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Drone to Controller communication

Ok. I don't actually understand your reply - it is way above my understanding. I do appreciate your effort to explain though.
GNSS?
KML file?
MSL?

I still navigate by the seat of my pants (land in sight, you have landmarks and buoyage to use), chart and compass. I still use my M73... yes I am a bit of a dinosaur. Everything about these drones, the stuff that drives them - it is mind blowing. I haven't really flown mine yet, 20ft max.... I dare not just yet. I don't want to end up on these pages asking questions like the first one here!

It is another world

Sorry.
  • GNSS: Global Navigation Satellite System - it's the umbrella name for the space segment of the various global satellite positioning systems. In this case it means GPS and GLONASS, which are the two systems that the Mavic Mini receives.
  • KML: Keyhole Markup Language - the markup language developed by Google to encode geographic data. It's one kind of file you load into a mapping program to display a track or waypoints.
  • MSL: Mean Sea Level - it defines a height or altitude relative to one of the global models of mean sea level.
 
Ok. I don't actually understand your reply - it is way above my understanding. I do appreciate your effort to explain though.
GNSS?
KML file?
MSL?

I still navigate by the seat of my pants (land in sight, you have landmarks and buoyage to use), chart and compass. I still use my M73... yes I am a bit of a dinosaur. Everything about these drones, the stuff that drives them - it is mind blowing. I haven't really flown mine yet, 20ft max.... I dare not just yet. I don't want to end up on these pages asking questions like the first one here!

It is another world
GNSS is global navigation satellite system, "GPS" to most people but the Russians have their own and there is a European one planned. Mavics use multiple systems - hence they see more satellites than a pure GPS system.
MSL is mean sea level , altitudes have to be relative to a reference point, so if you are using a barometer for altitude you zero for the take off point or by setting the pressure to match the landing point. Satellites use a mean sea level as their reference.
KML is a plot file which you can import into mapping software. (GPX does a similar job, there are others).
edit - missed that had already been answered DOH!

If you take the OP's data into a graphing tool (its downloadable from the link he gave and see the reference in @sar104 's sig) then you can see near the end of the flight the pitch roll and yaw all go berserk, and there's a rapid drop in height (@sar104 shows attitude data on his chart, I found it made things too hard to read). So we know the drone is falling and tumbling. We can see the lat /lon and altitude at the point where that started, it's roughly on the corner of the building. And we can also see the drone fell from 30.7m above the take off point to 15m below it, so we know we have a height in feet or meters needs to qualified as "above the ground at the building", "above take off", "above msl" etc. (It's like time, if you or I are in England and say 10 O'Clock it's not the same as 10 O'Clock Dallas time where the impact was. We can put everything in Universal time - GMT for old schoolers - but unless the base line is given nobody can be sure what's meant)

We can also see the drone was flying roughly south before impact, initially we thought it hit a wall running east-west but that would mean it couldn't go any further south. It goes south and east after impact so that says it didn't hit square into the building across the street - this is the only thing it could have hit at a suitable angle - so that sanity checks the data. The mini doesn't have on-board collision avoidance, which could have saved the situation.
 
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Haha agreed! But man that's how you learn. Ended up buying another Mavic Mini the next day to find the lost mavic. Between my last mistake, a few practice runs, actually learning what the heck RTH does, and the info from these forums I feel so much more confident when flying around. Even took her up for an aerial view of the city the next day: 2020_05_31_21_00_39_Cache.mp4

I will admit that my heart was in my stomach the whole time though, haha!

I can't afford to learn by mistakes! It has taken me 3 years to pluck up the courage to buy a drone. I have been aware of them and their abilities.. the Mavic Pro was the first one I was looking at, but it is way out of my price range now. The trouble is, as I have discovered, the costs don't stop at the drone... new computer, tablet to see where you are going.... it is a bottomless pit!
 
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GNSS is global navigation satellite system, "GPS" to most people but the Russians have their own and there is a European one planned. Mavics use multiple systems - hence they see more satellites than a pure GPS system.
MSL is mean sea level , altitudes have to be relative to a reference point, so if you are using a barometer for altitude you zero for the take off point or by setting the pressure to match the landing point. Satellites use a mean sea level as their reference.
KML is a plot file which you can import into mapping software. (GPX does a similar job, there are others).
edit - missed that had already been answered DOH!

If you take the OP's data into a graphing tool (its downloadable from the link he gave and see the reference in @sar104 's sig) then you can see near the end of the flight the pitch roll and yaw all go berserk, and there's a rapid drop in height (@sar104 shows attitude data on his chart, I found it made things too hard to read). So we know the drone is falling and tumbling. We can see the lat /lon and altitude at the point where that started, it's roughly on the corner of the building. And we can also see the drone fell from 30.7m above the take off point to 15m below it, so we know we have a height in feet or meters needs to qualified as "above the ground at the building", "above take off", "above msl" etc. (It's like time, if you or I are in England and say 10 O'Clock it's not the same as 10 O'Clock Dallas time where the impact was. We can put everything in Universal time - GMT for old schoolers - but unless the base line is given nobody can be sure what's meant)

We can also see the drone was flying roughly south before impact, initially we thought it hit a wall running east-west but that would mean it couldn't go any further south. It goes south and east after impact so that says it didn't hit square into the building across the street - this is the only thing it could have hit at a suitable angle - so that sanity checks the data. The mini doesn't have on-board collision avoidance, which could have saved the situation.

Holy ****... I struggle with emails! I use email, but only by 'reply'. I think I have a huge amount to learn before I fly!
 
Holy ****... I struggle with emails! I use email, but only by 'reply'. I think I have a huge amount to learn before I fly!
Hi Kingrat. YouTube can be your friend here. Lots of well done videos on the mini. As someone new to the hobby, you can learn a lot from these. Also read the full manual a few times (needs to be downloaded from the DJI website) but also a valuable learning tool.
“old man mavic” can be a good asset for you, as he is quite familiar with all things relating to UK drone flying regulations.
Enjoy the learning and fly safe.
 
Hi Kingrat. YouTube can be your friend here. Lots of well done videos on the mini. As someone new to the hobby, you can learn a lot from these. Also read the full manual a few times (needs to be downloaded from the DJI website) but also a valuable learning tool.
“old man mavic” can be a good asset for you, as he is quite familiar with all things relating to UK drone flying regulations.
Enjoy the learning and fly safe.

I know and I have been trying to understand all the help everyone has given. The trouble is my starting point is way behind. People seem to think that because I am a professional photographer that means I am also a tech geek - far from it. I take photographs, I download them, I send them to the magazine on a CD in the post. They do the rest. Same with commercial clients I have. Tech has moved on at such a pace.
 
The type of stuff I do. This was an expedition to north east Alaska back in 2012. I was the pathfinder/navigator for the expedition, this was coming in to Nome where we stayed for a couple of days before heading on round to Teller then Wales and across the Bering strait to explore the Russian coast. We were supposed to be going back this summer.... it will be next year now. The boat is already in Seattle ready for us! Just the one boat this time, a 25ft Safeboat, I shall be taking my drone to film the boat as we on passage. Simple ideas, simple shots, baffling technology! And the prospect for a crash, but little chance of endangering others. Too remote for that.
 

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Hi all. Quick follow-up regarding my downed drone. I was able to use the "Find my Drone" feature to locate the last charted position of my Mavic Mini (still haven't found it after thoroughly checking area on map) however, since flying my second Mavic Mini I have not been able to use the Find My Drone feature for the first Mini. Now, I only see location of the second Mini.

Can "Find my Drone" be used on more than one Mavic?
 
Hi all. Quick follow-up regarding my downed drone. I was able to use the "Find my Drone" feature to locate the last charted position of my Mavic Mini (still haven't found it after thoroughly checking area on map) however, since flying my second Mavic Mini I have not been able to use the Find My Drone feature for the first Mini. Now, I only see location of the second Mini.

Can "Find my Drone" be used on more than one Mavic?

It's probably more reliable to get locations from the flight logs - that eliminates any confusion with different aircraft. Your drone crashed on the sidewalk - it's very likely that it was picked up. Hopefully it didn't hit anyone or cause damage.
 
The type of stuff I do. This was an expedition to north east Alaska back in 2012. I was the pathfinder/navigator for the expedition, this was coming in to Nome where we stayed for a couple of days before heading on round to Teller then Wales and across the Bering strait to explore the Russian coast. We were supposed to be going back this summer.... it will be next year now. The boat is already in Seattle ready for us! Just the one boat this time, a 25ft Safeboat, I shall be taking my drone to film the boat as we on passage. Simple ideas, simple shots, baffling technology! And the prospect for a crash, but little chance of endangering others. Too remote for that.
It's probably more reliable to get locations from the flight logs - that eliminates any confusion with different aircraft. Your drone crashed on the sidewalk - it's very likely that it was picked up. Hopefully it didn't hit anyone or cause damage.
Agreed. Do flight logs capture the Mavic just being turned on, or does there need to be an actual flight path recorded?
 
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