Mini 3 Pro range? What's your experience been like?
- Thread starter shadow3467
- Start date
Ummm...you were not in the middle of nowhere, once you got to the buildings and near the powerlines, things started acting up. You were also at a relatively low atltitude for that distance. And finally, you left the wifi on, the manual says to turn it and bluetooth off for the best video signal...which might also mean the best signal.
I once flew in a tight canyon near a mine with my Mavic 2 Pro, I had clear as day line of sight. The walls of the canyon had iron ore in them and about 300 feet away from me, the connection went berserk so I returned the bird.
Based on the video you showed, I think this drone is a lot more sensitive to all kinds of interference.
1. I was over the buildings for a total of 100-150m of the distance the rest was flat farmland, so I guess just don't use the mini 3 pro anywhere near civilization? I will do a more urban range test tomorrow and I'll be surprised if I get more than 500m
Also notice the big drop at the start happened around 2 mins at 800m, that was over farmland, not near the buildings.
2. I was at 100-110m. Legal limit here is 120m so not like I could go much higher.
3. I will try with wifi and bluetooth off tomorrow but I promise it wont make a difference as seen here (
4. It's definitely super sensitive. I haven't had any other DJI drones so I'm not sure if they're all like this, but it's not pleasant to fly having to watch signal like a hawk. Maybe if it was a $600 drone I wouldn't mind, which is probably why I'll be returning this and going with the mini 2. If I'm going to get nearly the same photo/video quality and get maybe even better signal I'd rather pay $600 for it no $1200
The bottom line is, the drone is vastly under performing DJI's advertising. Also note, I only got about 17-20 mins of flight out of the battery, nowhere near DJI's estimate, wasn't super windy either (5m/s-7m/s).
I've yet to fly mine but unboxed it today and first thing I noticed in the DJI RC was signal was locked to 2.4Ghz in the UI with no capability to change anything.
Reboots didn't achieve anything so I temporarily paired it to the RC-N1 with phone I have from another drone and it could pickup dual band as expected via that setup. Then when paired back to the DJI RC the GUI became unstuck and all of a sudden I could switch between bands and drone started to use 5.8Ghz signal.
Unsure if this is a one-off just on my device or if others are affected but worth checking. Being locked to 2.4Ghz would definitely limit range given how much a noise there is on that band.
Reboots didn't achieve anything so I temporarily paired it to the RC-N1 with phone I have from another drone and it could pickup dual band as expected via that setup. Then when paired back to the DJI RC the GUI became unstuck and all of a sudden I could switch between bands and drone started to use 5.8Ghz signal.
Unsure if this is a one-off just on my device or if others are affected but worth checking. Being locked to 2.4Ghz would definitely limit range given how much a noise there is on that band.
Exactly this. Powerlines, many buildings that no doubt have wifi and wireless phones, etc. This may not be Manhatten, but is far from the middle of nowhere and clearly has plenty of interference. Not to mention low altitude.
I think it did pretty well.
So explain to me how this guy gets basically full signal flying in urban Philly from INSIDE his car? and I drop signal in the middle of farm land?
ufgatorvet
Well-Known Member
If that's the case then almost half the mini 3 pros DJI has pushed out are lemons because theres plenty of people with similar experiences
ufgatorvet
Well-Known Member
Are you flying over high voltage power lines in your video? It looks like it to me, but hard to tell for sure. When I fly the Mavic 2 Enterprise it loses signal whenever I get over transmission lines, even when just a few hundred meters away. The Philly videos are definitely impressive.
Also, in another video from the Philly guy he does drop a few bars randomly and then gets them back as he keeps flying. If anything it seems the bars tend to jump around, but often without any obvious impact to flight. I sometimes wonder if people are getting too bent out of shape over how many bars they have, versus what they can actually do.
Don't think so, at 2 minutes I lose signal strength and I'm right over flat farmland with nothing there
There is no situation where flying your drone outside your VLOS isn't stupid.
Just got back from a test flight in a VERY small park. Signal was terrrible, will post the video in a bit
hmm video is too long for youtube, anyone know how I can cut it up/edit it? Don't have an editing software
Neverrmind, figured it out.
Have a look for yourself. I had to edit the video to shorten it since the flight was 22 mins long, I cut out the start, and a few parts towards the end where I was much closer getting perfect signal.
At 8:22 I lose signal completely, and then fly directly to where I was. As you can see, I'm not very far and there's nothing between me and the drone other than a few trees maybe
Also at the start you can see, WiFi and Bluetooth are disabled since some people said those effect signal
This is in Canada, FCC not CE
Neverrmind, figured it out.
Have a look for yourself. I had to edit the video to shorten it since the flight was 22 mins long, I cut out the start, and a few parts towards the end where I was much closer getting perfect signal.
At 8:22 I lose signal completely, and then fly directly to where I was. As you can see, I'm not very far and there's nothing between me and the drone other than a few trees maybe
Also at the start you can see, WiFi and Bluetooth are disabled since some people said those effect signal
This is in Canada, FCC not CE
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I agree, but I'm a relative newbie. I understand the attraction of wanting to test the limits but I don't have a youtube channel and I don't want to lose my drone. I have a Mini 2 and was in a very remote area of Eastern Oregon...miles from anybody else so I flew it out 2 miles but it was a clear LOS all the way. other than that time I don't think I've pushed the drone out further than 3000 feet and have been able to get ll the shots and video I want.
I also don't like to return home with 10% battery
I mean in the above video I was under 500m away when it started losing signal. If you only fly drones so that they are FULLY visible to you at all times, then why even buy a drone? Because that's like 100m at most
I didn't say visible....I said line of sight. A white Mini 2 on a cloudy day disappears after about 600'
Ok but even by that argument, the drone loses signal within VLOS, as demonstrated in both my videos, in farmland and in suburban land
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