Forward obstacle avoidance failure

[jlange]

In my first flight after updating my Mavic to the latest firmware, I ran into an issue where I was out over an open field, maybe 100 ft up, and my Mavic all of a sudden refused to fly forward, telling me there was an obstacle in front of it! I went into the settings in the app and disabled forward-obstacle-avoidance, and then I was able to happily continue my flight back to me.

Has anyone ever had this happen before?

Thanks!

 

[Robert Mitchell]

I've heard of this happening when facing the sun.

 

[jlange]

I've heard of this happening when facing the sun.

You may be right.. I believe this happened as I was heading back south, and it was a very sunny day.

 

[Robert Mitchell]

You may be right.. I believe this happened as I was heading back south, and it was a very sunny day.

Yeah it's a pretty well documented little glitch.

 

[SteelFlyer]

It happens literally every time I fly toward the sun. Wish they could come up with a fix for that.


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[Cimriver]

Yup mine does the same. Only thing you can do is turn off obstacle avoidance.

 

[jerryflah]

INTERESTING

 

[Slantnose79]

Yup mine does the same. Only thing you can do is turn off obstacle avoidance.

Actually, u can flip to sport mode which turns off OA. Just be sure you're at a safe altitude before going forward.


Sent from my iPhone using MavicPilots

 

[JOHNNYBRAVO]

Glad I read it here and didn't run into that in the field. Good post. Only have a couple flights under my belt.

 

[DerekG]

I too have found the problem to occur WAY more often when flying with the sun low in the sky.

Just remember that you need to disable Obstacle Avoidance AND "Display Radar Chart", otherwise you'll get an annoying beep every time the OA sensors detect something even if Obstacle Avoidance is turned off

 

[rb14]

Yes thanks for posting this. I too had it, immediately after the firmware upgrade. I agree with others who experienced the glitch when flying towards the sun.

I continued flying anyway, turning the MP 180 degrees and flying backwards where obstacle avoidance was engaging. A couple of battery packs later, having tried out many of the flight modes and toggled into Sport mode and back a few times, the problem seems to have gone. I'll double-check that this weekend when storm Doris (yeah right) has blown over.

 

[EndlessTrail]

This same type of thing almost wrecked my Mavic this weekend. Has anyone heard if they can fix this with firmware update? Wish I'd read this thread before I went out. Drone kept seeing obstacles where there were none. No birds, no wires, no trees, no clouds, just open skies in all directions. It was running out of power. I tried manual return first. Then tried moving up or down and retrying manual return. No luck. Tried automatic RTH feature. Still wouldn't move towards me. In fact it kept wanting to climb slowly. Didn't find avoidance feature offswitch so finally decided only option was to bring it down close to ground as possible and move to an area I could land and recover it easily before power completely out. It wouldn't let me land because of two bushes nearby (opening was only about 2x2ft) but it let me get it to hover about 18-24" off the ground so when it finally came down it didn't have far to fall. After recovering it (it managed to flip itself over). I checked it out visually, switched the battery out, reconnected, found the avoidance switch and disabled it. Then did a test flight and it flew fine this time.

'Stickers' were removed before it ever flew - so that wasn't it. But the angle from the Mavic to me was Southeastward. I did however fly it directly at the sun the previous afternoon with a 64ND filter on and had no problems at all.

 

[Robert Mitchell]

Because of these, and other issues caused, or suspected to be caused by OA, I rarely have it on anymore. My missions are always line of sight and clear of any obstacles anyway. If I have a situation where I will be at risk, I'll turn it back on, but unless that situation arises, it just becomes a potential complication I don't need.

Also, beware that downward sensors can be a liability in certain situations; over water, in darkness, over featureless surfaces etc, and can also be disabled at any time.

I understand these are features highly valued and relied upon by many, (IMO, too much at times) and as such it should be flawless, but they aren't. The manual clearly states they have limitations.

I am not advocating that these features are useless and don't serve a purpose, but you as pilot need to understand the risk/benefit calculation of any feature at a given time, and that's why they allow for the feature to be turned off as needed.

 

[gixxerbill]

fly it in sport mode and never have that problem

 

[Vasek]

Happened to me yesterday when returning back, 100m height open field solved it by turning the bird 180 and made the rest backwards . The sensors seem to be better let off unless necessary till dji fix this issue. Have the txt log if someone is interested..

 

[EndlessTrail]

Because of these, and other issues caused, or suspected to be caused by OA, I rarely have it on anymore. My missions are always line of sight and clear of any obstacles anyway. If I have a situation where I will be at risk, I'll turn it back on, but unless that situation arises, it just becomes a potential complication I don't need.

Also, beware that downward sensors can be a liability in certain situations; over water, in darkness, over featureless surfaces etc, and can also be disabled at any time.

I understand these are features highly valued and relied upon by many, (IMO, too much at times) and as such it should be flawless, but they aren't. The manual clearly states they have limitations.

I am not advocating that these features are useless and don't serve a purpose, but you as pilot need to understand the risk/benefit calculation of any feature at a given time, and that's why they allow for the feature to be turned off as needed.

Thanks for the info. I will just turn OA off most of the time. I only fly line of sight too. I was thinking about it like a sort of insurance policy. And if I do have OA on I'll know to throw it into sport mode as soon as I start having a false obstacle problem. I was excited about the added feature because the other unit I use is a P3P.

 

[AyeYo]

I was out over an open field,

Perfect reason to have OA off.

 

[ksull72487]

Had this happen once. Landed powered off and turned back on and took off again. The Mavic has its share of glitches. When I first received mine it flew fine but not as steady by the time I flew it for the third time. The Mavic does recalibrate or adjust itself after use. That's something to note.

 

[Dr_jett]

Since I updated my Mavic firmware two revisions ago the forward obstacle avoidance sensors would only work for a minute or two after take off. I recalibrate my imu and vision sensors serval times successfully but the only way I could get them to work for longer was to down grade all the way back to the original release. I really didn't want to send it in because my goggles were supposed to ship soon, but tech-support says it was a software issue I need to send it back.
Here is where gets weird I got a notification on Tuesday this week they were done with the evaluation so I called them and they said that it may have went back into evaluation. So I call them every day the rest of the week to check in on it because they told me to and no one could find out what was going on so I asked for a manager and they tell me that the manager. So then the manager tell me that they will make sure evaluation is completed and they get an invoice created. then I got a email this afternoon saying the valuation was complete and it says I need it to pay to have the vision sensors replaced along with the main board and that there was damage of the forward sensors. Which doesn't make any sense at all because it's never been crashed and it was sent in for just a software issue. I have DJI care refresh but I hate to spend the $79 to pay for something that was a software issue on my Mavic. Anyway my Mavic is only 3 months old so it's under warranty.
Does anyone have any experience with this issue or how I should proceed?