Thank you for your vid. I did exactly that. I set the home point to follow my controller. My drone started to come back when I pressed RTH. It came close to me around 80m away it stoped,the drone went to the maximum altitude of 122m then the drone went back out to sea and I had no control over the drone because at that point the drone had very low battery.
Today I lost my Drone. I'm not sure what happend. I changed 1 setting and that's the return to home.
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Kilrah
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There is no "Return to Controller". There is a "set home point to current controller position", which is a one-time thing.
Sounds like your RTH might have been prevented by obstacle avoidance.
JoKhool
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That is the same thing as "return to controller", yes you only have to do it once but if it works correctly it doesn't matter where or how far you have moved the bird should RTH to your current position even if it is a mile away from the original takeoff point. Speaking from experience.
Is it possible that you had a poor GPS signal on your device, perhaps that was the cause of the failure. As mentioned in my previous post, my device's GPS signal was sporadic at best hence the purchase of the external GPS. I have now been able to use both the Follow me and RTH to controller features without an issue. *knock knock knock*
No I had very strong 4g and GPS signal. It was all green and looking good.
I've seen many folks, including DJI reps state that the Return to Controller feature is not dynamic, and does need to be updated manually. This again is further evident by looking at the home position on the mini map. It does not move until you update the position again.
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That's correct. DJI GO does not include a dynamic home point feature.
Did you lose it in a place you could potentially find it? There are several ways. to get you to its last known GPS coordinance.
No I wish I could. It dropped in the sea. Nemo is taking selfies with it.
Negative. It's a one time thing, that only applies when you click the button in Go4. So if you click return to controller and then walk 100m away, it will RTH to the GPS spot where you clicked it, not to where you've moved to. You have to reopen the settings dialog and reselect the set me as home button so that it stores your new position as home.
Above all that, you should hope that DJI Go4 can properly get coordinates from your mobile device. My S8+ refuses to pass on that data, so setting RC as home simply won't work. My G5 has passed along an affirmative answer, but bad coordinates, which Go4 has taken as gospel. I noticed that my home pin wasn't near me on the map...that's when I saw it passed on 0/0, which is in the middle of Africa. Obviously that would've resulted in a "fly away" if I was less experienced.
AlanTheBeast
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Can you post the data log from your phone/tablet at
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
The instructions are there. There may be more to this...
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
The instructions are there. There may be more to this...
Sorry, that's the worst
! I wonder if DJI will replace it as it seems to have been their fault. Definitely post your phone's logs, these guys will be able to tell what went wrong and if it should be covered by DJI.Yes ok I'll do this soon has I get home. I do hope it weren't my stupidity.
AlanTheBeast
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JoKhool
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I'm very sorry you lost your Mavic!
It doesn't look like this is DJI fault. Sounds like operator confusion, and what fault DJI has is in not clearly explaining the feature setting the home point at the controller location.
Still, DJI does give ample warning regarding flying over water, low-battery behavior, etc. In my opinion, the lions share of the fault lies with the pilot, choosing to take the risk of flying over the ocean (something I choose to do too), and running the battery down low during such a flight (something I never do).
This, and other lost Mavics under similar circumstances just reminds us to think about the risks involved, and plan accordingly. In this case, it is expecting to use full flight time from the battery, which should never be the plan when flying over water.
I always bring it back in and land at 40%. I may go a bit lower if I'm on the shore, it's right in front of me VLOS, and I can easily get it back over land in seconds.
Otherwise, you're taking a HUGE risk to run the battery down and not have a good reserve to have some flying time to deal with a problem, if it occurs.
It doesn't look like this is DJI fault. Sounds like operator confusion, and what fault DJI has is in not clearly explaining the feature setting the home point at the controller location.
Still, DJI does give ample warning regarding flying over water, low-battery behavior, etc. In my opinion, the lions share of the fault lies with the pilot, choosing to take the risk of flying over the ocean (something I choose to do too), and running the battery down low during such a flight (something I never do).
This, and other lost Mavics under similar circumstances just reminds us to think about the risks involved, and plan accordingly. In this case, it is expecting to use full flight time from the battery, which should never be the plan when flying over water.
I always bring it back in and land at 40%. I may go a bit lower if I'm on the shore, it's right in front of me VLOS, and I can easily get it back over land in seconds.
Otherwise, you're taking a HUGE risk to run the battery down and not have a good reserve to have some flying time to deal with a problem, if it occurs.
Sounds like you may have inadvertently disabled RTH by moving a control stick after hitting the RTH Button. Otherwise it would have still returned to the beach somwhere. I always recommend turning the controller off instead of using the RTH Button. It is very easy to disable RTH with the sticks and not know it. Turning the controller off gives a solid RTH command (if you have RTH on loss of signal enabled) which you can't disable accidentally. On Edit: Sounds like Alan figured it out (below)
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AlanTheBeast
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Per AirData, the wind direction during flight was a near perfect TAIL WIND OUTBOUND at about 17 miles per hour with gusts to 29 mph.
Okay the following is a bit rushed because I have to leave soon. But here's my take on it.
A new Home Point was updated at 13:30.7. That home point is on the beach 161 m to the SE of the original Home Point.
After battery low RTH began, the drone pointed toward the beach and began coming home.
@15:20.7: "Warning__The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now."
@ 15:22.7: " Low Power. Returning home."
At this point the heading is 226. ie: pointing at the beach.
@15:55.5: "Critically Low Power. Aircraft Landing"
Heading is toward the beach. But movement is out to sea - wind seems stronger than the RTH speed.
@ 19:34.5: "Critically Low Voltage Warning__Land as soon as possible, or battery will be damaged."
@ 19:35.5 ""Critically Low Voltage Warning__Landing"
Sundry strong wind warnings.
So, it was attempting to come back but with the low power at 19:35 it started to land. Turned to its takeoff heading and did its thing.
Brace yourself: Pilot error. Windy flying outbound leg with a tail wind.
In those conditions, you should have switched to S-mode and beated towards the beach at max throttle forward when the battery was below 50%.
Edited: added wind speed and direction.
Okay the following is a bit rushed because I have to leave soon. But here's my take on it.
A new Home Point was updated at 13:30.7. That home point is on the beach 161 m to the SE of the original Home Point.
After battery low RTH began, the drone pointed toward the beach and began coming home.
@15:20.7: "Warning__The remaining battery is only enough for RTH. Return home now."
@ 15:22.7: " Low Power. Returning home."
At this point the heading is 226. ie: pointing at the beach.
@15:55.5: "Critically Low Power. Aircraft Landing"
Heading is toward the beach. But movement is out to sea - wind seems stronger than the RTH speed.
@ 19:34.5: "Critically Low Voltage Warning__Land as soon as possible, or battery will be damaged."
@ 19:35.5 ""Critically Low Voltage Warning__Landing"
Sundry strong wind warnings.
So, it was attempting to come back but with the low power at 19:35 it started to land. Turned to its takeoff heading and did its thing.
Brace yourself: Pilot error. Windy flying outbound leg with a tail wind.
In those conditions, you should have switched to S-mode and beated towards the beach at max throttle forward when the battery was below 50%.
Edited: added wind speed and direction.
Well, for some reason my Mavic (.400 firmware, GO4 4.1.0) doesn't behave the way you describe at all.
When I'm in RTH, I can use pitch (Mode 2 right stick forward/back) to speed it up, all the way to 33mph at full stick, without canceling RTH.
I can also change altitude with the left stick, without canceling RTH.
Just did exactly these maneuvers yesterday, precision landed within 2 inches of take-off.
So, somethings different about my Mavic from yours -- radically so.
Further: Turning the controller off to initiate RTH is an exceedingly foolish idea. Perhaps the most important "rule" when flying a remote piloted aircraft:
Do not ever deliberately lose control of the aircraft when you have control; you may not be able to re-establish control
I'm hard-pressed to think of any worse advice than to completely remove your ability to control the drone while in flight. Autonomous control during RTH is not some sort of sophisticated AI that will avoid dropping on someone's head. No, it will drop the drone into a crowd if it hits critical battery. If you are connected, you can still control the aircraft quite a bit, get it out of the way, and sacrifice IT instead of people.
Finally, Failsafe RTH -- initiated from signal loss -- is different from Smart RTH, initiated by pressing the button. The behavior in flight and response to control inputs are not the same.
Please review the details of these features thoroughly, as it seems you have some misunderstanding. And please do not advise people to deliberately disconnect their RC from the aircraft as a means to initiate RTH. This is very risky, and to be blunt, foolish.
You should always be connected to and in control of your aircraft if possible, even when flying autonomously during RTH. You must be able to cancel RTH immediately if necessary for safety, take control and fly the aircraft.
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