Sudden drop in video feed range

scro · Oct 25, 2020

My MM had been packed away for over 6 weeks, and the other day when I went to fly I noticed significantly poorer range for the video feed. I seemed to retain control OK but found the video feed very stuttery, blocky and prone to dropping out at little over 100-150m range. I've never had such poor range before and have been flying in all sorts of conditions for nearly a year now. I had the same poor range in 3 locations I flew. 2 locations were out in the mountains with no wifi interference and one was on a golf course several hundred meters away from a village. There were a few scattered trees nearby and the signal was even worse when I tried flying on the far side of them (no real surprise). The only other thing that has changed with my setup is the version of the Fly app. My phone had updated to version 1.0.9. I tried forcing an update to 1.0.10 and saw no improvement. Previously I could reliably get 400-500m or more, even with some sparse foliage obscuring the signal, whereas now I can only seem to manage around 200m before the signal becomes unreliable.

Any thoughts as to what may be going on?

nn666 · Oct 25, 2020

Make sure the drone firmware up to date.

karlblessing · Oct 25, 2020

Out of curiosity what is the orientation of your controller antenna to the drone? (or likewise how you position your controller to yourself, if you haven't change any habit of the antenna since last time you flew).

scro · Oct 26, 2020

karlblessing said:
Out of curiosity what is the orientation of your controller antenna to the drone? (or likewise how you position your controller to yourself, if you haven't change any habit of the antenna since last time you flew).

I'm using the exact same technique as before: I have the long flat side of both antennas facing the drone. This usually means both controller antennas nearly vertical. When flying overhead I either fold down the antennas so they lay horizontally (flat side pointing up) or hold the controller vertically so that the antennas are pointing back at me a bit.

new2mavic · Oct 26, 2020

May be the phone is the source of interference ? Suggest to turn off all radios of the phone ( cellular, wifi, bluetooth ) and try again.

scro · Oct 26, 2020

new2mavic said:
May be the phone is the source of interference ? Suggest to turn off all radios of the phone ( cellular, wifi, bluetooth ) and try again.

Thanks for the suggestions. It's the same phone I'm using as before, with the same radios on (or off) as before, so wouldn't have expected this to be the problem. It has been updated to Android 10 though, so this may have changed something.

@nn666 I'm using firmware .0400 which isn't the latest. It is stable and has performed faultlessly so far, with live video feed working fine to well beyond VLOS distances. Firmware .0400 allows for increased parameter configuring compared to .0500, which is the main reason I have downgraded back to this. There is a very slim possibility the latest app version deliberately cripples the video feed for older aircraft firmware, but this does seem unlikely.

ludotalk · Oct 26, 2020

I had the same observation than you. Could you confirm this was on v1.1.9 and v1.1.10, not v1.0.*? Aircraft is .500.
My Mavic is CE version, used in France.
But as I did the WiFi 'country_disabled' trick to my remote, to force its power closer to FCC values, I thought this was a side effect, or I goofed somewhere :-/
Also, my phone is very bad at finding its GPS fix, if this can be related anyhow.
Can you tell if you use 2.4 or 5.8Ghz signal?

scro · Oct 26, 2020

@ludotalk I have the CE Mini and had the poor range on the video feed on Fly app versions 1.1.9 and 1.1.10. I can't actually remember the full number of the .8 version of the app, which worked fine. My aircraft is on FW 01.00.0400

Edit: I tried both 2.4 and 5.8ghz and had no noticable improvement in range.

nn666 · Oct 26, 2020

You are mixing and matching new app with old firmware.

scro · Oct 26, 2020

nn666 said:
You are mixing and matching new app with old firmware.

You imply this is the cause of the problem. Can you be a bit more specific, or draw on some experience of known incompatibilities between certain firmware and app versions?

Most of the flights I've done have been with so-called mixed and matched app/firmware versions, and have been entirely problem free.

ludotalk · Oct 27, 2020

My observations are with versions 'matched'. V0500 with v1.1.9. So you may exclude the mismatch hypothesis.
Haven't tested with v1.1.10 yet.
Maybe this is programmed obsolescence, to get us into buying the Mini 2 [emoji16]
Right on time !

scro · Nov 3, 2020

I did a few more trial flights and managed to get approximately 500m on 5.8Ghz on aircraft firmware 0400, which is about the most I could reasonably expect. However I was still experiencing some video drop out at much closer range, and more than I've had in the past. I also tried 2.4ghz and was able to achieve similar distances with similar feed reliability.

I tried updating the aircraft firmware to 0500 so it's no longer "mixed and matched" and did a few more trial flights (same location/time) and saw no improvement in range or video feed reliability.

Built in obsolecence?... haha... who knows!?

ludotalk · Nov 10, 2020

Seems RC range problems are confirmed, at least with v1.2.0 version.

JOHNVOSS · Nov 11, 2020

Exact same problem here with the MM1. Just reverted to ver 1.1.10.

theskinnerclan · Nov 11, 2020

Yep - experienced exactly the same issue today flying for the first time since the summer.
'Weak Signal' right from the ground, then the app actually disconnected completely (black screen - 'Disconnected') for nearly a minute before re-establishing connection.
Luckily only about 150m directly up, but incredibly disconcerting. I even had my new Yagi antennas on so god knows what they've done to degrade the performance so much.

I'm now trying out the Lichi Beta on IOS. Great to have Pano back, and Orbit seems to be working too.

ludotalk · Dec 18, 2020

theskinnerclan said:
Yep - experienced exactly the same issue today flying for the first time since the summer.
'Weak Signal' right from the ground, then the app actually disconnected completely (black screen - 'Disconnected') for nearly a minute before re-establishing connection.
Luckily only about 150m directly up, but incredibly disconcerting. I even had my new Yagi antennas on so god knows what they've done to degrade the performance so much.

I'm now trying out the Lichi Beta on IOS. Great to have Pano back, and Orbit seems to be working too.

It is normal to loose signal if the drone is 150m right above your head, and you hold the transmeter in the default position with vertical antenna : it means the radio beams horizontally away from you, not above.

karlblessing · Dec 18, 2020

theskinnerclan said:
Yep - experienced exactly the same issue today flying for the first time since the summer.
'Weak Signal' right from the ground, then the app actually disconnected completely (black screen - 'Disconnected') for nearly a minute before re-establishing connection.
Luckily only about 150m directly up, but incredibly disconcerting. I even had my new Yagi antennas on so god knows what they've done to degrade the performance so much.

I'm now trying out the Lichi Beta on IOS. Great to have Pano back, and Orbit seems to be working too.

If you're directly above, you're not likely pointing the antennas where they need to go. The flat edge is where the signal comes off of.