Caution re Dynamic Home Point Function

[MS Coast]

Be aware that DJI has added a dynamic home point feature to the Mavic 4 pro. And the default setting is apparently "on." You might want to confirm how your drone is operating with the new option before relying on RTH to act as expected.

Dynamic Home Point can be a useful feature if you're moving during the flight, as is flying from a boat. But it can cause problems if you intend for the home point to be the takeoff point.

While looking at some flights with Airdata I noticed that the home point was being reset during the flight, though I heard no audio notifications as it was happening. When I checked the setting on a subsequent flight, it showed as Static Home Point. After I set it to Dynamic Home Point and back to Static, it remained in Static.

 

[msinger]

Some additional details from the manual:

 

[MS Coast]

Some additional details from the manual:

This part is significant. No auto-landing and "near" the home point. Presumably, if the pilot didn't assume control, the drone would eventually self-land when the battery state of charge dropped to the critical level.

 

[msinger]

This part is significant. No auto-landing and "near" the home point.

Or maybe it's not that significant, since this is really the safest approach. Imagine if the aircraft always defaulted to auto landing at a new home point without knowing whether that spot was safe.

 

[MS Coast]

Or maybe it's not that significant, since this is really the safest approach. Imagine if the aircraft always defaulted to auto landing at a new home point without knowing whether that spot was safe.

Yes, I agree that manual landing with a dynamic home point is a good thing.

I almost never use RTH, but it's a highly useful thing for loss-of-signal situations. So, it's worth understanding how it behaves. There's a big potential for problems if the pilot isn't aware of the way RTH works with dynamic home points being set. If they're standing beneath a tree canopy when the home point is set, there's going to be a problem if they use RTH.

I'm wondering about what "near" means. And what altitude the drone flies to before entering the hover state. Given the potential for changes in terrain elevation, I'm guessing that the hover altitude is relatively high. It may choose the RTH altitude setting specified in the settings.

This is a good issue for someone to do a few test flights to sort out the details.