Cannot connect Desktop and mobile apps

Posted by Mike Piantanida on February 17, 2017 at 4:30pm

First off, I'm so sorry for sending this out earlier today as individual messages to everyone.

I'm not familiar with a forum that's also kinda formatted like Facebook. :)

Anyway...here's the issue I need help with, in case you didn't see it elsewhere:

I'm trialing UgCS to see if it might be a good solution to collect imagery for creating topographic surveys. I currently have a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced, controlled with an nVidia Shield K1 tablet. I'm able to get the mobile app installed, and it will connect to the Phantom. I have the Desktop app installed on my Win7 x64 PC, and I've created a test mission, but I cannot for the life of me get the desktop app to connect to recognize the mobile app so I can upload the mission to the drone. I've read the PDF, and it just says they should recognize each other automatically. Both machines are on the same network. The tablet is wifi, the PC is wired, both run through the same router. I've even tried switching the PC to wireless via a USB adapter, but it still doesn't connect. What else should I do? Until I get this sorted, I can't even try out the software.

Thanks for any advice,

-Mike

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Replies

  • Rick Menard April 30, 2017 at 4:35pm

    Hey Janis,

    I'm having the same problem but I'm using a Samsung Galaxy S2.

    When you say "On tablet go to Menu, scroll down to very bottom...", which menu are you talking about?

    The IP on my RC is 172.20.10.5. My Laptop is 172.20.10.4.

    I have my RC set to 'F' mode.

    Also, my desktop UgCS server IP is 127.0.0.1, do I need to change it to a 172.20.10.xx address?

    The documentation is very limited in this area.

    Janis Kuze said:

    Before support comes to work on Monday, please try following.

    On tablet go to Menu, scroll down to very bottom. There you will see IP and UgCS Connection port. Write down those values IP and port.

    Go to UgCS on PC, open Menu->Configuration->VSM. Find DJI VSM.

    Click on it. Click Edit button. Enter IP from Tablet in host field and port in port field.

    Restart both devices and give it a try.

    Provided that does not solve the issue something less common and exceptional is going on. Please report the issue to support as unfortunately we will need our tech guys from support at office to help you.

    Good luck!

  • Mike Piantanida February 23, 2017 at 3:23pm

    Normally, I'd agree, but I'm evaluating several other products at the same time, as well as running all my other projects, so I'm afraid I may not be able to complete the trials within the 2-week window.

    Regardless, I'm in contact with support and they are helping me work through some other crashes and issues I'm having with the software. Thanks for your help.

  • Janis Kuze February 23, 2017 at 9:24am

    Two weeks is usually enough time to get over learning curve and understand where limitations are within UgCS and where in drone. To see how UgCS squeezes out more from, let say DJI, than you can get with native software. 

    There is also option to have one-on-one sessions with our engineers for Pro/Enterprise customers, to go hand in hand through planning first real missions and learning best practice for particular situation.

  • jerome bos February 23, 2017 at 5:58am

    That is an extremely generous guarantee. I see you stand behind your products.

  • Janis Kuze February 19, 2017 at 7:26am

    For UgCS Pro I am accepting refund requests within period of two weeks from purchase with no questions asked.

  • Mike Piantanida February 19, 2017 at 7:22am

    Yes, I've read that page, and it was fairly instructive.

    However, with the photogrammetry tool being disabled in the free version, and there not being an option for a trial of any of the other versions that I can find, I don't see a way to determine if this software is something we can use in my business.

    Everything on that page refers to using the photo tools, which makes sense, except for the part where those tools aren't available to me.

  • Janis Kuze February 19, 2017 at 7:03am

    There are options to put "action on each waypoint" that means camera will be triggered by waypoint for each picture. Will add huge amount of waypoints, cause drone to stop at each, likely will run into DJI limitation of number of available waypoints and usually will provide more precision. Or option is to trigger camera by time or distance to minimize number of needed waypoints and increase speed of taking pictures at cost of reduced precision.

    Here is good material to start with to see what are basic aspects to consider for surveying and similar flights https://www.ugcs.com/en/page/photogrammetry-tool-for-land-surveying

    UgCS allows more fine tuning of the route than other planners on average. Generally we can say that last year most of improvements went into Area Scan and Photogrammetry tool as we were working almost daily together with surveyors who do these kinds of flights on daily basis as their core business. In end that led to split into Area Scan and Photogrammetry tool as number of settings and options become overwhelming for single tool. As everything it comes at the cost of increased learning curve.

  • Mike Piantanida February 19, 2017 at 5:38am

    I think I see the problem. I was under the impression that I was supposed to switch back to "P" mode after uploading the route. That must be the issue. I'll try again in "F" mode.

    Reading further, do I understand correctly that when I create a route (area scan for example), that it will not automatically take photos along the way? I thought that's what it was going to do, but reading in the manual, it looks like I have to set up specific actions for every time I want it to take a shot, or do it manually from the RC, which won't work well at all.

    My comment earlier about this seeming to be too hard wasn't based on misconceptions about the Hollywood perception of 'magical automatic drones', I was basing it on my previous experience with other, similar types of image collection software. Altizure Beta, for example, allows me to specify a collection area, calculate the path, and fly the route with about 6 clicks.

    I was hoping UgCS would be a more flexible option, but the exponential increase in complexity may just be beyond me...

  • Janis Kuze February 19, 2017 at 3:31am

    No, it should not be and most of the time it is not as all connections of the drones are happening automatically.

    As for not executing mission, have you set the drone to automode according UGCS Manual for DJI https://www.ugcs.com/files/PDFs/Manuals/v2.10/How_to_connect_UgCS_a...

    RC needs to be set for Phantom 3 (Professional, Advanced) – mode “F”

    If that is not an issue please report to our support and tomorrow they will look into the issues you are having.

    Drones are easy just in Sci-Fi films. In reality as soon as you want to squeeze something more than "Dronie" out of them complexity rises manifold unfortunately. It is just marketing what makes it look easy. Once drones are used for some serious applications lot of details needs to be taken in account to achieve results. That is reason why professional drone services cost so much as it is not enough to have an equipment and everyone is good to go and do volumetric calculations of a quarry as an example. Hope in 10 years we will have real "out of box" solutions not requiring any learning curve!

    https://www.ugcs.com/files/PDFs/Manuals/v2.10/How_to_connect_UgCS_and_DJI_Drone.pdf
  • Mike Piantanida February 18, 2017 at 1:33pm

    Hey, that worked! I wonder why I had to do it manually? Oh well, it's fixed. :)

    Now I have another issue...

    I've created a simple mission to take off, fly a pattern around my property, and land back in the same general place.

    Now that I have the PC and tablet connected, I'm able to upload the mission to the tablet, and it reports success.

    Once the drone is armed and ready to go, nothing I do makes it start the mission. However, if I launch the drone manually and put it in a hover, then press the on-screen "take off" button, I get a message saying that the mission is loaded and ready or run, or something similar. Here's the problem: if I tell it to go ahead and execute the mission, I get an error saying something like it's not done uploading waypoints. I don't recall the exact message, but basically it contradicts the message immediately prior to that one, which told me that everything was transferred and ready to execute.

    I feel like this shouldn't be this hard....

    Janis Kuze said:

    Before support comes to work on Monday, please try following.

    On tablet go to Menu, scroll down to very bottom. There you will see IP and UgCS Connection port. Write down those values IP and port.

    Go to UgCS on PC, open Menu->Configuration->VSM. Find DJI VSM.

    Click on it. Click Edit button. Enter IP from Tablet in host field and port in port field.

    Restart both devices and give it a try.

    Provided that does not solve the issue something less common and exceptional is going on. Please report the issue to support as unfortunately we will need our tech guys from support at office to help you.

    Good luck!

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