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Pixelated or broken appearance on screen

bill1950

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Have a question relating the image on my screen when flying mini over very wooded or highly brushy area or over grassy areas with trees bordering the field.
While searching for one of the RC pilots planes that he dumbed thumbed (and who hasn’t) I was searching in a heavily brushed area and noticed while searching with my gimbal at fully down that twice it gave me a screen with what looked like it was broken and frozen imag A lot like when satellite tv loses it signal. I put my gimbal up and it went back to normal. I have notice this a few other times while flying over a beach with very calm water and bright sand. I was about 120 ft up and 450 out. VLOS and no trees in the way. The trees are about 70 feet and I could clearly see the Mini2. I have flown this area a lot but never flown in this configuration of pointing straight down and doing a grid pattern search. Just wondering if this is normal with perhaps the screen having too much of the same territory while flying with the gimbal down. It is a little concerning Because you do lose orientation in this mode. Especially if the drone is further out. I know there are many tools to get your orientation, guess more of a nuisance then anything.
Just to note, I really didn’t note the altitude or distance in the other instances. Thanks as always with all the help I have received on my previous threads.
 
Forgot to add that I am using an Apple Mini 5 for my controller screen. I also was flying on a slightly overcast day with a ND 16 on it. on some of the other flights I didn’t have the ND filter on.
 
I would check the Physical aspect of the Camera on a table , there is a chance you might have damaged the Cable from the wind so check that out first.

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly your Mini in the Rain
 
Cable looks good, I had auto sync on, not sure if that would do it. Was wondering if looking down on very confusing terrain can cause it to lose focus. Not sure, going out to the flying field and going to see if I can replicate it and take a screen shot of it to post. The terrain is a field of wild blackberries and looks like a jungle.
 
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Happened again! I had the gimbal pointing slightly down and it appeared on my iPad to be a third of the screen broken up and to get it back I had to point the gimbal up and yaw slightly. Only happened once during my second flight about 16 minutes in.
 
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I searched the internet and could only find one other person with the same problem. I did a screen grab of his post. I couldn’t accurately describe it. Picture 1000 words. it Only did it for him when he was recording and to stop it he just I hit stop recording end it fixed the problem then later on it what happened and he would do the same. His final fix was he had a smart controller and switch to that and hasn’t had any problems since. I was not recording and this happened to me several times not sure of the problem will try and contact DJI if nobody here can help
 

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How far away was the drone? It could be that the video signal from the drone to the controller was marginal and the bandwidth needed when moving over complicated terrain was more then the marginal video signal could handle.

How did the video look on the SD card? If clear on the SD card it has to do with the signal , cable or the iPad. If you stopped moving did the video clear up? If so I would suspect a marginal video signal.
 
F
How far away was the drone? It could be that the video signal from the drone to the controller was marginal and the bandwidth needed when moving over complicated terrain was more then the marginal video signal could handle.

How did the video look on the SD card? If clear on the SD card it has to do with the signal , cable or the iPad. If you stopped moving did the video clear up? If so I would suspect a marginal video signal.
 
Thanks for the reply. Yesterday when this happened again I was at our flying field about 150 ft out and 50 feet high and over a grass field, time before that 300 ft out and 150 ft high over the much hated wild blackberry bushes (thorns are killer). I just recalibrated the gimbal and IMU and will take it out this afternoon and wiggle the cable which honestly I didn’t even think of. Could be a cable problem. It is a fairly new cord wrapped cable but could be a possibility. I wasn’t taking video on any of the times I got the display problem. The Screen shot I grabbed from another guy on YouTube that had the problem he was recording. I was not. He said it went away temporally when he stopped recording, mine seemed when I yawed and put the gimbal into straight ahead position.
 
I also was flying on a slightly overcast day with a ND 16 on it. on some of the other flights I didn’t have the ND filter on.
It's not related to your screen problem, but you were defeating yourself by leaving an ND16 filter on to search in forest.
That filter cuts the light getting through to the camera's sensor pretty drastically.
It only allows 6% of the available light to get through.
 
Thank y
It's not related to your screen problem, but you were defeating yourself by leaving an ND16 filter on to search in forest.
That filter cuts the light getting through to the camera's sensor pretty drastically.
It only allows 6% of the available light to get through.
thanks for the advice. Still in a learning stage of ND filters. In retrospect I can see how that would have lessened the light to the sensor and should have flown without.
 
I have two mini 2s and both do this only one time during a flight. At first, like you, I agonized over it searching and searching the internet for a resolution. Making a long story short, what cures it for me is to simply stop recording then restart a new recording. The video is perfect, so to me, no big deal, it is what it is. (iPhone 8+ used only for the mini 2 with Wifi/Bluetooth and no data).
 
I have two mini 2s and both do this only one time during a flight. At first, like you, I agonized over it searching and searching the internet for a resolution. Making a long story short, what cures it for me is to simply stop recording then restart a new recording. The video is perfect, so to me, no big deal, it is what it is. (iPhone 8+ used only for the mini 2 with Wifi/Bluetooth and no data).
Thanks for the post, it happens when not recording.
 
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I have noticed that a couple of times when flying.

The video recorded to the SD card was perfect so I put it down to something between the drone and my phone (iPhone 8).

I now just ignore it as it usually goes away fairly quickly.
 
I have had this more recently.

I am beginning to suspect the updated 1.4.8 fly app is a resource hog and unless you have a lot of RAM it tends to freeze out. I even had mine completely shut down and had to restart during mid flight...
 
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I have had this more recently.

I am beginning to suspect the updated 1.4.8 fly app is a resource hog and unless you have a lot of RAM it tends to freeze out. I even had mine completely shut down and had to restart during mid flight...
I just checked and the IPad mini5 has 3 gig of ram. it is the latest and greatest and hope DJI brain trust doesn’t make it so that will be obsolete anytime soon. I called DJI support and spoke to someone in product support and he went to his resources and they had me do a gimbal and imu calibration and had me check version of updates all is fine. Told me to fly to fly and they will keep the case open. Unfortunately our weather i8s not cooperating We have been in the upper 90’s with a southwest wind of 10 to 20 with gusts of 25. Only time when the wind dies is at night. I have my 107 so can do night flight but probably not the best to test video or display. I will look into 1.4.8 and see of the n negatives and positives are. Thanks for the reply. I am really impressed with the community on this Mavic Pilots forum.
 
There is a feature on the iPhone and iPad where you can record your screen. I suggest you do this and compare it to the corresponding video on your SD card.

Remember, the video from the camera is compressed (encoded) in 720p so that it can be transmitted in the bandwidth available over Ocusync. You may be seeing compression artifacts in the live video on your Apple device.

I have designed, installed, and operated video compression systems for broadcast and cable TV. Things like trees and grass are notoriously difficult to compress/encode, especially if there is movement due to wind (falling confetti is also a nightmare). The "fix" usually involved increasing the transmission bandwidth or softening the picture. Neither of these are available on the drone.

If the video on the SD card is clean then nothing to worry about. But don't forget that the video on the SD card is compressed (albeit at a higher bitrate) so artifacts may still be evident in some instances.
 
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In my case I use a Samsung Tablet S5e (SMT 725) with 4GB Ram and 64GB memory. The fly app is almost 800MB now so getting bigger and for my specs maybe just not compatible? I see my tablet is not specifically listed by DJI on the recommended list of phones/tablets to use but nor is the more advanced S6 or S7.

This issue appeared only after the last updates (and follow-up update) a few weeks ago.

In my case I have do a flight or two and it seems ok. Then when I hit my next flight the camera freezes if I use AEB and the spinner just spins endlessly. I then have to bring it home with a frozen screen. Pity because I was doing whale shots and had a magnificent shot lined up and my whole system froze at that moment ...

And yes, I do clear the cache after each flight. I also clean the tablet. I even removed alsot all the other apps
 
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Was flying today and this happened again. The blur is actually a row of trees on the east of our flying field. I was not using a filter and not recording. I snapped a photo that didn’t register but cleared the screen.
 
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