Filipok lost drone adventure

[Former Member07122019a]

Man, I had the same issue with my MPP the other day. Ready to Fly and then 20 feet in the air I got a Sys Warning - Check app. Disconnected and literally watched it fly away. Luckily I tracked it down and found it about 1/2 mile away. The video was pretty telling. It just floated away and then decided to land in a neighbor's yard instead of coming home. The home point was clearly updated and the drone should have RTH'd after it disco'd. After restarting the drone, there were no issues and it flew perfectly. Nothing in the logs as far as what caused the issue.

I'm honestly having serious reservations about ever buying another DJI drone. This is the 2nd of such instances and I'm seriously getting tired of chasing this thing down the street.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

So bummed. Was just taking the Mavic Pro 2 out for an early sunset flight in my neighborhood. Using my DJI smart controller.

Great connection had just taken off and I flew up and about 3 blocks away. BOOM. "Aircraft disconnected" of course I've ran into this issue before but always have managed to walk around and regain signal within 30 seconds.

Panic sets in and I RTH. Nothing. Couldn't hear it, or see it!!! I used "find my drone" to check its last location and couldn't find anything. Walked up and down the streets trying gain connection.

So far nothing!!!

It's clearly dead now. So no hope in reconnecting...??

Anyone know what to do in a time like this?! Was it a system malfunction and can I get a new one if I reach out to DJI??! How can I find this

Try posting on Nextdoor is the free private social network for your neighborhood community. and offer a reward.

 

[sar104]

Man, I had the same issue with my MPP the other day. Ready to Fly and then 20 feet in the air I got a Sys Warning - Check app. Disconnected and literally watched it fly away. Luckily I tracked it down and found it about 1/2 mile away. The video was pretty telling. It just floated away and then decided to land in a neighbor's yard instead of coming home. The home point was clearly updated and the drone should have RTH'd after it disco'd. After restarting the drone, there were no issues and it flew perfectly. Nothing in the logs as far as what caused the issue.

I'm honestly having serious reservations about ever buying another DJI drone. This is the 2nd of such instances and I'm seriously getting tired of chasing this thing down the street.

Who looked at the logs, and which logs?

 

[Brockrock]

In three or so years of flying, I have only used RTH twice, and these times were in order to test it, once on my P4 and once on my M2P. Both times it worked well, but both times, the copter was well within sight.

One concern that I would have about self-initiating RTH after a ‘disconnect’ is that while you may have totally lost video downlink, you may still have intermittent controller uplink to the copter. As such, if the copter itself enters RTH on its own, by then pressing the RTH button on the remote, it may cancel RTH resulting it the copter hovering out of sight until it force lands. I often wonder how many folks have done this - unknowingly - resulting in the loss of their copter.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

Who looked at the logs, and which logs?

Got it covered. Thanks.

 

[sar104]

Got it covered. Thanks.

That's good - disregard - I interpreted your post to mean that the logs didn't explain why the aircraft failed to RTH.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

That's good - disregard - I interpreted your post to mean that the logs didn't explain why the aircraft failed to RTH.

the logs did not indicate why the craft failed to RTH and stopped responding to commands even though the signal was strong and video was crystal clear.
A sys-warning - review app could have been many things including unusually high magnetic interference. Who knows? The logs nor the application ever indicated what the problem was.
The good news is that the craft didn't disconnect and find my drone led me right to it. However, this almost certainly will be the last DJI product I purchase. I own three DJI drones. I'll be moving on to autel next. In my opnion, DJI's routines are way out of whack when a blatant RC error is displayed and their code allows it to fly away arbitrarily. In that case, the craft should immediately return to home.

 

[sar104]

the logs did not indicate why the craft failed to RTH and stopped responding to commands even though the signal was strong and video was crystal clear.
A sys-warning - review app could have been many things including unusually high magnetic interference. Who knows? The logs nor the application ever indicated what the problem was.
The good news is that the craft didn't disconnect and find my drone led me right to it. However, this almost certainly will be the last DJI product I purchase. I own three DJI drones. I'll be moving on to autel next. In my opnion, DJI's routines are way out of whack when a blatant RC error is displayed and their code allows it to fly away arbitrarily. In that case, the craft should immediately return to home.

View attachment 77166

That's not the log that you want - you need to look at one of the DAT files.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

That's not the log that you want - you need to look at one of the DAT files.

So, what in the DAT file would indicate why the drone didn't return to home when it was supposed to?

 

[dave canada]

good luck i,ve lost two in a remote location have flew probably close to a hundred missions in search , i know there is a magnetic interferance around 8500 feet where both lost signal where they went is beyond me as far as somebody picking them up i wish they would but nobody hikes these miserable climbs where the got lost why was i flying there first time was learning mission setup and was a mistake the second was used to search and it had done over 50 flights over the area but when put in the same tracks as the other it never came home and i,ve searched so fly away isn,t so hard to believe but i can,t figure it

 

[Keule]

So, what in the DAT file would indicate why the drone didn't return to home when it was supposed to?

Because it was in ATTI mode. (your post #21) Aircraft entered ATTI in the 3rd row of your log.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

Because it was in ATTI mode. (your post #21) Aircraft entered ATTI in the 3rd row of your log.

I understand that. It stayed in ATTI mode despite having 15 sats. The craft should have RTH'd. It's that simple. I have the dat file and have parsed it. It says nothing more than the csv flight log.

 

[sar104]

So, what in the DAT file would indicate why the drone didn't return to home when it was supposed to?

The DAT files explain why the aircraft did what it did, not why it didn't do what it didn't do. It cannot RTH in ATTI mode, and the reason for it being in ATTI mode will be in the DAT file. If you think that it says nothing more useful than the csv log then you haven't looked at it very closely. I would check the correlation between the magnetometer data and the IMU data.

 

[paulatkin73]

It cannot RTH in ATTI mode

including manually activated atti mode? that would also block auto rth safety?

 

[sar104]

including manually activated atti mode? that would also block auto rth safety?

No - if it is user-selected ATTI mode then it will switch back to P-GPS to RTH. I've tested that function. In this case I doubt that it was user-selected ATTI though.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

15 sats in atti mode. This is a code flaw. If the unit has sufficient sats, there is no reason a sys warning should prevent rth. DJI, you listening?

 

[paulatkin73]

15 sats in atti mode. This is a code flaw. If the unit has sufficient sats, there is no reason a sys warning should prevent rth. DJI, you listening?

sats count has nothing to do with the quality of gps signal. sat count changes slowly, horizontal accuracy and velocity from gps - changes a lot. it is a pity they did not add 'gps glitch' warning for dji app - driven by inconsistency of sequential packets from gps data - i have it on arducopter models and on some days it takes several minutes to clear off, with 12-15 sats connected. it usually clears when you lift up to 20-30 meters, but close to the ground it sometimes has issues. it just does. and on some days - it gets whistle clean in 15-20 sec.

 

[sar104]

15 sats in atti mode. This is a code flaw. If the unit has sufficient sats, there is no reason a sys warning should prevent rth. DJI, you listening?

sats count has nothing to do with the quality of gps signal. sat count changes slowly, horizontal accuracy and velocity from gps - changes a lot. it is a pity they did not add 'gps glitch' warning for dji app - i have it on arducopter models and on some days it takes several minutes to clear off, with 12-15 sats connected. it usually clears when you lift up to 20-30 meters, but close to the ground it sometimes has issues. it just does.

The satellite count and DOP values are irrelevant if the aircraft was in ATTI mode due to disagreement between the IMU(s) and the compass. To put it simply - knowing where it is doesn't help it go home if it doesn't know which way it is facing.

 

[paulatkin73]

The satellite count and DOP values are irrelevant if the aircraft was in ATTI mode due to disagreement between the IMU(s) and the compass. To put it simply - knowing where it is doesn't help it go home if it doesn't know which way it is facing.

true. i do not argue with that.

 

[Former Member07122019a]

sats count has nothing to do with the quality of gps signal. sat count changes slowly, horizontal accuracy and velocity from gps - changes a lot. it is a pity they did not add 'gps glitch' warning for dji app - driven by inconsistency of sequential packets from gps data - i have it on arducopter models and on some days it takes several minutes to clear off, with 12-15 sats connected. it usually clears when you lift up to 20-30 meters, but close to the ground it sometimes has issues. it just does. and on some days - it gets whistle clean in 15-20 sec.

The unit lifted off, was 25 ft AGL in GPS and flipped into ATTI because of a sys-warning error (that was never logged). The unit had a home point and knew it's lat long from take-off. I know this because it logged it.
In this case, the drone should land immediately instead of drifting half a mile and randomly landing. It began to drift 10 ft in distance away from the home point. This is clearly a bug / hole in the software. I've seen countless people talking about losing their drones in this manner. I'm not sure what's up with DJI and allowing this, but the unit had obstacle avoidance on and should have landed.