Mavic Mini Signal Loss Causing Loss of Aircraft over Water

[boblui]

Bobblui, where EXACTLY in the DAT file do we look for the information relating to "because it should contain info. on whether the change was done manaully." and WHAT do we look for?

Just my guess because the .DAT file contains so much info .... may be the event field will show the change ?

 

[Meta4]

I thought I had been careless as recently I was experimenting with whether or not the battery-smart-return would override a failsafe setting of hover, it does btw. I thought that maybe I had left the setting at hover.

You confused RTH with loss of signal action.
You can choose your LOS action but RTH is still RTH.
Unless the drone loses signal, your LOS action does not initiate.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

Just my guess because the .DAT file contains so much info ..

ok.


Sorry Meta4 but I did not confuse the two.
I thought that the failsafe response was dominant and that a drone, with the failsafe response set to "hover", would, on experiencing loss of signal, hover and continue to do so until either the battery died or connection was reestablished.
This thinking was questioned, so I checked and found I was wrong.
My Mini, in failsafe hover (controller switched off), hovered until the low battery RTH kicked in and then RTH'ed, I have tried this at least 5 times so far with the Mini and on each trial the low battery RTH kicked in and took the Mini home.

 

[Meta4]

My Mini, in failsafe hover (controller switched off), hovered until the low battery RTH kicked in and then RTH'ed, I have tried this at least 5 times so far with the Mini and on each trial the low battery RTH kicked in and took the Mini home.

You can choose from three actions for Failsafe Action and on loss of signal the drone does whichever you've selected.
But Low Battery RTH is something else altogether and when the battery level reaches the level where it's programmed to RTH, that's what happens .. not whatever was set for LOS.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

I know that now, as a consequence of my experiment, but thank you all the same.

 

[Zbip57]

My Mini, in failsafe hover (controller switched off), hovered until the low battery RTH kicked in and then RTH'ed.

That's something that's good to know, and certainly not intuitive.

If you have deliberately chosen to set the failsafe loss-of-signal response to hover, it's because you do not want it to Return-to-Home but rather want it to hover and wait there until signal is regained.

If signal is never regained I would have thought it would eventually land where it's at when the battery eventually gives out. But you're saying the low-battery response takes priority and over-rides your chosen failsafe hover setting, and the Mini will then instead engage RTH when the battery gets low enough. That's interesting, and potentially alarming.

It would probably do the same thing then if failsafe is set to Landing, if the landing protection decides at the last moment that the landing site is unsuitable. Instead of landing , the Mini then hovers waiting for confirmation whether you want it to land there or not, which you are unable to confirm since you have no control signal. By the time you get to the landing site it may have reached the smart low-battery level and decided on its own to Return-to-Home. Despite the fact you had it set to land where it's at, you'd be surprised to find it's not there at all but has instead run away Home.

Bizarre. That's not at all what I would have expected.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

I was in the same boat as you but someone challenged the opinion and it's a fairly simple thing to check so I did, eeeek.
Failsafe set to landing is somewhat different since if it lands it will stop the motors. The danger lies in what happens if it rejects the landing site, then it hovers etc. etc. etc.
That said there is a post on here or maybe youtube where something like an M2P was lost because although the pilot forced a remote landing in wind, signal was lost or something, before the motors stopped and it took off and tried to RTH. It didn't make it and came down in brambles or undergrowth near the bottom of the White Cliffs of Dover ( if memory serves me correcly)

 

[DanMan32]

Forcing landing and then losing signal during the landing is different than LOS triggered landing. In the latter, you already lost signal, where the selected response is to land. In the former, one is manually landing, but lost signal during the process, so LOS setting, set to RTH in your example, took over.