when the customer indicates frustration with not getting a free replacement.

Are you certain about that?
Their forum people don't make any determinations regarding warranty claims even if they draw attention to parts of the manual.
I've never seen flying over water used to deny a claim.
But failing to retrieve the wreckage because the incident occurred over deep water is a very different reason for denying a claim.

 

[Justin Playfair]

Thanks. Although - on a second thought - Waypoints are fully resident on the drone itself, so it shouldn't matter whether you set them via GO4, Litchi or injected them manually. If the drone was recovered and deemed to be at fault.

Yes, although because it's an M2 the people on this forum won't be able to analyze the DAT file for you, though from what I've seen, DJI is very fair about admitting fault when it is indeed a product malfunction.

 

[7thstring]

Anyway, getting back to the topic, my main regret (apart from the very use of Waypoint as in none of my other manual flights on Air, Platinum and Zoom I haven't had any sort of issue) is not having had a GPS tag on it. At least I would have made the search easier.

That suggest what could be a M3 improvement, now that DJI seemingly scratched the barrel with features: cellular connectivity and/or RC decoupling (if on 5G) by applying the IoT paradigm.

 

[Justin Playfair]

Btw- welcome to the forum. Will be interesting to see how you go around here.

Oh, I get your drift. I'm well aware of the pecking order here and don't intend to be a regular participant.

 

[7thstring]

Did the aircraft disconnect or did the app crash? Or both?

The aircraft disconnected and then app went "blank", didn't crash (if it wasn't on WP + "continue mission" it would have gone RTH and reconnected). As I'm not a native English speaker I don't have a better definition, but by "blank" I mean "as when you entered the map without having the drone connected". You can replicate that by entering waypoints by connecting the remote but not the smartphone to the remote.
I think you can simulate this whole thing (without losing the drone ) by setting a WP mission and turning off the drone. You should see all waypoints suddenly disappear on a blank map.

 

[WithTheBirds]

The aircraft disconnected and the app went "blank", didn't crash. As I'm not a native English speaker I don't have a better definition, but by "blank" I mean "as when you entered the map without having the drone connected". You can replicate that by entering waypoints by connecting the remote but not the smartphone to the remote.
I think you can simulate this whole thing (without losing the drone ) by setting a WP mission and turning off the drone. You should see all waypoints suddenly disappear on a blank map.

Blank is the right word.

 

[Justin Playfair]

Are you certain about that?
Their forum people don't make any determinations regarding warranty claims even if they draw attention to parts of the manual.
I've never seen flying over water used to deny a claim.
But failing to retrieve the wreckage because the incident occurred over deep water is a very different reason for denying a claim.

The DJI employees usually only make vague statements about fault / blame (e.g., pilot error or defect), but yes, they often point out in the context of these discussions that the flight was conducted outside the parameters specified in the manual. When / if there's strong evidence for a defect they'll provide a free replacement regardless, but in the lack of evidence they do sometimes fall back on the "you didn't follow instructions" defense.

 

[JAW]

See post #45 in this thread:

Disconnected in flight - Mavic 2 Pro gone

In email conversations I had with DJI service center addressing the issue as to why I was not able to record or find the yyyy-mm-dd_hh-mm-ss_FLYxxx.DAT files in the folder FlightRecords/MCDatFlightRecords using iTunes to download them, DJI’s response back from DJI Engineers reads and I quote –...

mavicpilots.com

DJI ended up offering a 60% discount after starting at 30%.

 

[sar104]

Yes, although because it's an M2 the people on this forum won't be able to analyze the DAT file for you, though from what I've seen, DJI is very fair about admitting fault when it is indeed a product malfunction.

The mobile device DAT file is readable - it's only the aircraft DAT file that cannot be decrypted. I agree that DJI is generally fine about accepting fault when it can be demonstrated.

 

[Meta4]

The DJI employees usually only make vague statements about fault / blame (e.g., pilot error or defect), but yes, they often point out in the context of these discussions that the flight was conducted outside the parameters specified in the manual. When / if there's strong evidence for a defect they'll provide a free replacement regardless, but in the lack of evidence they do sometimes fall back on the "you didn't follow instructions" defense.

The DJI forum moderators make no decisions and offer no replacements.
They rarely say anything that isn't vague.
They have very little knowledge about DJI drones and there's very little evidence that any of them even fly drones.