Can the Mavic3 fly behind an object without loosing connection

[richkphoto]

Does anyone know if the Mavic3 has to be in constant contact with the controller like the min2. I ask because the mini2 has no internal memory and from what I've read neither does the Mavic3. If that is the case and I fly behind a water tower I would loose contact with the drone and this was the reason I purchased it with the promise the more features would be coming out with the release of the sdk. Now with the release of the enterprise edition ( a month after I bought my Mavic3)DJI is saying there will be no sdk for the Mavic3. If this is the case then I've been conned by DJI into buying the most expensive toy drone when I was looking for a commercial drone which isn't that much more money

 

[BobaFut]

It's doubtful that flying behind a water tower with either the Mini2 or the Mavic3 would cause a significant degradation of signal. I guess if you were right up next to the tower with the drone on the other side, maybe that would be a problem, but just flying behind a tower from a distance you probably wouldn't even notice a loss unless there were a lot of things already causing interference.

Not sure what you mean by "internal memory" in terms of signal. The Mavic 3 has internal memory for photos/videos, which the Mini2 doesn't, but that doesn't affect TX/RX or flyability in any way.

 

[microlinux]

Yes, it has to be connected to the controller to operate.

I assume you're referring to pre-programmed autonomous flight, which it does not support.

As stated above, simply passing behind a water tower would probably not be an issue.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

A loss of signal is a loss of signal. As far as I know there is no memory-of-a-connection.
If the object is wide enough that the drone brakes to a halt whist still behind the object and remains in loss of signal then, surely, the loss-of-signa/failsafe behaviour will be followed after the appropriate delay.

Experiment with it, fly the drone, in a safe place, across your field of view and as fast as possible and switch the controller off, what happens? Assuming the failsafe behaviour starts then once you see it start switch the controller on again.

It would be a good idea to check what the response to loss of signal is set to, by default it should be RTH but people have been known to change it to land or hover.

With the Mini 1 & 2 it takes maybe 10 seconds to restablish the connection.

 

[Bob in Savannah]

You 100% definitely can fly completely around, circling a water tower with ZERO issues with an M3. I do it from a mile away with a 150' water tower here in Savannah, Ga all the time. Of course, I'm on the coast and the water tower is a mile away over the marsh with ZERO trees in the way. I can see it.

 

[Meta4]

Does anyone know if the Mavic3 has to be in constant contact with the controller like the min2.

It's simple physics.
Your control signal can't pass through a water tower and signal will be lost.
After loss of signal for 6 seconds, Failsafe RTH will initiate (unless you have changed the loss of signal action).

Your drone might drift through to the other side and regain signal within 6 seconds, depending on it's speed, your distance from the water tower, the drone's distance from the water tower and the size of the water tower.

 

[Bob in Savannah]

It's simple physics.
Your control signal can't pass through a water tower and signal will be lost.
After loss of signal for 6 seconds, Failsafe RTH will initiate (unless you have changed the loss of signal action).

Your drone might drift through to the other side and regain signal within 6 seconds, depending on it's speed, your distance from the water tower, the drone's distance from the water tower and the size of the water tower.

I don't lose signal. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can activate the feature that circles around an object and records and I NEVER lose signal. Maybe it IS "drifting" behind the tower but that fact is never registered on my controller screen. Obviously, I can't argue with physics but Im not making this up. lol Maybe my drone is above the top of the tower at the time..? Now im wondering..

 

[richkphoto]

Its actually a cell tower (I said water tower by mistake), but there is another issue to deal with and that is EMI. I was going to upgrade to the M3e , but the company says they don't support it (yet), but that drone is suppose to be shielded

 

[Meta4]

Its actually a cell tower (I said water tower by mistake), but there is another issue to deal with and that is EMI. I was going to upgrade to the M3e , but the company says they don't support it (yet), but that drone is suppose to be shielded

A typical cell tower won't block your signal enough to cause an issue.
There isn't likely to be any significant issue with interference.

 

[Aerophile]

Going "behind" something is not immediately a completely binary (all-on or all-off) situation. In other words, in some cases the signal will degrade progressively somewhat before it is completely cut off - if you're paying attention and you realize that's happening, you may have a chance to save things. It's going to depend on multiple variables, eg how big the object is that you're going behind, how close it is, how "solid" it is, etc.

As a rather extreme (and completely stupid) example, last spring I was in a remote location, flying my drone from a beach on a tropical island. This island had a huge, dramatic, rock mountain that jutted up a few hundred yards from me -- picture "the Rock of Gibraltar." It wasn't quite that big, but it was very large, solid stone, steep-sided, high, and near me. I managed to fly my drone around it, and got about half-way around it, I was admirinig the view of the other side of the island which I could not see, was scouting for a nice beach...then to my surprise, the signal started becoming intermittent...the video started cutting out, I began getting "signal loss" messages...

That's when I stopped and had an epiphany: Gee, I guess the signal between the RC and the drone goes in a straight line, and it can be blocked....so me expecting the signal to penetrate through a solid rock mountain may not be very smart and hey, what does the drone do if it loses the signal? If it heads straight back to the home point, it's gonna fly straight into the mountainside...uh-oh.

After quickly dope-slapping myself and yelling "D'oh!!" a la Homer Simpson, I tried to reverse course and fly the drone back around the mountain the way it came, and I was able to. The video feed sputtered back, the signal-loss messages stopped, I got lucky (way more lucky than I realized at the time).

Let's just say this was before I understood how important it was to maintain VLS (I learned a lot of other lessons on that trip...). But even though the drone was pretty much "behind" a stony mountain, I did not completely lose the signal all at once (although I bet I was about to!), it was more of a progressive loss-of-signal that eventually become impossible to ignore (even to a complete idiot). Fortunately, I came to my senses quick enough to get the thing back around that mountain enough to re-establish a decent signal and was able to fly it back home for a safe landing.

Going around a nearby water tower (or cell tower)? I would not worry too much about that. A gigantic, stony mountain? No, that's not going to really work well.

 

[Elthree]

It's simple physics.
Your control signal can't pass through a water tower and signal will be lost.
After loss of signal for 6 seconds, Failsafe RTH will initiate (unless you have changed the loss of signal action).

Physics is rarely that simple.

As others commented, how close to the water tower the drone is can have a big effect.
Basically, the further back it is then the more chance there is to get signals bouncing off other things in the environment and reaching it. There's not a perfectly-defined "cone of silence" behind the water tower.

We see this a lot in the medical devices field, where Bluetooth-connected devices on the other side of the body can main decent connections, EXCEPT if they're hard up against the body (otherwise referred to as "a big bag of signal-blocking water").

 

[karlblessing]

I assume you're referring to pre-programmed autonomous flight, which it does not support.

it's odd that the Mavic 3 doesn't support waypoints, yet the Mavic 2 pro does. Seems like they're wanting to reserve waypoints for their more enterprise level drones now.

But on that note, because of that, any method of doing waypoints has to be done via virtual stick commands, which course needs a constant stable connection between the controller and the drone.

 

[Repaid1]

it's odd that the Mavic 3 doesn't support waypoints, yet the Mavic 2 pro does. Seems like they're wanting to reserve waypoints for their more enterprise level drones now.

But on that note, because of that, any method of doing waypoints has to be done via virtual stick commands, which course needs a constant stable connection between the controller and the drone.

DJI announced soon after the Mavic 2 that it was discontinuing waypoint flight..even in SDK's. Now they are saying NO SDK..The reason I still love my M2Z, it was the last full featured SDK, 360° avoidance, Go4 App, GPS tracking...ect drone made by DJI and even as old as it is tech wise(?), it still has many features new drones can't match. Heck I still fly a Phantom 3 Pro. If it ain't broke don't fix it, I have never been one to buy to keep up with the "Jones". In fact I don't think they can keep up with me and old DJI that is refined and proven.


A case in point for the OP's question, I can fly directly over a tower dead center. Set centerpoint, radius of circle, then altitude and finally speed. It gives the best orbits out there and NO DJI made today can still do it that way. And yes I can do it Optical track as well

 

[zinnware]

Going "behind" something is not immediately a completely binary (all-on or all-off) situation. In other words, in some cases the signal will degrade progressively somewhat before it is completely cut off - if you're paying attention and you realize that's happening, you may have a chance to save things. It's going to depend on multiple variables, eg how big the object is that you're going behind, how close it is, how "solid" it is, etc.

As a rather extreme (and completely stupid) example, last spring I was in a remote location, flying my drone from a beach on a tropical island. This island had a huge, dramatic, rock mountain that jutted up a few hundred yards from me -- picture "the Rock of Gibraltar." It wasn't quite that big, but it was very large, solid stone, steep-sided, high, and near me. I managed to fly my drone around it, and got about half-way around it, I was admirinig the view of the other side of the island which I could not see, was scouting for a nice beach...then to my surprise, the signal started becoming intermittent...the video started cutting out, I began getting "signal loss" messages...

That's when I stopped and had an epiphany: Gee, I guess the signal between the RC and the drone goes in a straight line, and it can be blocked....so me expecting the signal to penetrate through a solid rock mountain may not be very smart and hey, what does the drone do if it loses the signal? If it heads straight back to the home point, it's gonna fly straight into the mountainside...uh-oh.

After quickly dope-slapping myself and yelling "D'oh!!" a la Homer Simpson, I tried to reverse course and fly the drone back around the mountain the way it came, and I was able to. The video feed sputtered back, the signal-loss messages stopped, I got lucky (way more lucky than I realized at the time).

Let's just say this was before I understood how important it was to maintain VLS (I learned a lot of other lessons on that trip...). But even though the drone was pretty much "behind" a stony mountain, I did not completely lose the signal all at once (although I bet I was about to!), it was more of a progressive loss-of-signal that eventually become impossible to ignore (even to a complete idiot). Fortunately, I came to my senses quick enough to get the thing back around that mountain enough to re-establish a decent signal and was able to fly it back home for a safe landing.

Going around a nearby water tower (or cell tower)? I would not worry too much about that. A gigantic, stony mountain? No, that's not going to really work well.

Nice story and important for others to remember. Some drones will return to home but if they have their sensors on and have avoidance features they will not crash into the rock, instead, they are suppose to go up and over the feature that is in the way. For the Mavic 3 it does have advance avoidance for RTH. Here is an excerpt from The Drone Girl article: DJI Mavic 3: the closest we've gotten to a crash-proof consumer drone

Improved return to home​

Here’s something else neat: it can sense obstacles in front of it from a farther distance, enabling the drone to have more time to make decisions as to how to navigate around it. Previous DJI drones have a 20 meter sensing range. Compare that with the Mavic 3’s 200 meter (during Advanced RTH) sensing range.

Speaking of Return to Home, this drone improves upon it. Previous DJI drones used Return-to-Home functions based on tracing back the flight route or scanning and flying above obstacles to a safer altitude. This drone is a lot smarter and more efficient thanks to what DJI calls ‘Advanced RTH,’ which commands your drone to automatically determine the shortest, safest, and energy-efficient route to land back at its home point. That’s especially helpful if your drone finds itself needing to return home due to insufficient battery life.

 

[karlblessing]

DJI announced soon after the Mavic 2 that it was discontinuing waypoint flight..even in SDK's. Now they are saying NO SDK....

Ugh, they need some decent competitors.

 

[zinnware]

DJI announced soon after the Mavic 2 that it was discontinuing waypoint flight..even in SDK's. Now they are saying NO SDK..The reason I still love my M2Z, it was the last full featured SDK, 360° avoidance, Go4 App, GPS tracking...ect drone made by DJI and even as old as it is tech wise(?), it still has many features new drones can't match. Heck I still fly a Phantom 3 Pro. If it ain't broke don't fix it, I have never been one to buy to keep up with the "Jones". In fact I don't think they can keep up with me and old DJI that is refined and proven.


A case in point for the OP's question, I can fly directly over a tower dead center. Set centerpoint, radius of circle, then altitude and finally speed. It gives the best orbits out there and NO DJI made today can still do it that way. And yes I can do it Optical track as well

From time to time I like programming missions. I prefer Litchi for the Mavic 2 Zoom. Here is a recent mission programmed. Although this mission is within controller signal the entire time it could easily be done beyond signal. Sorry to hear the newer DJI drones will lose this capability.

And here is another video below that contains missions going down the stream and up over the trees at 0:34 and another mission clip at 2:40. Precision of altitude is required.

 

[KI5RLL]

MAVIC Radio Propagation Pt. 1, post yesterday on General Discussions, explains radio occlusion relevant to frequencies used and partly explains some answers to this OP question. Easy to apply to this situation for explanation and to others also.

Safe Flying,
KI5RLL

 

[Rockowe]

Does anyone know if the Mavic3 has to be in constant contact with the controller like the min2. I ask because the mini2 has no internal memory and from what I've read neither does the Mavic3. If that is the case and I fly behind a water tower I would loose contact with the drone and this was the reason I purchased it with the promise the more features would be coming out with the release of the sdk. Now with the release of the enterprise edition ( a month after I bought my Mavic3)DJI is saying there will be no sdk for the Mavic3. If this is the case then I've been conned by DJI into buying the most expensive toy drone when I was looking for a commercial drone which isn't that much more money

See this Very Issue I complained about No SDK

Im Considering Selling my Mavic 3 PRO

 

[Rockowe]

Yes, it has to be connected to the controller to operate.

I assume you're referring to pre-programmed autonomous flight, which it does not support.

As stated above, simply passing behind a water tower would probably not be an issue.

This is Not Entirely True.

The Mavic 3 WILL support autonomous flight if loss of signal occurs.
See how to do 'WAYPOINTS' ... and select as the mode - What to do if loss of connection >> 'Continue' (with the mission)

 

[Droning on and on...]

This is Not Entirely True.

The Mavic 3 WILL support autonomous flight if loss of signal occurs.
See how to do 'WAYPOINTS' ... and select as the mode - What to do if loss of connection >> 'Continue' (with the mission)

When this thread was active, it was true. Check the posting dates.