Testing in production

[lproyect]

After working in corporate IT for 45 years I finally retired 4 years ago with the intention of making videos and other cool things. I thought it would be fun to use a Mavic Pro since aerial shots would look great in a documentary about the Borscht Belt that I've been working on. After discovering that trying to train myself on it in NYC would be impossible because of no-fly restrictions or the unsuitability of the one allowable site where they can be flown (Flushing Meadows Park), I decided to train myself on it in upstate NY. After the controller failed to connect to the aircraft, I was told by DJI that it had to be relinked (I assume that the crash I had in Flushing Meadows Park 4 months ago that required a repair to the aircraft might have something to do with that.) In any case, the linking failed because the controller needed a firmware upgrade. But when I used Assistant 2, the controller was not recognized. A knowledgable tech support guy at DJI then had me use the DJI Go app to apply the upgrade but that failed as well. So, to make a long story short, I have to send the controller back to DJI to be "repaired".

When I worked for Goldman-Sachs and other major corporations, we were always told that we should never test in production, a way of saying that a system should not be released before it was fully tested. Users do not appreciate being guinea pigs. Does DJI have any notion of how off-putting it is to have to send in a piece of hardware because the standard methods of a firmware upgrade fail? I understand that the Mavic Pro is the best drone out there but I am ready to rent a helicopter at this point.

 

[tcope]

You seem to think this is typical. As with everything electronic, every once in awhile something will go wrong. Nothing is 100% all of the time.

As you mentioned, you think something went wrong when you crashed. Perhaps this is why the controller is not connecting to the Mavic and part of the crash.

A link should not fail because an update was not applied. You never need to apply any updates to obtain a connection. If you crashed and could never connect after that, it sounds to me like the crash caused damage.

 

[james_mav]

After working in corporate IT for 45 years I finally retired 4 years ago with the intention of making videos and other cool things. I thought it would be fun to use a Mavic Pro since aerial shots would look great in a documentary about the Borscht Belt that I've been working on. After discovering that trying to train myself on it in NYC would be impossible because of no-fly restrictions or the unsuitability of the one allowable site where they can be flown (Flushing Meadows Park), I decided to train myself on it in upstate NY. After the controller failed to connect to the aircraft, I was told by DJI that it had to be relinked (I assume that the crash I had in Flushing Meadows Park 4 months ago that required a repair to the aircraft might have something to do with that.) In any case, the linking failed because the controller needed a firmware upgrade. But when I used Assistant 2, the controller was not recognized. A knowledgable tech support guy at DJI then had me use the DJI Go app to apply the upgrade but that failed as well. So, to make a long story short, I have to send the controller back to DJI to be "repaired".

When I worked for Goldman-Sachs and other major corporations, we were always told that we should never test in production, a way of saying that a system should not be released before it was fully tested. Users do not appreciate being guinea pigs. Does DJI have any notion of how off-putting it is to have to send in a piece of hardware because the standard methods of a firmware upgrade fail? I understand that the Mavic Pro is the best drone out there but I am ready to rent a helicopter at this point.

Was the bird flying without problems before you crashed? Its hard for me to understand how you're blaming DJI when you crashed it into a tree which creates another layer of potential issues.