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Can I do this

donnk

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Jul 30, 2018
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I like the look of the mavic pro, what i want to do is send the drone to a GPS loc 2 miles away. I will not have control as the loc is behind a hill.

I would like to program the drone to fly say 700m up from takeoff which is enough to clear the hill, goto the GPS loc and drop down to say 100m and take some pics. then back up to 700m fly home.

is any of that possible ?
 
I like the look of the mavic pro, what i want to do is send the drone to a GPS loc 2 miles away. I will not have control as the loc is behind a hill.

I would like to program the drone to fly say 700m up from takeoff which is enough to clear the hill, goto the GPS loc and drop down to say 100m and take some pics. then back up to 700m fly home.

is any of that possible ?
I believe the mavic has a 500m altitude lock which can't be overridden. That would be a problem.
 
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thanks for the reply, does this mean it cant go over any obstacle of 500m or more ?
 
It means you can’t go above 500m from the point of take off. If you took off 210m up the 700m obstacle it would give you 10m clearance
 
ok thanks, i can get around that. What about flying out of controller range to a gps loc as the controller will be blocked by the hill. Is that possible ? Do i need specialist software ?

thanks !
 
I believe it's relative to your Altitude level at take off. If you could ascend further up the hill before you launch you could make it as long as the 500m cap is not met from that point.
 
I I think if you use Litchi it will do what you want. You’d need to get advise from a Litchi user though
 
How do you know you will not hit anything? The MP's collision sensors are not good enough for this. It's designed to be flown either in visual range or using the camera view.
Most countries have rules (laws in some places) that you should not fly out of visual sight. Some people do anyway and use the camera view to see what they are doing.
 
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its open fields once the hill is cleared. i cant see the signal being received from more than 1000m away this is why looking to send it to a gps loc. thanks!
 
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Why not climb the hill and launch from there? Or drive nearer.

Ultimately you're limited to 500m altitude.
Other issues, climbing to 500m and flying 2 miles out, 2 miles back and a 2nd climb to 500m is going to use more battery than you have.
And it'll lose signal and RTH

Its a terrible idea (and irresponsible from a safety point of view). In addition, illegal in most countries.
 
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FYI... Regardless of your height or the mavic's altitude, a hill or a building or any other obstruction between the RC and the Mavic will block the occusync signal pretty quickly and the mavic will lose connection with the controller and go into RTH mode. It will ascend to the RTH altitude and begin to return to the home point until it re-estabilshes connection with the controller (assuming the RTH altitude was set at a height above the obstacle). Once it's reconnected, the operator can stop the RTH procedure and take control again. This can happen at 50 yards away or 500 yards away.

Even if it's too far away to SEE the mavic, it really needs to remain in (nearly) direct VLOS to maintain a connection to the RC. A substantial object, like a hill or a building, will break that connection.

You are always limited to the 500m altitude unless you've edited the internal mavic firmware with 3rd party software.

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Im still thinking driving to the GPS point and flying or at least, climbing the hill seems like a far better solution (and one that would work).
 
I was told Litchi waypoint will still work even if connection is lost to RC. It only sounds like a good idea until it doesn't return and you don't know what happened. And you won't have flight logs so it'll be hard to determine where it went.
 
Litchi would work. Except it cant climb over 500m.

And 2 x climbs to 500m combined with a 4 MILE flight is going to be pushing it really really close to the limit of the battery even assuming no wind.
 
thanks all, great information. is it possible to add more battery to give it a longer loiter time ? Guess its a weight/power trade off.
 
Why? You won't get over the hill anyway.

I still dont see why you dont drive/walk around the hill or just climb the hill.
 
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You can downgrade mavic’s firmware to some earlier version and with dji assistant override the 500m height limit. I personally have set it to 2500m. So you can climb the hill manually that way. Litchi’s waypoint missions still limit you to 500m, which is a shame.. Maybe some other app does not have this restriction..
 
You can not add a battery. Safely you have 20 minutes of flight time in the conditions you are describing. At that altitude you won’t get half way.

I recommend you launch and record the first half. Then move to the second location and record the second half. Don’t make a problem that isn’t there.
 

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