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"Warning: Mobile device CPU fully loaded. Related performance may be affected"

Big-Foot

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Location
Gold Canyon AZ / Kenyon MN
"Warning: mobile device CPU fully loaded. Related performance may be affected"
Another member saw this message on his screen just before the drone was lost. I get this message too and have always wondered what it was trying to tell me...
My screen is a fully dedicated WiFi Apple iPad Mini-4 with 64gb storage. Quite literally all apps other than GO4 have been removed. No non-essential apps.

My drone flies fine.
Does anybody have any ideas why I and other shave been seeing this?
Have you seen this warning?

(Note - picture 2 & 3 are my screen but warning has disappeared. Picture 1 is representative of my photography)

Edit -
Temps here are in the 50-70F range.
iPad is in a protective cover, but that’s required in my location (dusty desert)
IOS 12.1.3 on the iPad
GO4 is at the current release 4.3.12 (4292)
Controller and drone are all updated via DJI Assistant 2 on my Windows 10 laptop
 

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It's telling you the app can't do its job properly because the mobile device is struggling to keep up. What iOS and app versions?
What's the ambient temp? You might want to remove your thick iPad case to allow it to cool better. Excessive heat causes thermal throttling.
 
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Assuming you’ve done the obvious, deleting the DJI GO 4 app and reinstalling. Restored the iPad and upgraded the firmware on the iPad, use your cell phone to make a temporary internet hotspot and connect the iPad just long enough so you get the map to come up where you are flying and see if that fixes it. At the very least the app now has a GPS reference for where the device is for return to home.
 
It's telling you the app can't do its job properly because the mobile device is struggling to keep up. What iOS and app versions?
What's the ambient temp? You might want to remove your thick iPad case to allow it to cool better. Excessive heat causes thermal throttling.
Just did an edit to the original post to add this info. Thanks!
 
Assuming you’ve done the obvious, deleting the DJI GO 4 app and reinstalling. Restored the iPad and upgraded the firmware on the iPad, use your cell phone to make a temporary internet hotspot and connect the iPad just long enough so you get the map to come up where you are flying and see if that fixes it. At the very least the app now has a GPS reference for where the device is for return to home.

I made some edits to my OP above.
I have not deleted and reloaded the GO4 app. It seems to be absolutely fine in all other regards. The WiFi signal (or lack thereof) has not been any sort of impediment to picking up the GPS satellites either from the controller or drone aspects. Home points are consistently set and the drone will return without issue - and if I let it - it lands within 6-12” of its launch point.

As I have always understood, the acquisition of GPS satellites was really only important to the controller (has its own GPS sensor) and the drone itself. I don’t use the mapping feature of GO4.

I am curious if this could have anything to do with cache? I may manually clear that out and try again tonight. I had understood that the cache, when full ,just gets over-written. Not sure where I gained that bit of info...

Thanks for your help!
 
I fly with an iPad Mini 2 and have this same issue all the time (in the summer). I'm in Phoenix (I see you are as well) and it's obviously warm here.

As far as I can tell when the iPad works hard, the processor generates heat. Because it doesn't have a fan to dissipate that heat, the iPad will throttle back the processor to reduce overheating. The GO4 app uses a lot of CPU power during flight, and if the CPU is throttled back, then it can't keep up with the app.

When this happens for me, the incoming live video feed framerate will begin to drop. It will be choppy, but useable, for a little while, then eventually it will reduce to a slideshow of perhaps 1 frame per second or less.

The only solution I have found is to return home and get the iPad cooled down. Everything then works fine until it heats up again

I thought about upgrading from the Mini 2 to a Mini 4 might solve this problem, but apparently not. Just more evidence that Apple really sucks.
 
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I made some edits to my OP above.
I have not deleted and reloaded the GO4 app. It seems to be absolutely fine in all other regards. The WiFi signal (or lack thereof) has not been any sort of impediment to picking up the GPS satellites either from the controller or drone aspects. Home points are consistently set and the drone will return without issue - and if I let it - it lands within 6-12” of its launch point.

As I have always understood, the acquisition of GPS satellites was really only important to the controller (has its own GPS sensor) and the drone itself. I don’t use the mapping feature of GO4.

I am curious if this could have anything to do with cache? I may manually clear that out and try again tonight. I had understood that the cache, when full ,just gets over-written. Not sure where I gained that bit of info...

Thanks for your help!

The remote doesn’t have a GPS unit. It has to use the GPS from your device to determine where the remote is. When it takes off the Mavic records ITS OWN GPS location and on return to home it will land on this spot. However the app also tried to calculate the distance from the AC to the remote using the the devices GPS. If it had a reference point it could use the accelerometer to calculate your distance from that reference point but since it has no reference point the calculation will look like this.

User distance from homepoint= error try again...

User distance from homepoint= error try again

User distance from homepoint= error try again

User distance from homepoint= error try again

Etc etc etc.

This is just an idea I don’t know if this is really the issue but worth trying you know?
 
I made some edits to my OP above.
I have not deleted and reloaded the GO4 app. It seems to be absolutely fine in all other regards. The WiFi signal (or lack thereof) has not been any sort of impediment to picking up the GPS satellites either from the controller or drone aspects. Home points are consistently set and the drone will return without issue - and if I let it - it lands within 6-12” of its launch point.

As I have always understood, the acquisition of GPS satellites was really only important to the controller (has its own GPS sensor) and the drone itself. I don’t use the mapping feature of GO4.

I am curious if this could have anything to do with cache? I may manually clear that out and try again tonight. I had understood that the cache, when full ,just gets over-written. Not sure where I gained that bit of info...

Thanks for your help!

Yea disabling cache will reduce the load on your device. If this is a heat issue like others have suggested this will help. Manually deleting won’t make a difference but turning it off will. You’ll just need to connect the SD card to your computer to get the files which is perfered anyway because they are better quality files. I turned off my cache just cause it saved a lot of battery on my phone
 
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Okay I turned cache off...
I’m still looking for the hardware decoding setting though..
Thanks!
 
Okay I turned cache off...
I’m still looking for the hardware decoding setting though..
Thanks!

I apologize it looks like this setting was removed from DJI Go 4 at some point. It’s still available in the Litchi and Autopilot apps and that must be why I thought it was still in DJI Go 4. Sorry bout that!
 
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You will very likely have to give up on that. It's particularly thick and sturdy too, even worse for cooling.

If I do that, the iPad will be a worthless piece of junk within a couple of weeks here. The dust is some of the finest - much finer than even talcum powder. The cool weather here right now has made no difference to this point. Even after an hour of constant use, it is barely warm. I have my doubts it is overheating.
Note - all our cell phones and other iPads seem fine in their cases..
 
Did you try taking it out of the case when it does that to see if the back is warm?

The GO4 app puts a strain on devices like almost nothing else.
 
If I do that, the iPad will be a worthless piece of junk within a couple of weeks here. The dust is some of the finest - much finer than even talcum powder. The cool weather here right now has made no difference to this point. Even after an hour of constant use, it is barely warm. I have my doubts it is overheating.
Note - all our cell phones and other iPads seem fine in their cases..


For what it's worth -- I've flown a few times lately and it's obviously nice and cool right now in AZ. So far, I have had zero issues with the warning appearing on my Mini 2, whereas the CPU overload warning shows up virtually 100% of the time in the summer (and when it happens, the iPad feels noticeably hot).

If you are still getting the warning during cool weather, and your iPad doesn't feel at least warm to the touch on the back panel, then it's possible something else is causing your issue. I would still assume the GO4 app is accurately seeing the CPU is maxed out, but the question is WHY that's happening. In my case, I think the CPU on the Mini 2 isn't super-powerful to begin with, so if the iPad throttles the CPU back to reduce heat, I can understand why the app thinks the CPU is unable to keep up.

In your case, I'm guessing your CPU has significantly more power than the Mini 2, and even if it got a little warm and was throttled back, you'd think the CPU would have enough remaining power to run the app without seeing a warning.

I wish there was a way to see exactly what apps/processes are using the CPU like you can on a PC with Windows task manager. If there was a tool like this for an iPad, you could easily determine if the GO4 app was maxing out your CPU, or whether something else was causing the problem.

The iPad I use with my Mavic is my only Apple product, so unfortunately I am not that familiar with what apps/options exist in the Apple universe for investigating something like this.
 

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You will very likely have to give up on that. It's particularly thick and sturdy too, even worse for cooling.
Like our cell phones - The iPad would last maybe a few weeks exposed to the dusty conditions here. Although I try to keep everything protected and blow out frequently with compressed air, you just can’t get all of it.
After an hour or more of use, the iPad barely gets warm.
So far the controller seems to be doing pretty well with just being blown out.

We owe our beautiful sunsets here in Arizona to that dust and God’s artistry with it...
 

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For what it's worth -- I've flown a few times lately and it's obviously nice and cool right now in AZ. So far, I have had zero issues with the warning appearing on my Mini 2, whereas the CPU overload warning shows up virtually 100% of the time in the summer (and when it happens, the iPad feels noticeably hot).

If you are still getting the warning during cool weather, and your iPad doesn't feel at least warm to the touch on the back panel, then it's possible something else is causing your issue. I would still assume the GO4 app is accurately seeing the CPU is maxed out, but the question is WHY that's happening. In my case, I think the CPU on the Mini 2 isn't super-powerful to begin with, so if the iPad throttles the CPU back to reduce heat, I can understand why the app thinks the CPU is unable to keep up.

In your case, I'm guessing your CPU has significantly more power than the Mini 2, and even if it got a little warm and was throttled back, you'd think the CPU would have enough remaining power to run the app without seeing a warning.

I wish there was a way to see exactly what apps/processes are using the CPU like you can on a PC with Windows task manager. If there was a tool like this for an iPad, you could easily determine if the GO4 app was maxing out your CPU, or whether something else was causing the problem.

The iPad I use with my Mavic is my only Apple product, so unfortunately I am not that familiar with what apps/options exist in the Apple universe for investigating something like this.

This is quite helpful! Knowing that you get the warning all the time when it is hot outside.
I also wish I could see what was consuming CPU use - like a logger utility of some sort. While I hate to divert any CPU power to an App other than GO4, I will see what I can find and if nothing else delete it when I am done...
Thank you!!
((Keeping fingers crossed that warmer weather returns soon but loving the exceptionally green desert this year))
 
Update -
I flew 3 batteries tonight with the cache disabled and there were no issues and no CPU warning message, so I think I will leave it like this for a while...
One of the shots I made tonight is attached.
Thanks guys!!!
547F02BA-9A74-4983-B8A7-59F717A9C127.jpeg
 

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