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Waypoint feature not functioning - Returing for repair

DanielC

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I spoke with Autel and I am sending the drone to them. I dropped it with FedEx on 8-12-19.
I tried waypoints after getting comfortable with the drone and couldn't get them to function.
I thought I may have been doing something wrong. Then the new mission planning feature arrived with the software update.
When that didn't work either, I opened a case with Autel. They requested that I send the drone to them for repair.

So far so good. I'll update this thread when I have more news of my experience. So far the greatest pain was $12.00 for the
over-pack box at FedEx. Autel covered the shipping cost.

I am a videographer but so far I am flying for fun. I will get my Part 107 in the future so I can monetize the drone.
 
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Quick question, with it "not working" do you get error messages? or it just does nothing? When I sent mine back in for some weirdness with this update, they couldn't reproduce it, even though I can reproduce it more often than not.
 
Just nothing. No errors. We shall see what happens. The tech guy I spoke responded in a way that it sounded to me that he knew what the issue was. I thought he said circuit card, but I don't have perfect recall.
 
This was happening before the update. What the update did was highlight the problem because of the new mission planning feature not working.
 
Would be interested to know how this turns out. I'm now convinced that Autel's answer to everything is 'return the drone to us'. They don't seem interested in doing any real troubleshooting.

LP
 
personally I think all the newer CS people that they have hired are like call center people. They have a written script to follow and that's about it. Most companies are like that now. Used to be the tech guys took turns answering emails and phones but with all the cut backs most of the guys that know anything have been moved to other positions. Not many of the original crew left from what I can tell.
Seems the new people would have trouble plugging in a soldering iron to actually fix anything on your drone.
Sad but its the way things are now a days.
 
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personally I think all the newer CS people that they have hired are like call center people. They have a written script to follow and that's about it. Most companies are like that now. Used to be the tech guys took turns answering emails and phones but with all the cut backs most of the guys that know anything have been moved to other positions. Not many of the original crew left from what I can tell.
Seems the new people would have trouble plugging in a soldering iron to actually fix anything on your drone.
Sad but its the way things are now a days.
While I was doing tech support back in Belleville Ontario we would take calls and when not on the phone we would answer emails. We would also do live chat help from the website. And yes the calls were all scripted as well as the emails and chat.
 
I got the impression after a few email exchanges with tech support that they knew what the issue was and that it required a hardware fix. That could only be accomplished by returning the drone. I believe the tech guy mentioned something about the motherboard or a chip. His immediate action after this was to process the RMA. He did enough troubleshooting to understand enough to know it could only be repaired by RMA.

I’ll keep you updated. The drone is scheduled to arrive tomorrow at Autel.
 
I received an email from support saying they have to replace a part on my drone at no cost to me.

It may take up to 14 days to get it back to me.

This is a $125 repair which again is no charge to me. I did pay $12 for an overpack for the return shipment, but Autel paid for shipping which took one week.

I’m starting to miss my drone, and I look forward to seeing it again. It will be nice to have the full functionality originally designed into the drone for the first time when I get it back.
I’ll keep you posted.
 
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I don't know what your exact problem is/was, but I want to share what I had happen just to see if this is possibly the same thing. I would start a waypoint mission and it would immediately stop. If I turned off obstacle avoidance it would run fine. It would run maybe 10% of the time with avoidance on. There would be no message, it would just quit.
 
I don't know what your exact problem is/was, but I want to share what I had happen just to see if this is possibly the same thing. I would start a waypoint mission and it would immediately stop. If I turned off obstacle avoidance it would run fine. It would run maybe 10% of the time with avoidance on. There would be no message, it would just quit.
If OA detects an object, it will quit the waypoints
 
My drone never started a mission. It would say it was loading and then do nothing. Tech support seemed pretty confident it was a defect or failure and replaced the part.
The drone has arrived home and I will see it in about an hour. I'll let you all know how it goes when I test it.

I like the new mission planning with in the software update. I look forward to experiencing the feature soon.
 
Got the drone back today. It is now performing missions as designed.

Now that I am familiar with flying the drone though, I'm finding that I am not that happy with the camera. I have seen footage recently from a Mavic Pro 2 and in my case the Mavic looks better.

I am going to try some adjustments to the camera to see if the look can be improved. Today I recorded and it was a beautiful sunny day. I shot in log mode H265 60fps manual exposure and shutter at 120. The footage looks soft. I reviewed all the collected footage for the camera and only a couple of the shoots look good compared with the Mavic footage. If my testing doesn't reveal some secret sauce to get a better look, I may have to replace the drone.

There just seems to be noise in the image and a lack of sharpness over all.

I don't relish the idea of the DJI universe with all its hassles, but image quality is also important to me.
 

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