Landing

[Logger]

I agree it would be PITA to keep upgrading and downgrading. Especially if it is unnecessary. Lets see what others report with the latest software compliment in your other thread.

 

[JLane]

I just came across this thread earlier today, but I'd been investigating and posting about this inability to cancel the auto-landing procedure for a couple of days. I posted a video yesterday showing that throttle and Pause don't work. But after posting that video, a user on the DJI forums pointed out that the Sport mode switch does work. So I've done a follow-up video to demonstrate it.

In summary, once an auto-landing has started (holding left stick down while VPS reads 0.5m or less), here's what works:
- Throttle does NOT work. No response at all to throttle stick input
- All other stick movements do work, but do NOT cancel the auto-landing
- Pause button does NOT work. No effect at all.
- Sport mode switch DOES work to cancel the auto-landing, whether going from P to S, or S to P

 

[Andrew F]

I just came across this thread earlier today, but I'd been investigating and posting about this inability to cancel the auto-landing procedure for a couple of days. I posted a video yesterday showing that throttle and Pause don't work. But after posting that video, a user on the DJI forums pointed out that the Sport mode switch does work. So I've done a follow-up video to demonstrate it.

In summary, once an auto-landing has started (holding left stick down while VPS reads 0.5m or less), here's what works:
- Throttle does NOT work. No response at all to throttle stick input
- All other stick movements do work, but do NOT cancel the auto-landing
- Pause button does NOT work. No effect at all.
- Sport mode switch DOES work to cancel the auto-landing, whether going from P to S, or S to P

Cool. Good job. I'm not sure why switching sport mode did NOT work for me. I've subsequently downgraded to .04 because I don't care to have to resort to "tricks" to stop automated movements.

 

[Logger]

I just came across this thread earlier today, ....pointed out that the Sport mode switch does work. So I've done a follow-up video to demonstrate it.

Yeah the Mode Button cancelling Auto land is also shown in the video I posted back at post #38

If you want to do a complete video showing how to cancel autoland, rather than one showing how you cannot, you could also add the example of the P/S mode toggle causing the Mavic to take off and fly back to 0.5m and hover (toggled before prop shutdown). This is perfectly understandable, but will give someone a shock if they did not expect it.

Having come from Litchi I am well used to using the Mode switch to regain control and don't have an issue with it. It is my go to switch and would be top of my thoughts if the Mavic started auto landing from some ridiculous height. I also fly over water heaps and am confident in doing so, knowing I have the Mode switch to stop things if it misbehaves. In fact a Litchi engineer once said to me in regard to Missions "..if you wish to regain control, the preferred way is to flip the RC switch. It is instant and will always give you back control no matter what.".

So in summary we still have the ability to cancel autoland.

 

[JLane]

Yeah the Mode Button cancelling Auto land is also shown in the video I posted back at post #38

If you want to do a complete video showing how to cancel autoland, rather than one showing how you cannot, you could also add the example of the P/S mode toggle causing the Mavic to take off and fly back to 0.5m and hover (toggled before prop shutdown). This is perfectly understandable, but will give someone a shock if they did not expect it.

I did include that in my video ;-)

Having come from Litchi I am well used to using the Mode switch to regain control and don't have an issue with it. It is my go to switch and would be top of my thoughts if the Mavic started auto landing from some ridiculous height. I also fly over water heaps and am confident in doing so, knowing I have the Mode switch to stop things if it misbehaves. In fact a Litchi engineer once said to me in regard to Missions "..if you wish to regain control, the preferred way is to flip the RC switch. It is instant and will always give you back control no matter what.".

I had a feeling that those of you who knew to try the Sode switch probably had a bit of Litchi experience. I know that in Litchi, the switch will cancel out of anything. But for the majority of flyers who've never used Litchi or another 3rd party app, that switch is far from being front-of-mind, and they will (have been) quite shocked to find no way to cancel an auto-landing using the normal methods.

So in summary we still have the ability to cancel autoland.

True. At least there's that. But I don't understand why DJI would take away a perfectly working solution that we already had, and that people are already familiar with, and not even mention the change.

 

[Logger]

I did include that in my video ;-).

Sorry - it was over 6 minutes long. I just skimmed it and must have missed it.

 

[JLane]

In addition, there are at least a couple of reasons why the Sport Mode switch is really not optimal for canceling an auto-landing:

1. (Mentioned in my video) When an iPad Mini is used in the Mavic controller, the right arm of the controller actually covers a part of the switch. It's not always easy to get enough grip with your finger to flick that switch the way the controller's arm sits.

2. For a lot of people, the auto-landing sequence is their preferred way to hand catch. It's not my personal preference, but the majority of videos on YouTube recommend this method. For most people, that means left hand on the RC, and right hand out to catch the Mavic. Now, if there's a bit of wind, or the Mavic drifts for some other reason, or your boat moves a bit, or you lose your footing, and you want to abort the landing, you have no quick way to do so, or even to slow it down. The throttle now has no effect whatsoever once the landing has started. Your Mavic is going to go down whether you like it or not, unless you can quickly get your right hand back on the controller and flick the switch in time.

 

[Andrew F]

I did include that in my video ;-)



I had a feeling that those of you who knew to try the Sode switch probably had a bit of Litchi experience. I know that in Litchi, the switch will cancel out of anything. But for the majority of flyers who've never used Litchi or another 3rd party app, that switch is far from being front-of-mind, and they will (have been) quite shocked to find no way to cancel an auto-landing using the normal methods.



True. At least there's that. But I don't understand why DJI would take away a perfectly working solution that we already had, and that people are already familiar with, and not even mention the change.

Hopefully it will turn out to be a coding mistake that is corrected in the next release. For some reason the mode change did not work for me. But if I'm only 10 feet over the Pacific Ocean and it erroneously starts to autoland, every moment counts and I'd rather not be fumbling with the mode button. I use an IPad mini so it gets blocked. Automation is great when you ask for it, uncontrollable automation doesn't thrill me.

 

[Kilrah]

I have done a few tests yesterday, on .500.
- I only get the "automatic landing" if "landing protection"/"Ground smoothness test" is enabled.
- It starts about 50cm above ground, when the above kicks in and switches to automatic landing.
- I can still push it up or sideways with the sticks, and cancel it with the pause or RTH buttons.
- Approximately once in 10 attempts I cannot push it up or cancel it with pause/RTH (didn't manage to reproduce it enough times and/or have enough time in the second it takes to land from <50cm to try the sport mode switch).
So as a summary firstly it seems not to be a problem if you have the "landing protection" disabled since you're in full control until touchdown, no automated thing. Secondly since it's not consistent it isn't necessarily a .500 thing - you might just never have hit the "one in 10" on .400, but did on .500. I won't bother downgrading to try since I always have landing protection disabled as I consider it pointless anyway.

 

[JLane]

I have done a few tests yesterday, on .500.
- I only get the "automatic landing" if "landing protection"/"Ground smoothness test" is enabled.
- It starts about 50cm above ground, when the above kicks in and switches to automatic landing.
- I can still push it up or sideways with the sticks, and cancel it with the pause or RTH buttons.
- Approximately once in 10 attempts I cannot push it up or cancel it with pause/RTH (didn't manage to reproduce it enough times and/or have enough time in the second it takes to land from <50cm to try the sport mode switch).
So as a summary firstly it seems not to be a problem if you have the "landing protection" disabled since you're in full control until touchdown, no automated thing. Secondly since it's not consistent it isn't necessarily a .500 thing - you might just never have hit the "one in 10" on .400, but did on .500. I won't bother downgrading to try since I always have landing protection disabled as I consider it pointless anyway.

That's very strange indeed. I tested probably at least a dozen times, and not once did the throttle or Pause button respond. In my thread on the DJI forums, the DJI rep Ken even said that he asked R&D about this, and they said it was an intentional change they made with the new firmware, but that they would consider reverting if there was user demand for it.

 

[Andrew F]

That's very strange indeed. I tested probably at least a dozen times, and not once did the throttle or Pause button respond. In my thread on the DJI forums, the DJI rep Ken even said that he asked R&D about this, and they said it was an intentional change they made with the new firmware, but that they would consider reverting if there was user demand for it.

An intentional change?!?! Wow. I'd love to hear their logic. That's just crazy. I'm gonna go over there and see if I can find that thread to "vote" for a reversion. I still can't think of a single valid reason to have full up stick not abort an autolanding sequence.

 

[Andrew F]

An intentional change?!?! Wow. I'd love to hear their logic. That's just crazy. I'm gonna go over there and see if I can find that thread to "vote" for a reversion. I still can't think of a single valid reason to have full up stick not abort an autolanding sequence.

I just had a horrible thought that the inability to abort autolanding may be a "big brother" thing to prevent someone from flying into a NFZ. Argh if that is the case. Regardless, DJI shouldn't make such a substantive change without informing us.

 

[Andrew F]

I just had a horrible thought that the inability to abort autolanding may be a "big brother" thing to prevent someone from flying into a NFZ. Argh if that is the case. Regardless, DJI shouldn't make such a substantive change without informing us.

Yes. It appears that they have disabled autolanding abort as some sort of protection against flying into an NFZ. If that is the case, people or going to be losing Mavics left and right as they fly into a "mistaken" NFZ (old or unused airstrip, etc.)

Mavic Pro Release Notes

Date : 2017.03.02
Firmware : v01.03.0500
DJI GO 4 App iOS : v4.0.5
DJI GO 4 App Android : v4.0.4

What’s New?

1. Updated No-Fly Zone management.

 

[Robbyg]

An intentional change?!?! Wow. I'd love to hear their logic. That's just crazy. I'm gonna go over there and see if I can find that thread to "vote" for a reversion. I still can't think of a single valid reason to have full up stick not abort an autolanding sequence.

Anything other than a Stick Pull Up is counter intuitive and forces the pilot to think about a solution rather than act by reflex.

Rob

 

[Andrew F]

Anything other than a Stick Pull Up is counter intuitive and forces the pilot to think about a solution rather than act by reflex.

Rob

Yep. But they did it. I'm 95% sure it was an NFZ "big brother" change. Hopefully they don't take away the mode switch abort but I'll bet you they do! They need to implement a separate decision matrix with redundant autolanding protocols - for when you clearly are not in an NFZ. They are probably being efficient / lazy with the code and using the same subroutine.

 

[mig25]

I just came across this thread earlier today, but I'd been investigating and posting about this inability to cancel the auto-landing procedure for a couple of days. I posted a video yesterday showing that throttle and Pause don't work. But after posting that video, a user on the DJI forums pointed out that the Sport mode switch does work. So I've done a follow-up video to demonstrate it.

In summary, once an auto-landing has started (holding left stick down while VPS reads 0.5m or less), here's what works:
- Throttle does NOT work. No response at all to throttle stick input
- All other stick movements do work, but do NOT cancel the auto-landing
- Pause button does NOT work. No effect at all.
- Sport mode switch DOES work to cancel the auto-landing, whether going from P to S, or S to P

Great video. Thank you for your time. Learned something here

 

[BudWalker]

@Andrew F why not just turn off Landing Protection as I suggested in post #49. With this turned off the Mavic will do the gentle landing when full back throttle is applied. And, the landing will be cancelled when full forward throttle is applied. What's not to like about this?

 

[Logger]

@Andrew F why not just turn off Landing Protection as I suggested in post #49. With this turned off the Mavic will do the gentle landing when full back throttle is applied. And, the landing will be cancelled when full forward throttle is applied. What's not to like about this?

I guess only that is is not a default.

 

[Logger]

Anything other than a Stick Pull Up is counter intuitive and forces the pilot to think about a solution rather than act by reflex.

Rob

I thought you guys had a bit of a bee in your bonnet about this issue until just now. Well I was wrong.

I thought that when it starts spuriously auto-landing from altitude because of a VPS glitch, I can just cancel it wiht Sports mode. This would be the case when flying at height over the water for instance.

What I did not consider is the case when an autoland goes haywire in the last meter down to the ground.

If you are in a sports field no dig deal. But if you are standing on a pier with water nearby and it unexpectedly starts drifting away when 2' off the ground what are you going to do?

Just happened to me and Mavic went for a swim.

My instinct was to fly out of the situation and to climb. I did not even consider using the mode switch which I have been such a proponent of. You would have to be consciously guarding this switch with a view to bang out on every landing for this to be viable.

I would definitely recommend disabling landing protection until DJI restore the abilty to cancel with throttle.
More later. Got some drying out to do.

 

[Andrew F]

ll

@Andrew F why not just turn off Landing Protection as I suggested in post #49. With this turned off the Mavic will do the gentle landing when full back throttle is applied. And, the landing will be cancelled when full forward throttle is applied. What's not to like about this?

Because when I'm out over the ocean it's easy to lose perspective and I like the extra protection from accidentally setting it down. Highly unlikely, but still. The technology is well considered even if a bit buggy.