Lost my Drone,

[Meta4]

I have flown my M1P (the first and original version of occusync) and Spark (which is only wifi), and never had issues with trees in the way, or reasonable distance, nor with facing any way I like while flying.

Last week I found myself in a similar situation to the OP.
I knew the drone was fairly close and was concentrating on the screen to line up some test shots.
I had trouble controlling the M3 while doing some testing with the tele lens.
After a while of being frustrated with glitchy controls and screen video, I checked and found that I had backed up more than I realised and the drone was behind me while I was facing forward with the controller..

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Last week I found myself in a similar situation to the OP.
I knew the drone was fairly close and was concentrating on the screen to line up some test shots.
I had trouble controlling the M3 while doing some testing with the tele lens.
After a while of being frustrated with glitchy controls and screen video, I checked and found that I had backed up more than I realised and the drone was behind me while I was facing forward with the controller..

Surprising !
I would think occusync 3 (?) would be better than previous versions.

Do you think it might be whatever controller you are using, if it's an internal / fixed antenna thing ?

 

[Meta4]

Surprising !
I would think occusync 3 (?) would be better than previous versions.

Do you think it might be whatever controller you are using, if it's an internal / fixed antenna thing ?

It was just the basic antenna .. and turning to face the drone solved the issue.

 

[NeilRob]

Thanks Meta. What I do not understand though is why could I not get it to react to the controls or RTH and all I could do was land it even though it was so close to me with no interference and was within line if site until the lat few meters of the decent, could it have been something faulty on the drone? Thanks again, I’ll go and try to retrieve it, it looks pretty easy to reach.

 

[Meta4]

Thanks Meta. What I do not understand though is why could I not get it to react to the controls or RTH and all I could do was land it even though it was so close to me with no interference and was within line if site until the lat few meters of the decent, could it have been something faulty on the drone? Thanks again, I’ll go and try to retrieve it, it looks pretty easy to reach.

It's hard to say.
Try some more flying in a large, open area if you can and see if it was a one-off thing or if there's a consistent pattern of signal issues.

 

[NeilRob]

It's hard to say.
Try some more flying in a large, open area if you can and see if it was a one-off thing or if there's a consistent pattern of signal issues.

Thanks again, I will try and retrieve the drone and test it again in an open area an see what happens.

 

[Droniac]

Still a very newbie and took my drone out for a fly, probably my 5th flight. I was flying at about altitude 50 mts was 48 mts away, when I got a red message “RC not connected to mobi… long and the short of the story, couldn’t communicate with the drone and eventually it landed in the trees in an inaccessibility area. Expensive mistake, what could I have done wrong and how do I prevent it from happening again.

Sorry to hear. You’re amongst a long list of others. Keep the faith. Godspeed, Droniac

 

[Droniac]

Here's what happened:
You started the flight with good GPS and a good homepoint, flew back and forward around your starting point.

At 13:28 you received the first message about weak signal:
Weak signal. Make sure the remote controller is facing aircraft and avoid blocking the signal
As the drone was quite close, this could have been simply because there were enough trees between the controller and drone to reduce signal strength or you might not have kept the controller oriented towards the drone.

At 13:28, uplink signal strength dropped to zero

At 13:45.1 there was a number of signal-related messages at the same time:
Remote controller disconnected from aircraft (Code: 30029).; Remote controller signal weak. Adjust remote controller antennas (Code: 80002).; Remote controller signal lost.

At 13:45.8 Downlink (signal from the drone) was lost.
When signal was restored 23 seconds later, the drone was 25 metres higher and climbing to RTH height.
Uplink signal strength remained at zero or low numbers for about 1.5 minutes, but data continued to be recorded, showing the RTH proceding as programmed.

Good signal strength returned at 14:48.3, at the same time the drone reached a point directly above the homepoint and started to descend from 120 metres.

When the drone was descending and at 68 metres, you started to work the joysticks to fly away from the home point.
Working the joysticks while the drone is in RTH or Autolanding can be confusing, because the drone will try to continue with it's programmed flight.
If you want to resume control, you need to cancel the RTH or autolanding and then you won't be fighting against the programmed flight.

At 15:31.2 the drone came to rest about 20 metres higher than the home point, up in a tree, 39 metres from the homepoint. The height is only approximate.

The tree is shown in this image.
It looks small enough that you should have a good chance of finding it.

Very cool. Done and done. Go Meta!

 

[NeilRob]

Sorry to hear. You’re amongst a long list of others. Keep the faith. Godspeed, Droniac

Thanks, hopefully I’ll be able to retrieve it tomorrow.

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

@NeilRob
I am having a look at you log and two things leaps out at me,
1) the disconnections are when the drone is quite high & realtively close.
2) The RTH height is, realtively speaking, very high.

1) Makes me wonder if you had the antennae oriented appropriately, as in as shown on page 29 of the manual.
With the Mavic Mini (it uses the same controller as the SE) I find the connection is very sensitive to antennae orientation generally weakest with the drone overhead.
My explanation for that (though I don't know if it is correct) is that the antennae in the drone are strips in the front legs' landing legs. As such when the drone is directly over head the drone's antennae present their minimum area to the signal coming from the drone and they radiate most of there out going signal horizontally i.e. away from the controller.

2) With regards to RTH height. Assuming that the drone starts the RTH process below the RTH height, excessive RTH height wastes battery power in the climb and in the descent, it takes time and power to climb and descend. PLUS, excessive height may put the drone up, unnecessarily, into strong wind. Wind speed generally increase with height. I adjust RTH height for every 'new' location and aim to clear any obstacles by around 10m/30ish ft, this also allows for a bit of air pressure change and or barometer drift.

Thanks Meta. What I do not understand though is why could I not get it to react to the controls or RTH and all I could do was land it even though it was so close to me with no interference and was within line if site until the lat few meters of the decent, could it have been something faulty on the drone? Thanks again, I’ll go and try to retrieve it, it looks pretty easy to reach.

With regards to the above, I have the impression that any horizontal movements that I have made during an RTH descent 'stick'. As if the drone 'thinks'
"ok I think I am over the home point but the boss wants me to move a little bit this way and that way. They must be fine tuning my position so I will do what they say".
As far as I can see you start giving various combinations of reverse and left stick from around 15:07 and the drone appears to have obeyed them.
I will check that thinking later today but if it is correct then you would have needed to have given forward and right sticks to return the drone to the home point whilst it was still descending.
I also have the recollection that I have been able to force a drone to climb during auto-landing by giving it full throttle but again I will have to check that later today.
Once it touched whatever at 15:31 all was, I think, lost.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

With regards to the above, I have the impression that any horizontal movements that I have made during an RTH descent 'stick'. As if the drone 'thinks'
"ok I think I am over the home point but the boss wants me to move a little bit this way and that way. They must be fine tuning my position so I will do what they say".

I'm talking Go4 here, as I don't have a drone using the Fly app, but . . .

Although I don't use RTH much, I have noticed when I have, that I can move the drone in any direction during the process, and if moved up / down then it will stay at the new altitude . . . handy if you want to bring it down lower out of wind, or lower with decreasing landfall etc.
If I have yawed or rolled either way, it will just resume RTH from the new position as it normally would straight line.

Fly should be the same.

To stop the drone doing its RTH thing, you must cancel it of course, but until you do, it will keep moving toward home at the normal RTH speed (unless right stick is pulled back *), but allow lateral and vertical movement inputs from the pilot.

* You can make RTH happen fast too by pushing right stick forward (mode 2 defualt).

 

[NeilRob]

@NeilRob
I am having a look at you log and two things leaps out at me,
1) the disconnections are when the drone is quite high & realtively close.
2) The RTH height is, realtively speaking, very high.

1) Makes me wonder if you had the antennae oriented appropriately, as in as shown on page 29 of the manual.
With the Mavic Mini (it uses the same controller as the SE) I find the connection is very sensitive to antennae orientation generally weakest with the drone overhead.
My explanation for that (though I don't know if it is correct) is that the antennae in the drone are strips in the front legs' landing legs. As such when the drone is directly over head the drone's antennae present their minimum area to the signal coming from the drone and they radiate most of there out going signal horizontally i.e. away from the controller.

2) With regards to RTH height. Assuming that the drone starts the RTH process below the RTH height, excessive RTH height wastes battery power in the climb and in the descent, it takes time and power to climb and descend. PLUS, excessive height may put the drone up, unnecessarily, into strong wind. Wind speed generally increase with height. I adjust RTH height for every 'new' location and aim to clear any obstacles by around 10m/30ish ft, this also allows for a bit of air pressure change and or barometer drift.



With regards to the above, I have the impression that any horizontal movements that I have made during an RTH descent 'stick'. As if the drone 'thinks'
"ok I think I am over the home point but the boss wants me to move a little bit this way and that way. They must be fine tuning my position so I will do what they say".
As far as I can see you start giving various combinations of reverse and left stick from around 15:07 and the drone appears to have obeyed them.
I will check that thinking later today but if it is correct then you would have needed to have given forward and right sticks to return the drone to the home point whilst it was still descending.
I also have the recollection that I have been able to force a drone to climb during auto-landing by giving it full throttle but again I will have to check that later today.
Once it touched whatever at 15:31 all was, I think, lost.

Hi Yorkshire Pud, thanks for your reply and advice. I set the RTH so high because there were some radio antenae close by and wanted to be sure to miss them. The strange thing is that when I lost signal, I was very particular making sure that I had the antenna facing towards the drone, there was just no response and it should have RTH when the battery started getting low but didn’t. Also it’s winter here and we didn’t have a breath of wind here as is winter. There was a chimney in the vicinity with smoke and this was going vertical until it dissipated, so, no wind at all. I really suspect there was a fault with it. I’m going to try and retrieve it today and hopefully I can figure it out. I have contacted the distributor here and await a reply.

 

[Meta4]

The strange thing is that when I lost signal, I was very particular making sure that I had the antenna facing towards the drone, there was just no response

Because of the orientation of the antennas in the drone, having the drone straight above you gives the worst geometry and it can be quite difficult to maintain god signal, no matter how you hold the controller.

it should have RTH when the battery started getting low but didn’t.

At the end of flight, the battery was still at 43%, not low enough to cause the drone to come home.

I really suspect there was a fault with it. ... I have contacted the distributor here and await a reply.

It doesn't sound like there's a problem with the drone.
When you get it back, do some test flying in a large, clear area, well away from trees and see how it goes.

 

[BudWalker]

RTH was initiated because the down link was lost. The MM had ascended to 120 meters (the RTH altitude) and returned to the home point coordinates. During the subsequent descent to the home point several backwards elevator inputs were applied causing the MM to back away from the home point as it descended.

At 825.8 secs when the downlink was lost. At 878 secs the MM had ascended to 120 meters (the RTH height) and was directly above the home point. At 888 secs the MM began to descend and at 906 secs several negative (backward) elevator inputs were input.

 

[NeilRob]

RTH was initiated because the down link was lost. The MM had ascended to 120 meters (the RTH altitude) and returned to the home point coordinates. During the subsequent descent to the home point several backwards elevator inputs were applied causing the MM to back away from the home point as it descended.
View attachment 151312
At 825.8 secs when the downlink was lost. At 878 secs the MM had ascended to 120 meters (the RTH height) and was directly above the home point. At 888 secs the MM began to descend and at 906 secs several negative (backward) elevator inputs were input.
View attachment 151313

Thanks for all that information. However I don’t remember imputing and of the back commands, I was actually try to bring it forward towards me at the Home point. Another question, if I may, why did the drone loss downlink comms when it was so close to the home point? Thanks again.

 

[BudWalker]

Thanks for all that information. However I don’t remember imputing and of the back commands, I was actually try to bring it forward towards me at the Home point. Another question, if I may, why did the drone loss downlink comms when it was so close to the home point? Thanks again.

Is it possible that you were thinking the MM was west of you and facing west? The natural response would have been to apply negative (backwards) elevator to bring it back to you.

Hard to say why the downlink was lost. Could be environmental issues such as noisy RF environment and/or it could be malfunctioning radio HW.

 

[NeilRob]

Is it possible that you were thinking the MM was west of you and facing west? The natural response would have been to apply negative (backwards) elevator to bring it back to you.

Hard to say why the downlink was lost. Could be environmental issues such as noisy RF environment and/or malfunctioning radio HW.

I don’t think so, because I was watching the direct of the drone (arrow) on the screen and it was facing towards me at the time.

 

[BudWalker]

I don’t think so, because I was watching the direct of the drone (arrow) on the screen and it was facing towards me at the time.

All I can do is look at the data which shows negative elevator. I'll have to defer to your observation that positive elevator was applied since you were actually there.

 

[Meta4]

If the data shows negative elevator input, someone pulled the right stick back.
The data doesn't just get scrambled and show the opposite of what happened.

 

[NeilRob]

I did say

If the data shows negative elevator input, someone pulled the right stick back.
The data doesn't just get scrambled and show the opposite of what happened.