Black screen on Mini 3 during mission on Android

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1

Hello,

First of all, I would like to thank the Litchi team for the great app you are working on. It will indeed bring many new possibilities to drones like mine, the Mini 3. Congratulations on your dedication and efforts!

This is what happened to me:

Yesterday, when I was performing a mission in grid mode, the camera view simply disappeared, the screen went black. The map view with the icon of the drone completing the mission was ok, working in real time, but no images. In fact, randomly and very rarely, you could say that a frame was loaded, but then it disappeared.

When I switched to the camera view, at least to check if the camera settings were good, at one point, my flight was paused in the app because it froze so badly that I thought I was going to close the app, actually.

On October 19th of last year, I last flew the app and everything worked perfectly, which indicates that the problem was with the update of one of the versions since then.

As for the images captured, everything is fine.

My drone is a Mini 3, using the screenless controller on a Galaxy S20 FE (SM-G780G/DS) smartphone, Android 13, One UI version 5.1.

If you need more information, I am at your disposal.

Thank you!

2

It is strange that it was working and then stopped. Normally this would mean that your signal quality was not good, but that may not be the case here. If DJI Fly is running in the background, that can also interfere with your video feed. Make sure that DJI Fly is “force closed” before running the Litchi Pilot app.

I have also seen one other case were someone was having a similar problem with the latest version of the Litchi Pilot app.

3

Hello,

Yes, I always check if DJI Fly is really closed because otherwise my drone won’t even connect to Litchi. In fact, if I want to switch from one app to another, I need to disconnect the cable that connects the controller to the phone and connect it again. It’s as if the smartphone only connects to one of them at a time.

These “blackouts” happen even when the drone is literally right next to me. It’s something intermittent, but it shows the black screen more than the image itself. I would say that 99% of the time I used it yesterday I didn’t see the image on the screen, just trusting the “instrument flight”. In fact, when I needed to return with the drone to change batteries, I did so just based on the map.

I did my flight twice, also to ensure images at 90 and 45 degrees of camera tilt. Right after finishing the second one, I went through the whole process to access the drone again through DJI Fly and everything worked normally in the native app.

I tried to do some tests to see if it would solve the problem, including turning the augmented reality option on and off, but I was unsuccessful.

4

We are investigating this issue, but it looks like the Mini 3 video transmission issue is a bug from the latest DJI SDK version and if that’s the case then we will need to wait for DJI to fix it. In the meantime, you can download the previous Litchi Pilot build by clicking here

1 Like
5

I had the same problem Mini 3 on a pixel6 and a lenovo tablet. black screen, feed would start while recording video but stop when recording stopped.
no feed in photo mode. Rolling back Litchi as suggested fixed it on all devices, thank you.

6

Further to this. If I start Djifly first and then force stop then the camera feed in Litchi Pilot will work.

I forgot and upgraded Litchi Pilot without thinking, lost the camera feed.

I’ve rolled back again, it’s easier and quicker to get airborne.

2 Likes
7

Just as an update, we have reported the issue to DJI and are now waiting for them to release a new SDK version which fixes the Mini 3 standard video bug that the current version introduced.

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8

Is there an estimated time when the new SDK will be released? Does anyone about how long it takes for DJI to troubleshoot issues like this?

9

I’m having the same issue—I just watch the drone fly, ready to hit the RTH button. Everything works fine when I fly manually and record a video.:sweat_smile:

10

DJI said they would release a fix last week which has not happened. Hopefully not too long to wait

11

I’ve been away. Updated DJI fly and Litchi pilot. All working as it should with my Min3.

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12

Oh, this is great! Thank you to share! I will update my apps and test as soon as possible.

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13

I’m a bit late to the party but I also had the persistent video blackout problem (very dangerous as I ended up flying blind a lot so hit RTH and hoped for the best, it returned while still flying blind until I could see it and land safely.) with my Mini 3 so I reverted to an older version of the app and it worked just fine. Looks like latest build has fixed the problem in which case I’ll try to check it out at the weekend.

14

Latest build has fixed the problem. 14 waypoint test this morning no problems at all.

Started straight into Litchi Pilot. Flew straight to 1000 metres away and perfect video feed.

Thank you Litchi developers, you are not monkeys :laughing:

2 Likes
15

just to add.. you solved this problem… but i have had problems with older drones the WiFi airspace is very cluttered now… even in the middle of the woods the frequencies are literally saturated because the squirrels have cell phones now. and also… i noticed with old cell phones on hot days they will thermal throttle and cause the screen to go darker. i crashed once because the screen was getting darker and i assumed it was just the sun effecting viewing the screen and i could not see the detail enough to tell i was like 6” above the top of a tree….

16

And let me guess, you are talking about an iPhone :joy::+1:

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17

Happens with Samsung Galaxy when they get too hot. I found an app that seems to prevent it.
It is called Thermal Guardian and is part of the Good Guardians app (from Samsung). You can also download it from an APK web site.
It works on my Samsung Galaxy S20FE phone but it will NOT install on my Samsung Galaxy A7 Lite tablet. So maybe only for “S” models.

18

P.S. I’ve had the same problem on hot, sunny days when there is no available shade.
Litchi Pilot puts a lot more load on the phone’s CPU than simply flying with DJI FLY and so causes it to get hotter quicker and so it dims a lot sooner.
See my other reply an app that seems to fix it on my Samsung Galaxy S20FE phone.

19

So, I understand this might have happened to you on a hot day, but in my case, it was actually quite cold. I think it was around 12 to 15°C, no more. In fact, my smartphone wasn’t even hot. As mentioned before, this was a problem that has since been fixed.

20

There were two different problems being described. I also had the lack of video problem with my Mini 3 in previous update and reverted to an earlier release to get around it.

The phone dimming due to overheating is a different, unrelated problem as it is not confined to Litchi. It happens with DJI FLY and other drones too.