General drone intelligence

[hedbonker]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away. There was no intelligence in the drone software to disallow this kind of thing.

I suspect this is not a thing with a modern drone. Certainly the Air 3 sets the home point once it has enough sats to do so and, oddly, appears to set it again once takeoff is initiated. My question is related to this but is specific to waypoints. If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location? What about the hyper lapse waypoint mission? Will it also attempt this?

Thanks.

 

[mavic3usa]

I don't know about each of the drones in particular but I once had a drone that I started a mission and the waypoint were not nearby and the drone started to take off. Seems to me if the destination was too far away either it would abort or it would attempt to return home when the battery got too low. However, the drone was attempting to get to waypoint #1 as quickly as possible so it was flying pretty quickly and of course, I was able to stop it.

 

[old man mavic]

@hedbonker the issue you mentioned about moving 100 miles away ,was primarily a compass related thing ,and had nothing to do with the actual homepoint directly
with todays drones, if on start up the drone senses an anomily, between what the satellite information and the compass seem to be saying,then you will get a compass calibration required warning on the screen
what can happen sometimes ,is that the drone has been launched, before enough satellites have been locked , and at some point away from the take off point ,the satellite lock is established,then that point will be where the drone will return to
the two messages saying homepoint is set ,once on the ground ,and then as the drone takes off, are just to make sure, that the operator has got the message,the second one is a comfirmation of the first, the homepoint remaines the same
as far as a homepoint mission is concerned ,then realistically once the drone has located its compass heading and position by GPS coordinates ,then it should realise that the stored waypoint mission coordinates, and the actual coordinates ,are not the same ,and maybe abort the mission from taking place, whether this is the case or not i do not know ,just summising
maybe someone can try this out and see if it is the case

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away. There was no intelligence in the drone software to disallow this kind of thing.

The P3P sets the home point when it gets sufficient GPS to do so and or, GPS permitting, when the drone lifts off, there is NO danger of a P3P attempting to RTH to an old home point from a previous drone switch on.
As OMM states the thing you are probably confusing is/was the supposed requirement to recalibrate the compass and even then I am not sure if it was mandatory.

 

[Droning on and on...]

Been doing this since the P4 ten years ago and never heard of or experienced anything like this. My P4 and every DJI drone I've owned since have all set the HP after starting the motors.

The only thing I can remember ever hearing about vis a vis DJI drones w.r.t. the issue of moving 100 miles or more is GPS having to do a "cold start", which takes longer – sometimes much – to lock a fix. As mentioned by @old man mavic a compass recalibration might be necessary as well.

I don't think any DJI drone has used a previous HP from a flight session. That's obviously erroneous operation. Also, if it did, it would immediately start the RTH process on take off, you'd have to cancel it to fly, and it would be pestering you the entire time to go home. Never heard anything like that in a decade

 

[BigAl07]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away. There was no intelligence in the drone software to disallow this kind of thing.

I suspect this is not a thing with a modern drone. Certainly the Air 3 sets the home point once it has enough sats to do so and, oddly, appears to set it again once takeoff is initiated. My question is related to this but is specific to waypoints. If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location? What about the hyper lapse waypoint mission? Will it also attempt this?

Thanks.

The RTH 100 miles away was a REAL thing with early GPS drones. A previous business partner lost his P1 due to this issue. They flew it in one town and then went home, charged the battery and drone to another town. When they launched the P1 they flew it further than the signal could reach and when it RTH'd it headed back to previous location which was about 35 miles across a mountain range. She was long gone!

A fellow hobbyist was flying a first edition Typhoon. He flew it in the morning at his home doing some testing and "Set" the Homepoint during that flight. Later in the day we all met at the Flying Field to check out his new investment. Upon lifting off it went into RTH and to all of our amazement we watched it make a bee-line back towards his home but fortunately (or is it unfortunately) there was a large stand of old growth oak trees between his launch point his home 6 miles away.

Thank goodness today's aircraft are much more "idiot proof" but we still test the levels of Idiot Proofing now and again.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Thank goodness today's aircraft are much more "idiot proof" but we still test the levels of Idiot Proofing now and again.

 

[GadgetGuy]

My question is related to this but is specific to waypoints. If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location? What about the hyper lapse waypoint mission? Will it also attempt this?

Thanks.

Hopefully, someone will still answer your real question which was about Waypoints and Hyperlapse Waypoints, rather than RTH.

 

[mobilehomer]

Hyperlapse waypoints RTH when the drone disconnects. Low battery trumps waypoint, plus you will get a warning that the battery does not have enough capacity to complete the mission.

 

[GadgetGuy]

Hyperlapse waypoints RTH when the drone disconnects. Low battery trumps waypoint, plus you will get a warning that the battery does not have enough capacity to complete the mission.

So, a Waypoint mission can still be activated that was programmed for 100 miles away, resulting in the drone attempting to fly to the start, located 100 miles away?

 

[Meta4]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away.

Going back at least as far as the Phantom 2 series, that was never a thing.
It would be impossible, because your recorded home point evaporates when the power is switched off.
When the drone is restarted, there is no home point until a new one is saved.

If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location?

Unless the drone warns you at the start and won't start the mission, it would.
But even if that happened, your drone would still give up and come back when low battery RTH initiates.

 

[Zbip57]

If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location?

How could you accidentally start such a mission?

There is a way to abort waypoint missions once started, no?

Why not set up your own experiments to test for yourself what happens?

 

[BetterBizWorks]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away. There was no intelligence in the drone software to disallow this kind of thing.

I suspect this is not a thing with a modern drone. Certainly the Air 3 sets the home point once it has enough sats to do so and, oddly, appears to set it again once takeoff is initiated. My question is related to this but is specific to waypoints. If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location? What about the hyper lapse waypoint mission? Will it also attempt this?

Thanks.

I have had 3rd party companies set automated missions where the launching area and the mapping area were 1.5 miles apart by mistake. We need to identify it before the flight. I would hope that the drone would calculate the difference and that there were parameters the automated flight should meet. Remember other countries do not require line of site, so It all depends on the programming which we are not privy to, unless it has happened to us. I am curious if anyone has had this issue and what the drone did.

 

[Zbip57]

Isn't there a built-in maximum distance limit between homepoint and first waypoint, and between each subsequent waypoint? I know there is a max distance limit in Litchi which would prevent triggering such an "accidental" 100 mile mission launch.

See this previous thread. Litchi Waypoints radius? (max distance from starting point)

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[BetterBizWorks]

Isn't there a built-in maximum distance limit between homepoint and first waypoint, and between each subsequent waypoint? I know there is a max distance limit in Litchi which would prevent triggering such an "accidental" 100 mile mission launch.

See this previous thread. Litchi Waypoints radius? (max distance from starting point)

​

Probably, but who knows what it is?

 

[Zbip57]

Probably, but who knows what it is?

I'll take a wild guess and suggest the programmed limit is likely to be a whole lot less than a 100 miles.

 

[WanderLost]

When I first got my P3P back in the day one of the things that users were warned about was the RTH feature in this regard: If you set a home point and then moved 100 miles from that spot and flew the drone without resetting the home point, there was a risk the drone might attempt an RTH to the spot 100 miles away. There was no intelligence in the drone software to disallow this kind of thing.

I suspect this is not a thing with a modern drone. Certainly the Air 3 sets the home point once it has enough sats to do so and, oddly, appears to set it again once takeoff is initiated. My question is related to this but is specific to waypoints. If I have a waypoint mission saved and I am 100 miles away from it's location and I accidently start that mission will the Air 3 attempt to fly to that location? What about the hyper lapse waypoint mission? Will it also attempt this?

Thanks.

I recently had something like this happen when I was mapping a Conservation Area. I had setup the mapping mission on the RC+ controller for my Matrice 30 and launched from where I thought was the edge of the area. It flew off when I started the mission in the right direction, and the first thing I did when it started was to check the map. I immediately saw that I was at least 2 miles away from the start point, flying into a 17-20 mph headwind.
I cancelled the mission and pressed the RTH to bring it back to the liftoff point. That map view is critical to mission awareness along with things like the wind speed and direction.

 

[Meta4]

I recently had something like this happen ... It flew off when I started the mission in the right direction, and the first thing I did when it started was to check the map. I immediately saw that I was at least 2 miles away from the start point, flying into a 17-20 mph headwind.

What was the issue and what caused it?

 

[WanderLost]

What was the issue and what caused it?

The issue was that I had setup a waypoint mission and was far away from the actual point and the drone was headed there no matter how far away it was. What caused it? Stupidity on my part?

 

[BetterBizWorks]

I recently had something like this happen when I was mapping a Conservation Area. I had setup the mapping mission on the RC+ controller for my Matrice 30 and launched from where I thought was the edge of the area. It flew off when I started the mission in the right direction, and the first thing I did when it started was to check the map. I immediately saw that I was at least 2 miles away from the start point, flying into a 17-20 mph headwind.
I cancelled the mission and pressed the RTH to bring it back to the liftoff point. That map view is critical to mission awareness along with things like the wind speed and direction.

It's good to know it returned to home when you requested it. i was talking to someone yesterday that used a 3rd party app automated flight. The drone lost contact but still flew the mission out of range. Took the required pictures with no contact and flew back. He was lucky that it completed safely, but anything could have happened.