Disable forced landing

[mavic3usa]

I see some people have never flown the older drones of the past decade before all these fancy controls and settings became common. The intelligent DJI drones didn't just materialize out of thin air to where it is today. All of these "features" as a whole is why they are among the most popular drones in the world...for everybody. I think the days of being able to root or hack or completely customize your consumer drone at a technical level are slowly disappearing to gone.

 

[alexsh1]

It's been pointed out to you that there is no "technical solution", but you don't want to hear that.
You know how your drone will respond to a low battery situation.
How you choose to respond to it is your problem.

there is no technical solution YET.

Lithium batteries have a history, everything from electronic cigarettes catching fire or exploding in someones pocket to Teslas doing similar.
I haven't had any battery catch fire or explode yet but I have had a couple that expanded for whatever reason.
Have you brought this up on DJIs forum? I wouldnt mind having the option of alternative safe landing spots set as waypoints and have the drone attempt to make it there instead of landing in a 60ft high tree

Swollen batteries are the result of too much current inside a cell of the battery, which causes a build-up of heat and gas.
Additionally, charting batteries to 100% and not using them may result in expansion.

In fact when the voltage drops below a certain level, the drone reducing its consumption. There is absolutely no way the battery can catch fire under these circumstances

 

[samysys]

DJI will not do it and I am not expecting from DJI to do it.
Mini 3 Pro has the option to disable it in the engineering menu. I hope mini 4 pro will have it too.
And this is not a high level modification at all.

So you are suggesting to close the sensor to trick the system not to land? I'll try that - thank you.
Circumstances of such flight are these. I am flying far in the mountain or over water. I cannot land and change the battery and I must squeeze every percentage point from the battery. I did several such flight over 10km with mini 3 pro with a custom made 6300mAh battery and it works, but it is an advanced option and the pilot must understand the risks.

Hi Alex,

I think I was not presenting myself well.

On the contrary, I am suggesting you activate the OA function so that the drone would think that it is not safe to land and remain hover.

After you tested and confirm your "obstacle" function well, you can de-activate the OA when you take off, so that you dont have to be bothered by the warning during the flight. When battery level is low, OA should be activated so that the drone would stay hover.

Pls test the exact best procedures before you put it in place. I have only conducted indoor flight test for the logic of Low battery/OA safety feature of DJI. I haven't further tested this nor put it into practice as I do not need it. Yet, I would be interested to know if this would solve your situation.

On the other hand, I have the impression that quad drone may not be the best tools for your purpose. Fix wing can fly longer by comparison. Of course, you have other factors to consider, e.g. price, maintenance etc.

Lastly, I am not aware about the Mimi 3 Pro engineering menu. Can you post some material up here?

 

[mobilehomer]

The BEST SOLUTION has been presented several times by many respondants. But the OP doesn't want to hear it. He wants to ruin his batteries and risk a lost drone. When the drone says RTH, let it RTH!!!

 

[MS Coast]

there is no technical solution YET.

Swollen batteries are the result of too much current inside a cell of the battery, which causes a build-up of heat and gas.
Additionally, charting batteries to 100% and not using them may result in expansion.

In fact when the voltage drops below a certain level, the drone reducing its consumption. There is absolutely no way the battery can catch fire under these circumstances

Current is an electric energy flow rate. Current cannot be stored in a battery. Unless there is energy being withdrawn from or pushed into the battery, there is no current. The stored energy in a battery is described in amp-hours, coulombs, or a similar measure of the amount of energy.

I'd say the other two statements are subject to question, too.

 

[Wreckhunter]

Why on earth do people on this forum judge each other so much? Being able to choose for yourself in different circumstances is great! Over area where there might be people or property, forced land. Over clear water or wilderness, run until empty if drone recovery isn’t possible. Even if you plan correctly, things can go wrong. Wind suddenly picks up, battery has an issue, human error, heck, you’re in Ukraine have to move from your home point unexpectedly and “going to get” the drone means risking life, and it might end up in enemy hands - run it until it can’t run no more! Let’s stop deciding about enforcing “rules” on others and insisting they explain themselves, and just help if we can!

Because there are some pilots on here that seem to be challenged in the common sense department.
And need to be questioned on why did you do that.But here is the problem those individuals do not want
to hear about it,and their way is the right way.Trying to help and offer advise is a lost battle before it began.

 

[Wreckhunter]

The key here is that it goes to 60% only after 9 days idling

So what is your point

 

[alexsh1]

The BEST SOLUTION has been presented several times by many respondants. But the OP doesn't want to hear it. He wants to ruin his batteries and risk a lost drone. When the drone says RTH, let it RTH!!!

If you do not want to read the whole thread, let me repeat it again for you. This is my drone and my battery and please spare me from your moaning. Not interested hearing it.

 

[alexsh1]

So what is your point

The battery can expand only by being stored fully charged.
And I have seen it many times. Only 10-20 cycles

 

[alexsh1]

Hi Alex,

I think I was not presenting myself well.

On the contrary, I am suggesting you activate the OA function so that the drone would think that it is not safe to land and remain hover.

After you tested and confirm your "obstacle" function well, you can de-activate the OA when you take off, so that you dont have to be bothered by the warning during the flight. When battery level is low, OA should be activated so that the drone would stay hover.

Pls test the exact best procedures before you put it in place. I have only conducted indoor flight test for the logic of Low battery/OA safety feature of DJI. I haven't further tested this nor put it into practice as I do not need it. Yet, I would be interested to know if this would solve your situation.

On the other hand, I have the impression that quad drone may not be the best tools for your purpose. Fix wing can fly longer by comparison. Of course, you have other factors to consider, e.g. price, maintenance etc.

Lastly, I am not aware about the Mimi 3 Pro engineering menu. Can you post some material up here?

Thanks for your suggestion.
I'll try that

 

[alexsh1]

Current is an electric energy flow rate. Current cannot be stored in a battery. Unless there is energy being withdrawn from or pushed into the battery, there is no current. The stored energy in a battery is described in amp-hours, coulombs, or a similar measure of the amount of energy.

I'd say the other two statements are subject to question, too.

No problem - be my guest and explain it here.
I may have been inaccurate but batteries swell especially when they are charged with high voltage.
However, this is not the only reason. Storing fully charged batteries is not good and might start to see it's health degrading.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Your 'point' of being able to fly a drone until it drops uncontrollably from the sky due to battery depletion is about as valid as calling driving a car on a highway without brakes an 'advanced' option.

You lack imagination.

There are perfectly valid mission profiles where only the drone is at risk were total battery depletion to occur. These operations are as responsible as any other.

The car example seems to me apples to oranges, but this is perhaps due to my own lack of imagination being unable to think of a case where that might be justified. Perhaps filming a movie scene? I don't know.

What i do know is there could be a scenario that, when I'm made aware of it, I'd say, "ahhhhhh, that makes sense".

 

[Droning on and on...]

Suppose the flyer flew too far and wasn't going to make it all the way home.
It starts a forced descent and he pushes the left stick up (which burns through the already depleted battery even faster) and tries to push the drone closer to home.
Battery runs down quickly until the drone just drops.

Suppose the operator is Chevron, and there is a problem with an offshore pipeline. Critical information can be obtained by hovering over the leak area 1000 ft off shore. While drones are not considered disposable, losing one is less important than the imagery obtained real time over the leak.

So they send an Air 3 out, but disable forced landing in case something happens at that critical moment that they need to stay in place monitoring, while they get another drone out there so they can bring the first one back before the battery dies. The first drone must stay as something's happening right then that is critical to observe.

Events work out that they monitor to the last second and then it shuts down and drops in the water. Only the drone was ever at any risk at all.

The point here is just drones can be used for a lot of things where it's not reckless or stupid to include in the mission plan the possibility of loss due to needing to keep the drone on-site to every drop of battery energy and tolerating the loss of the drone. Other examples where the risk of the bird falling out of the sky might be LE pursuit of a suspect through forested wilderness, or firefighting in rugged, mountainous areas.

It's not automatically stupid and reckless to allow a drone to deplete its battery and drop from the sky. It may be worth it in the cost/benefit tradeoff, and the safety risk to persons and property can be mitigated.

The mission is everything.

 

[Wreckhunter]

The battery can expand only by being stored fully charged.
And I have seen it many times. Only 10-20 cycles

What have you seen many times one battery with an issue causing it to swell up.
So in your eyes every drone battery that is stored fully charged is going to swell up.
That is what it sounds like to me.
Other members please feel free to have fun with this one.

 

[Droning on and on...]

This one is going to be on the test.

Question:

• Pilot in command flies for 30+ minutes, ignoring the steadily decreasing battery level shown onscreen.
• PIC maneuvers the drone too far away to return home safely.
• PIC attempts to fly the drone home rather than choosing a safe remote landing area.
• Drone automatically executes a low-battery landing, as described in the manual.
• Drone lands under control but slowly sinks into a fresh, steaming, semi-liquid cow patty and uses its last milliamps of current to fry its circuitry. Puff of grey smoke drifts downwind. Cow moos.

Who or what is responsible?

Answer:

1) Pilot in command
2) Low-battery emergency landing system
3) Cow

4) The 2016 Farm Bill.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Why on earth do people on this forum judge each other so much?

Uh, because human?

What sort of creatures have you been around all your life?

 

[Droning on and on...]

The key here is that it goes to 60% only after 9 days idling

Actually, the discharge to 96% is more important to reducing the lithium metal dendrite formation than the storage discharge to 60%. That's why this extra discharge was relatively recently added to the Intelligent Battery firmware.

 

[Droning on and on...]

The BEST SOLUTION has been presented several times by many respondants. But the OP doesn't want to hear it. He wants to ruin his batteries and risk a lost drone. When the drone says RTH, let it RTH!!!

Hmmm... that's not what I distilled from his posts.

What I heard is someone who has different priorities than those arguing with him, and while he doesn't want to ruin batteries or lose his drone, other aspects of the missions he flies are important enough to take these risks.

That's for him to decide, not me. Especially since I know way too little about the missions and why he flies them to judge his tradeoffs. Doing so with such ignorance is, in my view, obnoxiously arrogant.

 

[samysys]

The point here is just drones can be used for a lot of things where it's not reckless or stupid to include in the mission plan the possibility of loss due to needing to keep the drone on-site to every drop of battery energy and tolerating the loss of the drone. Other examples where the risk of the bird falling out of the sky might be LE pursuit of a suspect through forested wilderness, or firefighting in rugged, mountainous areas.

It's not automatically stupid and reckless to allow a drone to deplete its battery and drop from the sky. It may be worth it in the cost/benefit tradeoff, and the safety risk to persons and property can be mitigated.

The mission is everything.

Well said.

I suppose the prime consideration for recreational remote pilot is different from remote pilot who use the drone for work*. Indeed mission is everything.

I 100% support that flight safety should be in everyone's mind and should be the prime concern in a lot of situation, but there are occasions that other factors prevail. If that is the case, the pilot should consider moral, legal and other factors. At the end of the day, the responsibility rest on him.

On the other hand, assuming following all safety restriction/setting set by DJI would guarantee safety is dangerous myth. It certainly would make your flight safer in most of the situation but may cause you in further trouble in certain atypical situation. So, we are back to basic: the most important safety rule is to know the science , know the environment and know your drone (in details).

*I avoid using the term "Professional remote pilot" cause it may looks like "superior" then recreational remote pilot. In fact, I think many recreational pilots are more fluent in the area.....

 

[Davros007]

Uh, because human?

What sort of creatures have you been around all your life?

Try all the Land Rover forums- none of it. Odd blow up

If you do not want to read the whole thread, let me repeat it again for you. This is my drone and my battery and please spare me from your moaning. Not interested hearing it.

Exactly! If one wants to know what kind of acid will best dissolve a drone, how fast to hit a wall to guarantee destruction, how high to fly before it will ice up, then either give the answer, or move on!! If someone posts they want to crash their drone into a kindergarten, take down the post/report. Otherwise, just help!