Fimi X8 SE 2020 Camera Drone and App Disconnects Mid-Flight and Returns To Home
Are you new to flying your Fimi X8 SE 2020 camera drone and found that no matter what you try, your drone disconnects mid flight and automatically returns to home?
Overall, we are very impressed with the Fimi and had nothing but great things to say about it, until a few months in to ownership and out of the blue, the Fimi Navi app on the phone would turn black, would disconnect from the drone and the drone would fly right back to where it took off.
Below is a screenshot of what the issue and error looks like.
No matter what we tried, it would do this on numerous flights and through multiple tests.
What baffled us the most was that we hadn't upgraded or downgraded any firmware for the drone, so what was happening?
If it wasn't the firmware updates making it do this, we thought it could be interference from a new radio tower nearby or even low flying planes as we have a few in the area that do test flights with the RAF.
We flew the Fimi in 4 different locations over the span of a week and found no matter where we were, it would disconnect. Thinking it might have also been due to our position, in the bowl of mountain side which was causing the issue, but this wasn't the case.
Sometimes it would fly for up to 10 minutes, other times it would fly for 1 minute and then return.
Each time we would restart the camera drone, the remote control and the phone and none of these actions would fix the issue. We would take off again, and after a few minutes, another disconnect.
Safe to say, we missed a few decent shots, photos and video opportunities because of this disconnection issue.
How To Fix the Fimi X8 SE 2020 Disconnecting Issue
At the end of the week, and without a clue how to fix it, we decided to downgrade firmware to see if that would work.
This idea did not solve the issue either.
We upgraded the firmware again and as we did, we knocked the remote control in our hand and the drone would disconnect again, which led us to think, this was a physical connection issue, rather than a software issue.
We took our smartphone out of the controller for the Fimi but left the micro USB lead connected to both the remote control and the phone. This is so that it was fully functional and we could fly, but we could do it whilst sat down and check the actual connection between the devices.
With them separated we could play with the connection and found that it was actually loose. This is when we knew we had discovered the issue to the disconnecting drone.
Like everyone, we have a house full of USB cables so went about to grab a longer micro USB cable we had spare. Plugged this in to the remote control and the smartphone and connected them all up together and turned on the Fimi camera drone.
We tested this for over 20 minutes indoors before putting in a new battery and testing it outside.
To our relief we found that the camera drone and remote control did not disconnect from then on.
Below you can see what we replaced the standard Fimi USB leads with:
Once we had replaced the poor Fimi usb cables, we haven't had a single issue.
And since using these new 90 degree micro USB cables to connect the smart phone and remote control of the Fimi, we realised how poor of a connection the Fimi usb cables where.
These new cables fit extremely tightly in to our phones female USB port and have given us a lot more reassurance than the stock Fimi drone cables that come with the camera drone as standard.
We hope this issue can help you resolve your Fimi drone disconnecting issues and keep you up in the air flying.