Are there only few hours to find lost MM ?

[Tomas H.]

Hi, MM was not lost (yet), don't worry ... I just want to be prepared.
My question was "how much time I have to find lost MM?" . The point is, that FindMyDrone feature, as well beeping of the lost drone, those features work until MM's battery is depleted.

I did the test: switched on both AC and RC, wait for connection; than RC was switched off. Occasionally I switched on RC to read battery level. In about 1,5 hour I got "camera overheating" message (it was really about 50C warm), in about 2,5hours "CPU overheating"... both did not surprise me much , as there was no active ventilation. Battery lasted about 4 hours, and this I believe is the time frame (considering of course, that MM is lost with full battery), in which one needs to locate the lost drone, and start to seach for it. I can imagine that for example lost MM in corn field would take good time to locate it precisely, even if I am 10m close to it.

Any experience with time , when MM can be located using RC ? Maybe it enters more power efficient mode if craft is lost during the flight... but I doubt this is so sophisticated.

 

[m80116]

Unless the drone is set to land for signal lost chances are you'll end up with a handful of minutes of battery operation after the drone has landed.

In fact although possible I've yet to see being used the feature to remotely land the drone (for signal loss) beyond RC connection. I advise not do these tests as the Mavic Mini is not designed to stay stationary without air flow around the body, the area underneath is a heat sink and should be ventilated in case of prolonged stops with the drone on.

 

[Miro Kolev]

Unless the drone is set to land for signal lost chances are you'll end up with a handful of minutes of battery operation after the drone has landed.

In fact although possible I've yet to see being used the feature to remotely land the drone (for signal loss) beyond RC connection. I advise not do these tests as the Mavic Mini is not designed to stay stationary without air flow around the body, the area underneath is a heat sink and should be ventilated in case of prolonged stops with the drone on.

But when you downloaded your video in your telephone, you use the MM without air flow. What happened there

 

[Tomas H.]

But when you downloaded your video in your telephone, you use the MM without air flow. What happened there

I just got those "overheat" messages, otherwise MM was functioning properly (like able to connect with RC, or stream video to RC etc.).

 

[Cw4bray]

My MM has crashed several times. The battery usually falls out on impact becoming disconnected. My experience has been zero minutes.

 

[samuca06]

My MM has crashed several times. The battery usually falls out on impact becoming disconnected. My experience has been zero minutes.

I had the same experience.Now I put a tape to close the battery compartment

 

[scro]

My MM got a bit too friendly with a tree and decided to stay. It shut off the motors but kept telemetry running. It had 69% battery on impact. I returned to site about 2.5hrs later to mount a rescue mission and the battery had obviously run out by then. In this situation having the motors beep was helpful in confirming where it had ended up as I was able to get to the crash site in under a minute, and still had plenty of battery power left.

If flying over difficult terrain or further away, the chances of getting to your crash site while still having any battery left (if it doesn't get flung out on impact!!) are much slimmer. You then only have the last GPS position received from the drone to go by. At best this would get you to within a few meters, or potentially many hundreds of meters away if signal was lost prior to crashing.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

Miro Kolev, post #4, direct the output of a fan over the drone. That said, to download video etc. I remove the mSD card from the drone and put the card into a reader connected to the computer.

 

[Miro Kolev]

Miro Kolev, post #4, direct the output of a fan over the drone. That said, to download video etc. I remove the mSD card from the drone and put the card into a reader connected to the computer.

I do this to download and save every my video on computer. But when i download a few videos on the phone to mount a clip with dji fly (I think that's the only way) , it takes a long time and MM heats up. The last time I turned on a fan to blow at the drone, because I had a lots of video and it took me about 30 minutes.

 

[Tomas H.]

My MM got a bit too friendly with a tree and decided to stay. It shut off the motors but kept telemetry running. It had 69% battery on impact. I returned to site about 2.5hrs later to mount a rescue mission and the battery had obviously run out by then. In this situation having the motors beep was helpful in confirming where it had ended up as I was able to get to the crash site in under a minute, and still had plenty of battery power left.

If flying over difficult terrain or further away, the chances of getting to your crash site while still having any battery left (if it doesn't get flung out on impact!!) are much slimmer. You then only have the last GPS position received from the drone to go by. At best this would get you to within a few meters, or potentially many hundreds of meters away if signal was lost prior to crashing.

Thanks scro for exact description! I will think about it when flying over not much accessible terrain. Well... it‘s probably good idea to avoid such places unless one is sure that camera shots will be worth of the risk.

 

[ff22]

My MM got a bit too friendly with a tree and decided to stay. It shut off the motors but kept telemetry running. It had 69% battery on impact. I returned to site about 2.5hrs later to mount a rescue mission and the battery had obviously run out by then. In this situation having the motors beep was helpful in confirming where it had ended up as I was able to get to the crash site in under a minute, and still had plenty of battery power left.

If flying over difficult terrain or further away, the chances of getting to your crash site while still having any battery left (if it doesn't get flung out on impact!!) are much slimmer. You then only have the last GPS position received from the drone to go by. At best this would get you to within a few meters, or potentially many hundreds of meters away if signal was lost prior to crashing.

Sorry to read that. Is there a reasonable chance of retrieval? Good luck.

 

[Hill Top Rez]

I am new to the hobby but I am beginning to think if a person is seriously going to remain in the hobby for long, purchasing a Marco Polo tracking unit may be a good investment. It can be moved from one drone to another easily.

 

[scro]

Sorry to read that. Is there a reasonable chance of retrieval? Good luck.

It's eluded me so far. ? It's not visible from the ground as the tree it's in has some very dense clumps of foliage. I've tried a few recovery ideas so far and have one more to try before calling it quits. It doesn't help that it's a good 40 min drive away. Maybe a good winter storm will bring it down!

 

[Deleted member 103366]

My mini has been in a tree twice, both times my fault no doubt about that, and fortunatley both were within 30ft of me.
This leads me to ask, did you get video from the crashed drone and if so can you see anything useful in the footage such as an identifiable object?
My second encounter was in daylight and I couldn't see the darn thing but I could see its video feed. From that I was able to work out what it was seeing (I am deaf so beeping is of no use to me), even then I still couldn't see teh drone.
I ended up with me putting the end of a brush shaft in shot and then moving that brush shaft end towards the camera. That took me straight to the drone and it was about 7ft off the ground, in the crook of two branches.
Unfortunately a live view will, at a guess, not now be available to you but would you have the original footage?
Do you have access to another drone that you could use to get a birds eye view of the crash site?

 

[scro]

I've done some forensics on the DAT file and the last video taken from about 5 seconds before the crash and have pieced together a reasonable picture of what happened (ultimately it was pilot error)The live feed showed a nice thick clump of blurry branches right in front of the camera and nothing easily identifiable.

Things I've tried so far:

• Beeping to locate the drone - definitely up in the suspected tree and most likely on top of one of 2 possible thick clumps of foliage.
• Climbing - nearly impossible due to the size of the trunk and complete lack of branches for the first 8m. Also fairly risky as I don't have any proper climbing gear (harness, ropes belays etc)
• Long ladder - got me to within 1m of the first solid branch, again risky.
• Weight on the end of string, thrown up through the branches to shake them, As I don't know where exactly the drone is it was a bit of a stab in the dark and very difficult to aim well. Other nearby trees made the available space for throwing quite tight.
• Inspection using a Tello drone. low res video feed, very limited stabilisation and inability to look downward meant this wasn't successful
• Inspection from ground level through a stabilised 400m telephoto lens. No sign of the drone.

Things I wish I'd done, and would do before/after next crash:

• take some stills/video of what the camera can see after crash and download the hi res versions over the wifi RC link.
• Download hi res versions of any video/stills that were taken just before the crash
• Take a few more photos of the tree, in stereo pairs for later viewing in 3D. Depth perception happens before shape recognition so even a perfectly camouflaged object can be picked out by the human brain if it is at a different depth to the surroundings. Anyone remember "magic eye" posters?
• Attach more retroflective tape to the drone so that a powerful camera flash or torch might make it glow.

Next plan is to assemble a very long pole made of construction timber and strap an old mobile phone (recording video) to the end to have a better look among the branches with the hope of spotting the drone. Then use said pole to poke away at the location in the off chance I can dislodge it and get it/the pieces back.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

The phone on a pole stikes me as a good idea but difficult to control once the pole gets long especially if you have to fight branches.
That said is there any way to strap a phone to the tello and either record video or transmit video via some of the modern connection methods

 

[scro]

Trial run in a tree next to my home seemed to go OK, and the video from the old phone may be helpful, if a bit nauseating to watch ?My galaxy s10 records far better video by I'm reluctant to wave it about at the end of a long pole. Its worth more than the Mini! The Tello is a tiny drone (80 grams) so it would never lift anything as heavy as a phone. It punches well above its weight and has a 5mp camera that can take surprisingly good stills though.

Hopefully I can get back out to the crash site soon to try the long pole

 

[ff22]

It's eluded me so far. ? It's not visible from the ground as the tree it's in has some very dense clumps of foliage. I've tried a few recovery ideas so far and have one more to try before calling it quits. It doesn't help that it's a good 40 min drive away. Maybe a good winter storm will bring it down!

Oh, you're in the UK, a good WINTER storm can happen anytime of year! Seriously, hope you last go works. Mine almost landed in my laurel (actually, I understand, Portuguese plum) yesterday. I'm going to post my first log to see if someone can explain what was happening.

 

[scro]

Indeed, we can get winter storms in the middle of summer it seems. We had gusts up to 55mph the other day, so maybe the long pole won't be needed!

I found analysing the DAT file interesting and helpful in understanding what I did wrong and what actually happened in the crash. Its fairly easy to do on a PC, provided you've taken a copy of the DAT file before it gets erased from your phone! Have a read of @sar104 's excellent guide on how to view logs, in the crash and flyaway assistant section of the forum.

 

[ff22]

Indeed, we can get winter storms in the middle of summer it seems. We had gusts up to 55mph the other day, so maybe the long pole won't be needed!

I found analysing the DAT file interesting and helpful in understanding what I did wrong and what actually happened in the crash. Its fairly easy to do on a PC, provided you've taken a copy of the DAT file before it gets erased from your phone! Have a read of @sar104 's excellent guide on how to view logs, in the crash and flyaway assistant section of the forum.

I'm totally new to ipad. How the heck do you get the dat files off it to my Win10 computer. I really am lost. With Android or windows, I just navigate to folders and copy what I darn well please. (g)

I tried emailing but maybe too large or restricted.