OK, so here some
first results flying 0.98y!
I ran through all of my 7 batteries and experienced not a single issue!
Currently I get a little less flight time out of each battery as I've mounted a
Hawkey Firefly Micro cam (ugly1080p, don't bother), about 15g extra weight, plus I installed
stronger rotor guards that actually let you 'lean into' a wall w/o going down! Highly recommended.) Take-off weight currently 106g with battery (charged that is, --yup). But it flew absolutely great throughout, loaded like this. All in all, I flew it a bit over 50 minutes indoors (dark, sleet/snow outside).
In the past, I would've had a run-away, I'd say, at least once, or maybe twice, pretty reliably during that amount of flight time. Not this go-around! (Whew... --regaining confidence!)
Please note, this is also
after removing the third-party WiFi helper app from my phone. Maybe it interfered somehow. I also calibrated the
Tello using the
orig.Tello app. Decidedly better at hovering now. But that's not related to the run-away problem. That it dropped 'out of the sky', was a bit of a downer... but, hopefully a fluke; or so exceptionally rare that I it's not worth worrying about too much for the time being.
So, I took some notes what I've been doing pre-flight:
- Check rotors, flick rotors to check if they move freely, rotor guards, so that all clears, esp. after crashes
- Disconnect/Force Stop NordVPN (VPN app, which will not allow Wifi connection to drone)
- Check/Force Stop orig Tello app
- Check/Force Stop TelloFPV (to assure that there aren't two instance running, ever)
- Set screen rotation to Auto
- Set Airplane Mode ON
- Set WiFi ON
- Clear All Apps using Android button (square one on bottom of Android 8.0 screen)
- Plug in WiFi amp, check that active (yellow light)
- Turn on Gamesir T1s using home button +"A" (which activates the blinking red mouse button light later when connected)
- Plug in "Cable Creations" OTG cable (LG G6 to Gamesir T1s)
- Put in fresh battery into Tello, turn on Tello, watch Tello LED for color modes
- Wait for Tello to establish a connection to Wifi Amp (Xiaomi Mi 2), blue light on
- Open TelloFPV and click TelloFPV icon for WiFi to enter phone's WiFi settings
- Select the WiFi from WiFi Amp, wait, when prompted click OK to affirm that there's no internet connection
- Return to TelloFPV app, wait for video stream, check notifications, if applicable
- Arm Motors, and if all sounds good, manually take off
- Crash
- Start it all over.
I had the app crash hard a couple of times after I upgraded and while trying to connect for the first time in 0.98y to the
Gamesir. I've been trying as hard as I could now to reproduce this, but I can't (that's good). The only time the app disappears, is when I long-press the
Gamesir 'home' button and the 'Y' button simultaneously. Then the app goes into the background, but is still open. So, who cares. Pulling the OTG cable also leaves
TelloFPV unfazed. If I smash the phone with a hammer, the app is still running too (somewhere, --just not on my phone!)
No clue what might have been going on there initially...
I noticed I can arm the motors now with the sticks (lower-right/lower-left) much more easily than before. Nice!
I tried, and totally loved, the feature of mapping a controller button to arm the motors! Awesome.
Here's an idea (
totally useless, but it's strictly from a
software elegance of design flow perspective only, ...those little neat details... it's just a thought, seriously):
If I press the mapped 'arm motors' button again (I re-mapped the 'Start' button) while the motors are idling (not yet flying!), the same dialog box pops up, again asking if I want to arm the motors... I assume the
Tello knows that the motors are running and it is probably reporting back to the
TelloFPV app that this is going on (I don't know, I simply assume). IF that's the case, then a different dialog box could ask the user if the app should shut down the currently idling motors, i.e. send a 'left stick down 2 seconds' command). Pressing the mapped button mid-flight should suppress any dialog, because it doesn't make sense then to display a dialog box to arm/disarm motors.
Anyway, thank you
very much for this upgrade!