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Important lesson learned

MapMaker53

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Joined
Jan 7, 2018
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Long Island, NY
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www.zazzle.com
So a few weeks ago, I had photographed a nighttime high school football game with my P4P which I had posted in a previous thread. This week, I was asked to photograph a company event with the drone, so a few days beforehand I decided to run through some of the camera and flight settings like I usually do in preparation for a job -- only to find that I had no video feed in either DJI Go4 or Litchi. Not only that, but I get the message "Warning: The MC connection to the center board has failed. Solution: Restart the drone. If the problem persists contact DJI Support." Plus, in the DJI settings I see "Gimbal Disconnected" even though the gimbal is obviously reacting to me tilting the drone side to side. In addition, I get a "Strong WiFi interference" warning in DJI Go4, I'm unable to change my camera settings, the whining sound of the drone fan pulsates every 2 seconds, and my battery button ring flashes 10 times before it shuts down. The battery shuts down normally when not installed in the drone, and driving a distance from my house did not eliminate the Strong WiFi interference warning. So WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON!!!??

I shipped my drone off to DroneTed, and it's a good thing that I had left my SDcard in the drone. Believe it or not, Ted discovered that it was my SDcard that was causing all of these issues. It had worked fine during my football game flight (or so I thought), and Ted could see the game photos and video when the card was inserted into his laptop. But as soon as he put it back into my drone, the drone's video feed shut down. Inserting a new SDcard resolved all of the problems.

It's crazy that a bad SDcard can cause this many glitches - and all at once. Why would my P4p warn about high wifi interference when it doesn't even use wifi? And how is a bad SD card able to affect the behavior of a battery?? My wife did remind me that this particular SDcard had accidentally gone through the washer and dryer in my jeans pocket, so maybe that had something to do with it. Seemed fine at the time.

So the lesson is, if you experience ANY problem with your drone be sure to try a different SDcard before panicking. Apparently, you won't always just get a simple "No SDcard" message when your card goes bad. Oh, and don't put one through a wash cycle.
 
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