The last 6 months I have seen a huge degradation in the telemetry quality of my ANAFI USA.
Actually, I have tested 4 new SkyController3 devices and another ANAFI USA too.
The maximum distance I can fly the drone is roughly 230m away. All the tests have been taking place in regions / areas with open space, no buildings, just nature and generally speaking open areas with clear LOS!
I recall like 1.5 years ago that my telemetry could reach up tp 2.5Km away.
What changed? Is there maybe a firmware update you did and messed with the transmission power or something else?
I am terribly worried as all others drones I tested (DJ, AUTEL) have easily reached the 2.2+Km distance under all conditions and tests.
ANAFI USA is an enterprise product and an expensive one. Such a huge technical obstacle is unacceptable, especially when you state that the maximum distance is about 4Km!
We didn’t do any software changes on the network side and you’re right 200m range is not a normal behavior in open space.
Would you be able to do some tests by changing the band to 5GHz?
This could be done in settings->network
Changing to manual Wifi band and selecting 5GHz and a channel between 149 to 165.
If you still got a 200m range that could confirm a possible HW issue.
I have tested as already said, as of today, 4 x SkyController3 controllers, 3 x ANAFI USA and did all possible combinations… and YES tried the bands to auto and with different ranges and channels for 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz.
I do NOT accept your answer as a “hardware problem”. It makes no sense for all drones or all controllers to be malfunctioning.
All drones and batteries and controllers have the most recent updates.
It’s not just me. Four different people from different companies have had the same issues under certain occasions.
The problem begun like 9 months ago. Maybe more if I count the only 1.5Km range test in open space like 13 months ago…
I can upload new file logs soon in the coming weeks where I will fly 2 or 3 times.
Right now we seized operations with Parrot drones especially due to this issue.
As you understand we are forced to use drones from the competition!!!
This is a SERIOUS matter and I would be extremely happy if you release an update and set things straight as we have invested in Parrot more than 22.000 Euro so far!
We will do some tests base on different FW version and force the Greece settings and try to reproduce the issue.
For sure if we are able to reproduce it we will release a FW update to correct the issue.
We have been testing for about 2 days, and we have not reproduced any issue yet.
We have tested different combinations of different software versions on the drone and on the controller, always set in country GR, and we have not found any behavior difference, any regression.
Would it be possible for you to provide us with some logs? So we can try identifying what is causing the issue you are facing. The logs on the drone side should be enough. To access the logs, plug the drone to a computer through usb, it should then appear as a mass_storage device in you explorer, the logs are then in the FDR folder. The logs are quite big, and we do not have any system dedicated to logs sharing, so the best way to give them to us is maybe using an online service like wetransfer.
Please check the logs and please let me know ASAP what the problem is and how to solve it…
These logs are only from one drone. We have another two ANAFI USA with similar behaviour of low range!
I recall that this one had also another issue. In flight after some time it was yawing by itself left and right and then stopping which is totally insane! In one of our flights it happened too many times.
If this is a hardware issue I expect Parrot to send me back at least a new ANAFI USA and a new SkyController3. Like I said before, I put all our Parrot-related work on ice and I am forced to use devices from the competition but I am not too happy as we have invested a lot on your drones!
Unfortunately the logs you sent will not help understanding the issue you are facing, on those logs the drone never goes further away than 30m.
Could you please try to reproduce the issue and then get the logs?
As for the message from Erwan, it is related to the video you sent about the yaw problems. Would you have the logs corresponding to this issue?
These logs must show the problem with the telemetry and the anomalous drone behavior.
I am going to send you also the logs of the second ANAFI USA when I get it back.
In the meantime I will send you the logs of our ANAFI Thermal which has the same telemetry issue and managed to get it up to 500m away from me before I had a disconnection!
In order not to take too much space on the sdcard there is a rotation of the logs. Older logs are deleted and replaced by newer.
You must have done new tests/flights since those on which you had the issues, that is why we do not have the logs corresponding to the problems you are referring to.
So if you notice a problem it is better to get the logs not too long after, to make sure you get the right logs and that they do not get overwritten by newer ones.
It’s clear that your products have defects and you do not recognize it. Resellers or support won’t do anything other than spend my precious time and also burn more of my money…
I need to get in touch with the CTO or any other higher manager.