Mini 3 Pro completely loses connection to RC controller for good without any reason

[makla]

Greetings everyone

I'll be honest, I'll copy&paste my description and the attachements as I've tried multiple connections points so far:

I just had that very same experience on my very first flight with the Mini 3 Pro ... Lifted off, everything normal, flew around for like 5-10 minutes, took some videos , switched to taking some photos and then: - Screen turned greyish and image froze - for approx. 20-30s I could still send control signals that the drone realised - After these 30s the drone did some random stuff that resulted in Return Home... well.... almost home... it rather resulted in "hovering right over a tree due to obstacle avoidance" - I had to span a blanket and wait for a random length of time (approx 20 minutes) until the battery was fully drained and the Mini 3 Pro crashed (fortunately into my blanket) During these 20 Minutens I tried everything from restarting everything, reconnecting / pairing and even tried to call customer support (yes, out of office hours). By no means the remote was able to establish ANY kind of connection again after the initial loss of control. During these dreadful 20 minutes I was only 10m away from the drone (vertically, of course ...) I did check the flight-log and I found, that at the time where the problem started, the log shows a warning 'GPS signal weak. Switeched to Attitude mode. Aircraft unable to hover. Fly with caution' , despite of having lock on 30 satellites. I do see NO reason for that as weather was very good, the area is extremely open (above fields). I attached a screenshot of this particular log-part. This really is a ... first experience with a new "better" model I flew the Mini 1 for 2 years now, with not a single problem ever and now this bad stuff on the very first flight.

By now, after lots of further reading, I do gain the feeling that there might be more problems like this, but other circumstances make it look like different reasons. In my case it is really hard to find a pilot's fault (and trust me, I'd be okay with being at fault. Actually, I'd prefer it, because like this my trust in this product is very low and that makes me sad). Weather was perfect, the area was completely free, the distance between me and the drone was really not too much. I do have 2 years of flight-experience with the Mini 1. I was able to fly without any issues for 10 minutes and the disconnect happened while I was standing still (also the drone) as I was simply comparing different photo-features (obviously from the same spot). And last: The fact that the drone hovered 15m away from me for the better part of 20 minutes and - no matter what - I could NOT regain any kind of connection really does not feel like my fault
The current status is that I sent it to DJI support. I do understand that they do not directly send a replacement, but having to give away my new toy on the very first day due to (what I'm fairly sure will turn out as) a product failure, that sucks. Let's see how many weeks this will take.

Does any of this ring a bell for anyone of you? If not it might still be important to know / read for others in my situation or similar situations.

 

[timinator]

Did you restart the controller? I had a similar incident on the second flight of a new aircraft and a restart allowed me to regain control.

 

[Jam0ne]

Everybody* wanted the NEW Toy because......




*not everybodyeverybody....

 

[makla]

Did you restart the controller? I had a similar incident on the second flight of a new aircraft and a restart allowed me to regain control.

Thank you for your reply

But yes, i did try restarting the RC. Several times, actually, as i had plenty of time to try reconnecting my RC to the drone. Not even after i held the crashed (yet functional) drone in my one hand and the RC in the other. But mere seconds later, after restarting THE DRONE, connection worked instantly... this is why am fairly sure the drone is at fault here.

 

[Hands Down]

I have close to 40 flights in with mine. Zero connection issues or situations where it didn’t respond. [Knock on wood].

Seems like you probably have a faulty unit? I’m sure it happens from time to time. I hope DJI gets you taken care of quickly.

 

[makla]

I have close to 40 flights in with mine. Zero connection issues or situations where it didn’t respond. [Knock on wood].

Seems like you probably have a faulty unit? I’m sure it happens from time to time. I hope DJI gets you taken care of quickly.

Thanks, I, too, do hope that DJI will find a fault on the drone instead of simply returning it to me unchanged. Trust is a somewhat important ressource with drones . I've had 2 years with my Mini 1 and I did NEVER have any problem (except weak signal for 1-2 seconds).
Nonetheless, my post might help other people in future who come across the same situation

 

[JimSteadman]

Did you restart the controller? I had a similar incident on the second flight of a new aircraft and a restart allowed me to regain control.

That also happened to me and I restarted. No problem at all until about 3 weeks later, when the RC gave up the ghost and DJI replaced it.

 

[Steve_UK_M4P]

Thanks, I, too, do hope that DJI will find a fault on the drone instead of simply returning it to me unchanged. Trust is a somewhat important ressource with drones . I've had 2 years with my Mini 1 and I did NEVER have any problem (except weak signal for 1-2 seconds).
Nonetheless, my post might help other people in future who come across the same situation

I had a similar experience with my Mini 3 a few weeks ago, however I have the RC-N1 controller. I had been having a different issue which I had reported to DJI, and they sent me a test version of the DJI Fly app to try.
I took off on a test flight, I was about 190m away when the screen froze and turned black & white. The drone was line sight, and I started flying it back towards me. Around 70m away it stopped responding to the stick inputs, then it disconnected from the controller.
RTH kicked in, it climbed to my preset RTH height and started returning, however when it got near the home point & started descending, it was a few metres out, and was coming down over a garden water feature. It stopped descending and just hovered about 3m above the water feature. I tried turning the controller off and back on a few times, but it would not reconnect. In the end, I stood on a chair to reach the drone, I then hand caught the Mini 3 and flipped it upside down to stop the motors.
I then uninstalled that "test" app version, and then reinstalled the official release version.
I've had 100's of flights with my Mini 3 Pro now, and this has only ever happened once to me. I've put it down to there being something wrong with the test version that DJI sent me.

 

[Capt KO]

You followed all the correct procedures and did the right thing in the end..return to dji. Good luck..fly soon.

 

[timinator]

Sounds like my experience was not unique. Since the incident last Thursday I've got about twenty flights and three hours on it. I will definitely be watching things carefully.

 

[makla]

I then uninstalled that app version, and reinstalled the official release version.
I've had 100's of flights with my Mini 3 Pro now, and this has only ever happened once to me. I put it down there being something wrong with the test version that DJI sent me.

As the first thing I did after unpacking was to "install firmware upgrade", I would maybe add the current new firmware on my watchlist for being at fault. All posts about similar problems seem fairly recent (but of course the mini3 itself is not very old yet, too).

Very interesting, thank you! I'm keen on learning about DJI's findings on my drone after their analysis.

 

[makla]

Sounds like my experience was not unique. Since the incident last Thursday I've got about twenty flights and three hours on it. I will definitely be watching things carefully.

Thanks for your reply!

Did you, by any chance, upgrade your firmware right before the problem occurred for the first time?

 

[timinator]

I had upgraded the fw when it came out of the box and had one successful and uneventful flight. The second flight, which occurred at night, is when I had the problem.

After that one incident it really has been flawless and I have routinely been able to fly it 1300m in urban environments before I get any signal problems.

 

[makla]

I had upgraded the fw when it came out of the box and had one successful and uneventful flight. The second flight, which occurred at night, is when I had the problem.

After that one incident it really has been flawless and I have routinely been able to fly it 1300m in urban environments before I get any signal problems.

Wow, then it seems to be hard to reproduce this error. But it's great to see that it seems to only happen once per unit^^" maybe some kind of unintended initialisation

 

[timinator]

I haven't flown it at night since that incident so I don't know if that was the trigger for it or not. I had posted in the crash and flyaway forum but didn't get any expert analysis.

This mini3pro is my second aircraft. I had to return the first one as I had a few anomalies with it. It was a July 2022 build and I was using my rcn1 control with it.

The second aircraft came with the new rc and was an August 2022 built machine. Not sure if it means anything but the second one seems to fly much better than the other one did.

 

[stevenws]

Greetings everyone

I'll be honest, I'll copy&paste my description and the attachements as I've tried multiple connections points so far:




By now, after lots of further reading, I do gain the feeling that there might be more problems like this, but other circumstances make it look like different reasons. In my case it is really hard to find a pilot's fault (and trust me, I'd be okay with being at fault. Actually, I'd prefer it, because like this my trust in this product is very low and that makes me sad). Weather was perfect, the area was completely free, the distance between me and the drone was really not too much. I do have 2 years of flight-experience with the Mini 1. I was able to fly without any issues for 10 minutes and the disconnect happened while I was standing still (also the drone) as I was simply comparing different photo-features (obviously from the same spot). And last: The fact that the drone hovered 15m away from me for the better part of 20 minutes and - no matter what - I could NOT regain any kind of connection really does not feel like my fault
The current status is that I sent it to DJI support. I do understand that they do not directly send a replacement, but having to give away my new toy on the very first day due to (what I'm fairly sure will turn out as) a product failure, that sucks. Let's see how many weeks this will take.

Does any of this ring a bell for anyone of you? If not it might still be important to know / read for others in my situation or similar situations.

I'm just a hobbyist Mavic Mini & Mavic Pro Flyer... for several years now. Never a problem, just luck maybe ?? But to me this Mini 3 - wow. I see just as many problems as no problems online. Sure makes me leary of ever up scaling to a newer model. Except for the Mini 2 maybe? Is it just me?

 

[Grandzab]

Have had several instances of grey screen but only lead once to a total inability to reconnect, despite reboot of the controller, leading to a RTH and autoland. Read somewhere that a slower SD card in the controller would cause it to fail while cache is on. I have upgraded to a faster SD and have yet to see a grey screen since then.

 

[makla]

Just to keep you in the loop: I just got a mail from DJI support, telling me that they will replace both "Remote Controller Main Board" and "Aircraft Core Board Module" for free.

Sadly i do not know any particular problem they might have found. It sounds to me add if they could reproduce the issue but could not find the reason. Thus, they simply replace all relevant parts in communication between drone and RC?

But i am relieved that they seemingly found me not to be at fault

 

[timinator]

Just to keep you in the loop: I just got a mail from DJI support, telling me that they will replace both "Remote Controller Main Board" and "Aircraft Core Board Module" for free.

Sadly i do not know any particular problem they might have found. It sounds to me add if they could reproduce the issue but could not find the reason. Thus, they simply replace all relevant parts in communication between drone and RC?

But i am relieved that they seemingly found me not to be at fault

That's great news! Happy to hear they resolved it for you.

 

[Kradk]

Greetings everyone

I'll be honest, I'll copy&paste my description and the attachements as I've tried multiple connections points so far:




By now, after lots of further reading, I do gain the feeling that there might be more problems like this, but other circumstances make it look like different reasons. In my case it is really hard to find a pilot's fault (and trust me, I'd be okay with being at fault. Actually, I'd prefer it, because like this my trust in this product is very low and that makes me sad). Weather was perfect, the area was completely free, the distance between me and the drone was really not too much. I do have 2 years of flight-experience with the Mini 1. I was able to fly without any issues for 10 minutes and the disconnect happened while I was standing still (also the drone) as I was simply comparing different photo-features (obviously from the same spot). And last: The fact that the drone hovered 15m away from me for the better part of 20 minutes and - no matter what - I could NOT regain any kind of connection really does not feel like my fault
The current status is that I sent it to DJI support. I do understand that they do not directly send a replacement, but having to give away my new toy on the very first day due to (what I'm fairly sure will turn out as) a product failure, that sucks. Let's see how many weeks this will take.

Does any of this ring a bell for anyone of you? If not it might still be important to know / read for others in my situation or similar situations.

I had the same problem……500 feet away and dropping signal…..even 300 ft directly overhead…..finally even after the firmware update it got a little better i thought then one day……it just disconnected the pairing from the RC and could not connect again…I was online and on the phone with the DJI techs…..finally I was instructed because I had purchased the refresh, to send the drone back and I did…..the new drone went through all the updates and paired with no problem to my RC. I did a range test in the same area that I was getting disconnected and I flew some 3500 ft away 50 ft. AGL with the signal only going down 1 bar…..the only time I saw the RC having issues is when one of the tour helicopters came between me at its altitude. I saw the bars turn color for about 10 seconds and then right back to all bars. So I’m happy with the replacement. No issues