Flew my drone into the woods

[RaWine]

It wasn't just woods with trees a couple feet apart, but had to stop and start, go up and down dodging twigs. I got far enough in I wasn't sure which way was out. I finally hit a twig or something and thought I was done for, but drone stayed up. I got out safely but was pretty close to running out of power. I had set it on hover so if I lost signal it wouldn't return to home.

I did this with my mini 2 with mini ipad for screen. Anyway, it was an interesting challenge. I was actually looking for anything, that might make a good reference photo for an oil painting. But I was also interested if I would see anything of interest. It wasn't an area you could get into easily without a machete.

I should have turned on the camera to tilt up though. Also, I should have planned for extra time to get out. I'm sure I could have got the right direction with the map, but did it without needing it.

Hey,, I also read a story about some guys finding an old box full of gold coins in the woods. Hah, so... likely not, but you never know. If my drone was as expensive as some of the new ones, I wouldn't do it.

 

[mavic3usa]

So what happens if you lose signal and your drone hovers and then when it hits lower battery and you haven't yet regained the signal?

 

[MS Coast]

So what happens if you lose signal and your drone hovers and then when it hits lower battery and you haven't yet regained the signal?

It continues to hover until the critical battery threshold is reached, and then it lands.

 

[slup]

It continues to hover until the critical battery threshold is reached, and then it lands.

That's not entirely correct... before the forced critical low voltage auto landing gets initiated, a low battery RTH will kick in.

The low battery RTH will give you a 10sec counter before proceeding where you can chose to either RTH or cancel. If you have lost the connection to the drone you can't "cancel"... meaning, even if you have the failsafe action set to hover to prevent a RTH in a situation where it's obstacles above/around the drone... the drone will still RTH & ascend up into the obstacles if you can't reach the drone & regain the connection before the battery gets too low.

 

[GadgetGuy]

That's not entirely correct... before the forced critical low voltage auto landing gets initiated, a low battery RTH will kick in.

The low battery RTH will give you a 10sec counter before proceeding where you can chose to either RTH or cancel. If you have lost the connection to the drone you can't "cancel"... meaning, even if you have the failsafe action set to hover to prevent a RTH in a situation where it's obstacles above/around the drone... the drone will still RTH & ascend up into the obstacles if you can't reach the drone & regain the connection before the battery gets too low.

However, theoretically, in most cases, the low battery RTH would have already kicked in and been canceled, if you were flying the drone in front of or behind you, away from the original home point, with no desire of it returning to the Home Point set at launch.

I had a similar situation in 2016.

Knowing it wouldn’t make it back over water, I diverted to dry land, and ditch landed a Mavic Pro on the return flight, after already having cancelled low battery RTH at some 60% remaining battery. I located a safe landing spot and descended, knowing that the signal would be lost once it descended behind an intervening hill, completely blocking signal. Drone was recovered intact exactly where I intended to land it, having landed safely. I believe signal loss was set to RTH. I also did not change the Home Point which was several miles away.

This was eons ago under very different FW and apps.
Would that not be possible today?
Other than changing the Home Point to the current location before the signal was lost over the intended ditch landing position, is there any other way to ditch land with a very low battery when signal loss is inevitable during the descent, to prevent the drone from trying to RTH instead of land?

 

[MA2 317]

the drone will still RTH & ascend up into the obstacles

That's what happened to my SPARK years ago.

I wasn't quick enough to cancel the RTH when trying to land it in my hand before the time ran out.

Two inches from landing and up it went into the tree canopy.

As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh!".

.

 

[RaWine]

That's not entirely correct... before the forced critical low voltage auto landing gets initiated, a low battery RTH will kick in.

The low battery RTH will give you a 10sec counter before proceeding where you can chose to either RTH or cancel. If you have lost the connection to the drone you can't "cancel"... meaning, even if you have the failsafe action set to hover to prevent a RTH in a situation where it's obstacles above/around the drone... the drone will still RTH & ascend up into the obstacles if you can't reach the drone & regain the connection before the battery gets too low.

Wow, nice to know. Not sure how low I can set the RTH., but I'd rather it had crashed trying to fly horizontally than from height. Assuming I could eventually get to it, it should only have propeller damage.

 

[MS Coast]

That's not entirely correct... before the forced critical low voltage auto landing gets initiated, a low battery RTH will kick in.

The low battery RTH will give you a 10sec counter before proceeding where you can chose to either RTH or cancel. If you have lost the connection to the drone you can't "cancel"... meaning, even if you have the failsafe action set to hover to prevent a RTH in a situation where it's obstacles above/around the drone... the drone will still RTH & ascend up into the obstacles if you can't reach the drone & regain the connection before the battery gets too low.

Is this described in any DJI literature? Applicable to all consumer-grade DJI drones?

 

[slup]

Is this described in any DJI literature? Applicable to all consumer-grade DJI drones?

Check out the user manual for the OP's Mini 2 at page 14... or maybe page 47 from a newer Mavic 3 Pro or page 44 from the Air 3S. Look up the chapter Low Battery RTH.

From what I've seen over the years, all Mini, Air & Mavic iterations have it...

 

[MS Coast]

Check out the user manual for the OP's Mini 2 at page 14... or maybe page 47 from a newer Mavic 3 Pro or page 44 from the Air 3S. Look up the chapter Low Battery RTH.

From what I've seen over the years, all Mini, Air & Mavic iterations have it...

This is interesting.

Despite having read the RTH information in several manuals several times over the past few years, I hadn't fully appreciated that the drone's Low Battery RTH action on low battery supersedes the hover action in the Fly App's Failsafe RTH setting. Wow.

When flying beneath the tree canopy or in an area with power lines, I've always set the Failsafe RTH action on loss of the controller signal to Hover, thinking that the drone would hover until low battery auto-landing took place. In the event of a controller problem or signal obstruction, I didn't want the drone to ascend to the RTH altitude an fly into a tree or power line.

It sounds like choosing Land rather than Hover might be a better action in response to controller signal loss in situations with overhead obstacles and the possibility of not being able to get to the drone location promptly.

(The page number varies between versions of the manuals. For the Mavic 3 Pro version 1.4, 2024.08, the Low Battery RTH information is on page 49. And this is another good reminder to me to check for updates in the manuals for each model.)

 

[mavic3usa]

This is interesting.

Despite having read the RTH information in several manuals several times over the past few years, I hadn't fully appreciated that the drone's Low Battery RTH action on low battery supersedes the hover action in the Fly App's Failsafe RTH setting. Wow.

When flying beneath the tree canopy or in an area with power lines, I've always set the Failsafe RTH action on loss of the controller signal to Hover, thinking that the drone would hover until low battery auto-landing took place. In the event of a controller problem or signal obstruction, I didn't want the drone to ascend to the RTH altitude an fly into a tree or power line.

It sounds like choosing Land rather than Hover might be a better action in response to controller signal loss in situations with overhead obstacles and the possibility of not being able to get to the drone location promptly.

(The page number varies between versions of the manuals. For the Mavic 3 Pro version 1.4, 2024.08, the Low Battery RTH information is on page 49. And this is another good reminder to me to check for updates in the manuals for each model.)

Thinking FPV:

After you responded, I thought I would need to go out in the field and test it. For so long I thought the same and then it struck me one day that if I lost my connection and I could NOT get close to my drone in the next 10 minutes because of a canyon or lake between me and the drone, will it crash on low battery RTH in the overheard?

Agreed, I'd much rather it just land but when I think about the places where I might lose connectivity such as when the drone goes too deep in a building and you DO have the ability to take a few steps forward and reconnect, do you want the drone to land in an abandoned building or on the roof? But disconnect and lands also means you can put your drone into a lake.

This is a hard one and I gotta go back and test it thoroughly again but I'd rather lose the drone than crash it. And I've seen a disconnect where you can't seem to ever re-connect and maybe need a power cycle and then with FPV, you can experience a disconnect with either Goggles or Remote which means you're watching 3 batteries.

When I start getting down to 30%, I usually start coming home and bringing it in because I don't need the trouble.

 

[RaWine]

Thinking FPV:

After you responded, I thought I would need to go out in the field and test it. For so long I thought the same and then it struck me one day that if I lost my connection and I could NOT get close to my drone in the next 10 minutes because of a canyon or lake between me and the drone, will it crash on low battery RTH in the overheard?

Agreed, I'd much rather it just land but when I think about the places where I might lose connectivity such as when the drone goes too deep in a building and you DO have the ability to take a few steps forward and reconnect, do you want the drone to land in an abandoned building or on the roof? But disconnect and lands also means you can put your drone into a lake.

This is a hard one and I gotta go back and test it thoroughly again but I'd rather lose the drone than crash it. And I've seen a disconnect where you can't seem to ever re-connect and maybe need a power cycle and then with FPV, you can experience a disconnect with either Goggles or Remote which means you're watching 3 batteries.

When I start getting down to 30%, I usually start coming home and bringing it in because I don't need the trouble.

It would be good to have both options, "Hover and land" and "Hover and rth) If you're hovering over water trying to reestablish a connection, you definitely want to go up if you fail to do so, (unless you have pontoons on it.)

 

[MS Coast]

It would be good to have both options, "Hover and land" and "Hover and rth) If you're hovering over water trying to reestablish a connection, you definitely want to go up if you fail to do so, (unless you have pontoons on it.)

The current setup is fine for flying over water, where you don't want a "land" option. It's situations with overhead obstacles that pose a problem.

 

[mavic3usa]

Here's what I discover for the Avata FPV and it's ideal but it's not the end of the world.

Using the Goggles and the MC/RC, you can simulate a "disconnect" or "loss of signal" by powering off the MC. At that point, you can still see everything going on thru the Goggles and this is what I found:

The setting says something like "action upon signal disconnect" and therefore that means no relationship to the battery. You may choose between RTH, HOVER, or Land.

In short, when the setting is HOVER, I sent the drone out quite a distance and I shut off the MC and the drone stopped and hovered. As soon as the battery got low enough and the alert was triggered, the drone started returning to home so I had to power up my MC to take back control.