Strong RF Interference warning

[TheGrumpster]

I am curious to know whether or not anyone else has started seeing this since the latest firmware upgrade. I fly almost exclusively in the middle of nowhere and up until about two weeks ago, I had NEVER seen the "strong RF interference" warning, not ever, even when I was in places where I might suspect there would be strong RF interference.
But beginning about two weeks ago (right around the time of that firmware upgrade), I started getting this warning ALL the time (i.e. I never have a flight now where this warning doesn't pop up).
Over at RCG, Mad suggested that DJI made a change to comply with EU regulations that require monitoring a channel to make sure it isn't already in use before transmitting on it (listen before talk), and hinted that this might be the culprit. And perhaps that is the case, but given that I am literally in the middle of nowhere, with no people, no buildings, no cell towers, no nothing for miles in all directions, there is no way that you will hear anything on any of those channels. I could easily prove this with a spectrum analyzer from work if I so desired, but there is no need.
What's also quite weird is that when you go into the HD menu on the Go app and look at the channels, you'll see the red unstable bars hop around all over the place, showing you that all of your channels are bad, and it doesn't matter whether you pick 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz. This makes no sense at all.
Another fellow on RCG said that the Go app is jamming itself, and claimed that all you need to do to cure this issue is roll back the firmware. But of course that is impossible since doing so would render the X7 useless. So what are you to do?
This whole thing smells to me like yet another DJI firmware fiasco, where they just went ahead and made some changes without giving any thought whatsoever to the possible consequences, and of course, they never tell anyone what they have changed. It's quite scary when you think about it, and I have noticed a lot of video drop-out issues lately that I had never seen before. I've flown the I2 up to 1200m away with the X5S and never had any issues, but with the X7 and the latest firmware, I get break-ups at 10m, and have totally lost the signal while in perfect line-of-sight at about 100m. Not good.
Anyone else see anything like this, or am I, as so many of the paid corporate DJI shills on RCG constantly brand me, just a know-nothing troll?

 

[sailor]

I have had the same issues..I've been ignoring the warning and all seems to work ok. It does make me nervous though.

 

[PatrickP]

i created a thread about this the other day. strong interference warnings with new firmware?

in my case i reloaded the firmware for the RC and the i2, deleted and reinstalled the dji go 4 app and the warnings went away.

 

[Scoobywrx05]

What is interesting is that it’s just not this platform that has problems with stuff like this. They all seem to do. Each platform has its own group of problems and from what I’m finding about 80 percent of the time problems are fixed just by downloading new firmware or the app. My guess is that maybe it’s not the firmware or app itself but how the information is sent for the download or app . That’s all it takes is one tiny little piece of information in that file to be missing or out of place and it will cause problems. The bigger the files are the more of a chance things could be messed up. Ever noticed how it seems 85 to 90 percent of the problems com from the United States based group of people. Yes I’m sure they sell more birds over here than they do in the U.K. or other places but how many servers does the information I download bounce thru before it gets to my computer? Take an example, one day I download the new go app. The first time download acted funny and would have a grey screen in 4K 30fps setting. Removed and reinstalled the app and the second one was all messed up, compass error problems along with several other problems. Deleted it and reinstalled again,this time around everything worked fine. Nothing changed at all besides 30 minutes of time passing. Same everything, same bird,camera,battery,iPad,WiFi connection. So why did it do that. Same thing with the last time I updated the firmware. First time the bird had all kinds of problems second time with the same firmware no problems at all. Why?

 

[The Editor]

What is interesting is that it’s just not this platform that has problems with stuff like this. They all seem to do. Each platform has its own group of problems and from what I’m finding about 80 percent of the time problems are fixed just by downloading new firmware or the app. My guess is that maybe it’s not the firmware or app itself but how the information is sent for the download or app . That’s all it takes is one tiny little piece of information in that file to be missing or out of place and it will cause problems. The bigger the files are the more of a chance things could be messed up. Ever noticed how it seems 85 to 90 percent of the problems com from the United States based group of people. Yes I’m sure they sell more birds over here than they do in the U.K. or other places but how many servers does the information I download bounce thru before it gets to my computer? Take an example, one day I download the new go app. The first time download acted funny and would have a grey screen in 4K 30fps setting. Removed and reinstalled the app and the second one was all messed up, compass error problems along with several other problems. Deleted it and reinstalled again,this time around everything worked fine. Nothing changed at all besides 30 minutes of time passing. Same everything, same bird,camera,battery,iPad,WiFi connection. So why did it do that. Same thing with the last time I updated the firmware. First time the bird had all kinds of problems second time with the same firmware no problems at all. Why?

Parity checks and checksum information should take of validating the download and will spit an error if all integrity isn't intact.
However...... this is DJI we are talking about so anything weird is possible!!

 

[NickU]

Like the Ed says parity checks etc will stop you getting a bad download.

What is more likely is that some programmer at DJI failed to set some value correctly in their code (firmware or software), and which is then released to production... simple carelessness. Or, that the Dji Go app doesn't read stored flight parameters properly, or doesn't act on them if it reads them. The value for Gimbal Yaw Smoothness in Follow Mode seems to point towards the later.... basically a code regression bug, aka it worked, then someone picked the wrong module to compile with and reintroduced a bug that had been cleared before.

DJI are great at innovating, but far less great at actually getting things to work or delivering on their promises

I've also never had a single interference warning in over 150hrs flight with both an I2 and a P4. Updated Dji Go and I2 firmware last week and got swamped with the warnings. Turning off the iPad wifi stopped them.

 

[TheGrumpster]

Sorry I didn't see the previous post. Interesting to hear that some folks seem to have fixed this. I forgot to mention that as an experiment, I tried to put my iPhone (yes, I use a 6s+ as my flight display, always have) in airplane mode, and guess what happened then? The Go app disconnected from the controller and would not reconnect no matter what. So airplane mode is a no-go, apparently. And I still don't accept that my phone is jamming the I2, because it never did until about two weeks ago. Quality is job NONE, perhaps?

 

[Scoobywrx05]

Parity checks and checksum information should take of validating the download and will spit an error if all integrity isn't intact.
However...... this is DJI we are talking about so anything weird is possible!!

Don’t worry tho because it’s coming soon.

 

[Scoobywrx05]

Sorry I didn't see the previous post. Interesting to hear that some folks seem to have fixed this. I forgot to mention that as an experiment, I tried to put my iPhone (yes, I use a 6s+ as my flight display, always have) in airplane mode, and guess what happened then? The Go app disconnected from the controller and would not reconnect no matter what. So airplane mode is a no-go, apparently. And I still don't accept that my phone is jamming the I2, because it never did until about two weeks ago. Quality is job NONE, perhaps?

You’re not the only person I’ve heard of having problems using the I 6 as a monitor now.

 

[Scoobywrx05]

Like the Ed says parity checks etc will stop you getting a bad download.

What is more likely is that some programmer at DJI failed to set some value correctly in their code (firmware or software), and which is then released to production... simple carelessness. Or, that the Dji Go app doesn't read stored flight parameters properly, or doesn't act on them if it reads them. The value for Gimbal Yaw Smoothness in Follow Mode seems to point towards the later.... basically a code regression bug, aka it worked, then someone picked the wrong module to compile with and reintroduced a bug that had been cleared before.

DJI are great at innovating, but far less great at actually getting things to work or delivering on their promises

I've also never had a single interference warning in over 150hrs flight with both an I2 and a P4. Updated Dji Go and I2 firmware last week and got swamped with the warnings. Turning off the iPad wifi stopped them.

If that was the case tho then why would the 2nd download of a firmware that is the same version work but the download that was done 20 minutes previously to it not work? Is it a random bug that attaches itself to whatever download it wants to whenever it wants to? If it was a bug don’t you think you would see the problem in every craft that had that version of the firmware? I’m not a computer programmer or anything of the sort but how could 2 exact crafts,one purchased from dji with firmware x on it and the second one update to firmware x from the owners pc and the one from dji doesn’t have a problem and the one updated from the owners pc does when they are the same exact craft with the same exact firmware? Is it because the firmware is having problems overwriting the older version of the firmware?

 

[Scoobywrx05]

I know there’s a few guys on here that understand how dji writes their programs and understand s this stuff a lot better than I do but I’m wanting to learn why the stuff messes up.

 

[NickU]

In a nutshell, yes. The firmware is basically a computer program, or actually a set of computer programs, a bit for the flight controller, a bit for the camera, a bit for the gps, a bit for the geofencing and so on. They're all rolled up into a big parcel and updated one after another... although you only see 'one' update. When the parcel is downloaded, each bit is unwrapped and sent to the appropriate 'department'. During that unwrapping, bits can get scrambled, or something can interrupt the flow of the bits the department and the message gets messed up, or when the new code starts up, it misreads a value set by the previous firmware. So there are lots of things that can go wrong during a firmware update.

There's no easy answer or rhyme or reason as to which bits will work, or what will screw up. As everything is packaged into a single update you don't get to know (unless you dig in to the log files that are hidden away). So, if a bit fails to update fully, it can seem as if it will work, but it may be at a previous revision level, not the latest... so it can sometimes take two or more goes to fully update everything.

The trouble with things that don't share the same revision level is that you end up with bits that don't function correctly together... so basically they're not playing from the same sheet of music.

 

[Scoobywrx05]

It’s like not having the correct communication between the bird, camera, fc, and so on.

 

[SteveFPV]

A big problem is pushing out updates without adequate testing. In fact, sometimes it seems they don't test at all. Can only be hopeful, but I am keeping my I2 on 8 month ago firmware until I am comfortable with the reviews. Certainly don't want to screw up my x5s

 

[NickU]

Flew this afternoon (4 sets of batteries), didn't switch the iPad to aeroplane mode, RC used both 2.4G and 5.8G bands at different times and I got no interference warnings. Mind, there shouldn't have been as the nearest Wifi (other than iPad or the phone in my pocket) to interfere would have been well over a mile away .

 

[sailor]

I get interference warnings in the last two weeks both far from any wifi or cell coverage and when in airplane mode. I had these warnings start before I dowloaded the new firmware, so I suspect the problem with my I2 resides in the DJI GO app which I update regularly.

 

[924]

I am curious to know whether or not anyone else has started seeing this since the latest firmware upgrade. I fly almost exclusively in the middle of nowhere and up until about two weeks ago, I had NEVER seen the "strong RF interference" warning, not ever, even when I was in places where I might suspect there would be strong RF interference.
But beginning about two weeks ago (right around the time of that firmware upgrade), I started getting this warning ALL the time (i.e. I never have a flight now where this warning doesn't pop up).
Over at RCG, Mad suggested that DJI made a change to comply with EU regulations that require monitoring a channel to make sure it isn't already in use before transmitting on it (listen before talk), and hinted that this might be the culprit. And perhaps that is the case, but given that I am literally in the middle of nowhere, with no people, no buildings, no cell towers, no nothing for miles in all directions, there is no way that you will hear anything on any of those channels. I could easily prove this with a spectrum analyzer from work if I so desired, but there is no need.
What's also quite weird is that when you go into the HD menu on the Go app and look at the channels, you'll see the red unstable bars hop around all over the place, showing you that all of your channels are bad, and it doesn't matter whether you pick 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz. This makes no sense at all.
Another fellow on RCG said that the Go app is jamming itself, and claimed that all you need to do to cure this issue is roll back the firmware. But of course that is impossible since doing so would render the X7 useless. So what are you to do?
This whole thing smells to me like yet another DJI firmware fiasco, where they just went ahead and made some changes without giving any thought whatsoever to the possible consequences, and of course, they never tell anyone what they have changed. It's quite scary when you think about it, and I have noticed a lot of video drop-out issues lately that I had never seen before. I've flown the I2 up to 1200m away with the X5S and never had any issues, but with the X7 and the latest firmware, I get break-ups at 10m, and have totally lost the signal while in perfect line-of-sight at about 100m. Not good.
Anyone else see anything like this, or am I, as so many of the paid corporate DJI shills on RCG constantly brand me, just a know-nothing troll?

 

[924]

I got this message a couple times prior to the most recent FW update, an update that I still have not loaded. I've not seen the message in the last half dozen or so flights - and I still haven't update my firmware. I use an iPad Pro (WiFi only) with my controller. In order to have access to mapping, and to be sure which direction my aircraft is facing while at the edges of my LOS I use my iPhone 6 as a hot spot. i have wondered if the hot spot, which is generally coming from my shirt pocket, is the source of interference. It's my understanding that wireless phones use frequencies in the 700-900 MHz range so maybe I have stinkin' thinkin '.

 

[NickU]

To be honest, I think it's just DJI nannying - as with the High wind warnings that appear, they've set the warning threshold too low

 

[924]

"Nannying".... that's funny!