DJI Mavic 2 Active Track 2.0 refuses to allow manual height adjustment increases thus causing a crash that could have been avoided

[adiru]

DJI Mavic 2 Active Track 2.0 refuses to allow manual height adjustment increases thus causing a crash that could have been avoided

(this just happened, will update post later with video, details etc)

update: I've attached the logs

 

[adiru]

 

[Thomas B]

First comment... you were flying close over traffic... were you driving while flying your drone? Maybe the metal of the car blocked your controller signal.... or flying consistently over high tension wires.
Second comment... know the height of obstructions in your route. You’re lucky that the tower/wire collision didn’t result in a crash from altitude.

What else was the video illustrating?

For best analysis of input and drone response recommend posting the flight logs for analysis by resident experts. Then @sar104 and others can provide your answer.

 

[Neil Reid]

Respectfully- where was the crash?

 

[Deleted member 94047]

I don't own the M2 nor have I ever operated it, so I can't comment on the technical aspects of the near-craah you had. But you ought to be glad that it wasn't worse, you got very lucky there.

 

[Keule]

Respectfully- where was the crash?

At 2:03

 

[g36pilot]

The OP was caught by the manual's fine print as many of us have. In the cautions section of the M2P Active Track section on page 28, the first and next to last cautions recommend against the flight attempted. As a general recommendation NEVER rely on collision avoidance sensors as they are inexpensive, of low reliability, and ability. It is very easy to outrun the sensor operating envelope. Glad your bird appears to have survived.

 

[pmshop]

I know you want the answers on why it didn't raise up at your command.
I rarely use active track but when I did with my Spark, I could control altitude in flight.
I believe controlling in the car along with the high tension electric wires caused a disconnect.
Also, I have been brave with long distance flights...through bridge structures, barn storming workshops (with permission and notice) and close quarters flights.
I would not have attempted such a tight flight.

 

[Paul2660]

And folks are upset about "remote id" coming in the future.

From screen shot, can't up up, trees, can't go to the right private property, can't to up to the right power lines, and can't go left private property. And appears to be flying from a car, and along a street.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Paul C

 

[g36pilot]

Sorry I didn't address your question earlier. I don't use the Intelligent Flight Modes much so can't answer it. We'll need your telemetry data to see what happened. From the video, there may not have been enough time for the craft to climb if initiated when the guy wires come into view.

 

[apeel]

I hate being negative, but I feel compelled to respond with negative comments. So I will ignore my mother's advise (if you don't have something nice to say, say nothing):

1) PLEASE follow the FAA rules for recreational flying. If you do not know what they are, please read up on them. Hint: flying over traffic is illegal. Considering you had joined this forum back in Jan 2019, my bet is that you do know the rules and are simply choosing to ignore them. It is people like you that are just making our hobby even more challenging as more regulations and public opinion come down to bear on the rest of us.

2) You were extremely lucky. You could have a major crash and even lost your drone in the tower or high tension wires.

 

[Deadtillten]

Agree with apeel entirely. It is mindless flying near traffic or any built up areas. People like you give drone haters the ammunition to fire.

 

[g36pilot]

I agree that was a risky flight for many reasons, but chose to educate instead of chastise. One can safely fly in that environment with experience and proper procedures. I have no idea what processes the operator used, but have a good idea of what the mistakes were. From the limited perspective of the video and the fact that the poster did not admit to any specific violations, there is no evidence any FARs were actually broken.

 

[Deadtillten]

Cloud cuckooland !

 

[adiru]

Guys, I've been away for couple days, tonight I try to export and upload the logs as suggested and just get spins and spins
On DJI forum some say this is due to incompatibility of rights with Windows 10. I did the bcedit change but still no go. I don't have the ability to reformat my harddrive into Windows 7. There has to be a better way to get this to work? Why does DJI make everything so complicated?! (complicated as in 'does not working')

 

[adiru]

Also, second update, to some of the commentors suggesting maybe a 'disconnecct' had occured, I had hooked the the controller to the ipad and running the official dji app, at no time was there a visual disconenct, I was getting the imageery just fine, so if there was a downlink that allowed the real live video feed to come to me, why not the command to raise height? Also, the height was indeed raising just super slow like inches per second rather than feet per second if you know what I mean.... almost like in 1/10th slow motion. So I think it might have gotten the command but just acting on it slowly? Or alternative theory is that my height commands didn't take at all but I mistkaenly thought it did because it might have correspondended coincidenetally to the airplane wanting to gain height all on its own via the active track segement...

in any case, DJI OA is crap, and basically not useable. I had drank the kool aid since 2017 and now I see firsthand myself that this thing cannot be trusted. Good to see more competition like the Skydio giving it a run for money.

 

[adiru]

I hate being negative, but I feel compelled to respond with negative comments. So I will ignore my mother's advise (if you don't have something nice to say, say nothing):

1) PLEASE follow the FAA rules for recreational flying. If you do not know what they are, please read up on them. Hint: flying over traffic is illegal. Considering you had joined this forum back in Jan 2019, my bet is that you do know the rules and are simply choosing to ignore them. It is people like you that are just making our hobby even more challenging as more regulations and public opinion come down to bear on the rest of us.

2) You were extremely lucky. You could have a major crash and even lost your drone in the tower or high tension wires.

Here the full context. I live right next to a very large school, and this was during the off seasons, and the entire parking lot was empty.... so I was at first attempting to drive around in the parking lot to test out the OA features of the MAVIC2, in my years with both versions of the Mavic I've never tried it tracking a car even though plenty of youtube videos of people doing exactly the same thing. Since this was the last final day of the entire decade I figured now would be as good as time as any. So I started slow and cautiously, putting the drone in the "SLOW" mode of the active track, and I at first wanted to maintain an floor height of at least 225 feet which would give plenty of clearance but the active track 2.0 was not smart enough and would always lose tracking after just a few seconds of my car moving... even though there were no other cars there to confuse it.

Finally I had to get the drone to get very low compared to the ideal height of 225feet in order for it to sustain an active track lock on my car, as I spun a few around the parking lot my thought was to do a quick circle of my immediate neighborhood area, and it wasn't until I came to the corner turn that I realized there was a tall tower there... immediately I attempted to force the Mavic to raise to very high attitude but to no avail, before I even had chance to cancel the active track it had already struck.

This is DJI's fault because

1) It pitched the "slow mode" as 360 degree OA and made it sound much more confident and safer
2) The Mavic refused my commands to manually go up higher
3) The mavic still hit something when in broad daylight and going slowly and all sensors were being used
4) DJI makes it impossibly difficult to export the logs after the crash... (see above)
5) DJI active track is crap compared to skydio 2
6) Active Track 2.0 basically not working at reasonable heights and only works when very low tracking object, had DJI active track worked while at 200 feet or above this wouldn't have happened.
7) I had it track me from BEHIND but as my car turned the DJI MAVIC orientation changed on its own to the RIGHT. Had it stayed behind me like it should have, again none of this would have happenend.

This is like Boeings MCAS bug.

This was my very first time using OA in Mavic to track car... Had DJI published warning that for whatever reason during this OA/Active Track that it may be that height increases are IGNORED. and inputs to gain height are simply not followed, then I would have had a reasonable heads up and then proceeded accordingly.

In all my years of flying Mavic I've never encountered any instance of a height input being ignored other than if it was a NFZ alt restriction and this simply wasn't the case here....

Again, a flaw like this is like the MCAS issue that the Boeing 737MAX faced.

 

[adiru]

Respectfully- where was the crash?

Next to the empty Martin High School parking lot in Arlington Tx

 

[slup]

...This is DJI's fault because

...
4) DJI makes it impossibly difficult to export the logs after the crash... (see above)
...

Because you look for the log in the wrong place ...

Go here --> Flight log retrieval and analysis guide
and read point 3 in the first post on were to find them.

Once retrieved your device TXT & DAT file, upload the TXT file to either PhantomHelp or AirData and post the link back here.
The DAT file can be attached directly to your post with the ...


The AC DAT file from Mavic 2's aren't of any use as the decryption keys are hidden, and so those are not readable except by DJI.

 

[JAW]

This should get interesting.