Accuracy of home point

[Gauts]

I'm surprised, you're only an hour and a half north of me. 10 is a low number of satellites for me.

Mikeg

Ya that's weird for as long as I can remember having GPS in my boat never got more 5 or 6 satellites.
Use to hang out in Vermont every weekend in my younger days knew someone who had a place in St Albans Bay , good old days.

 

[Gauts]

It's not your location.
Wherever you are in the world, there should always be more sats than you need.
I don't know which sats your boat GPS is using, perhaps it's an old machine and only uses US GPS sats?
That would mean it receives less than the Mavic but it should still be getting 9-10 almost all the time.

The Mavic also receives signal from Russian GLONASS sats so it can get >20 at a time depending on where the sats are.
The important thing is that your GPS antenna is out in the open and its skyview is not blocked by obstacles.

The one I have now is a Raymarine product about 4 years old but got to say its very slow to lock in.

 

[Meta4]

Ya that's weird for as long as I can remember having GPS in my boat never got more 5 or 6 satellites.

That's not at all normal.
The first thing to check is the mounting of the antenna.
What's blocking its skyview?

 

[KB4MTO]

The MM GPS is spot on with consumer GPS. I have had to use RTH a few times. I have my altitude set at 250' to make sure it clears all of the trees in the area. I then fly to an open spot about 20' away with no trees around and land. I then take off and then hover. That way the home point resets to that spot and won't land in the tree I'm sitting under. Like others have said, I let RTH get close and then I take over, but the preparations I make by establishing the home point in a clear area protect me if I am not able to take over.

I actually do some work on the DoD side of GPS and it will land on the orange landing pad, but unfortunately, we don't have access to those. Plus, those GPS receivers cost around $75,000 USD.

 

[Whiskey103]

Yea, keep in mind the more expensive drones are not "precision landing" because they have better GPS.
They manage to take a picture of the landing spot or recognize the "H" and go back globally on GPS and then the bottom sensors/camera take over.

 

[DrizzyDrones]

Hey I never let the mini finish landing because I hand land just about every time I do have to say that precision landing or not the mini rth is in my opinion very reliable and dependable. as long as you have the right altitude and verify the orientation and homepoint on map rth has always performed like its supposed to... I think it would be probably possible to give mini precision landing via virtual stick input and capture take off it is probably possible to get some sort of obstacle detection/advoidance through using camera and an app like the way an iPhone camera can detect objects and combined with the virtual stick input I read it on a different thread and sounded interesting and doable

 

[Paleomanjim]

I fly a lot in forests and other lands full of obstacles including trees and cliffs. Quite a few times I have taken off in small 30' diameter clearings in 100' high forests. I am sure RTH would probably bring it home safely, but no way I would take that chance. I never use RTH, I feel better just using the altitude and distance indicators to bring the mini overhead and around 10' directly in front of me. I bring it down at that point, but always like to spot it visually at least 100' or so above me just to make sure I can avoid all obstacles. Really its amazing what these little inexpensive drones can do. I have an FPV racing drone with GPS and it hovers but drifts around continuously in all directions whereas I feel safe having the mini hover 3' away from me without having to keep an eye on it at all time. Just incredible technology!