Mavic stopped responding after rth fail

[shannon88]

Hey guy's. I;m just after a bit of help as dji support has not been much of a help.
Today i was flying my mavic and went through two battery's all good. The end of the 2nd bat i hit RTH button on controller the drone turned towards the home point that exact moment my phone went to a black screen and turned off. I could see the controller was still connected to the aircraft but strangely doing 2.2 kmh the controller inputs were not responding at all and it just hovered. I then hit return to home button again, the speed picked up to about 15kmh and then stopped a few seconds later it dropped back to 1-3kmh. Controller was showing RPM and speed the entire time. But no control at all.

At this point the drone was still around 400m away and 50m high but running very low on battery.
I did not regain control of the aircraft until l i disconnected the phone plugged it back in and restarted app and hit go fly. That point the controller started responding again and is went into auto landing and i was able to guide it down to a safe landing. Watching back the footage saved to the sd card the drone was drifting and you can see it start to head home then stop after each time i hit RTH on controller.

Dji support have just told me to try a different device, i don''t feel this was a device fault as the strange behavior between the drone and the controller. Could some body please help, so this does not happen again. Next time i may loose the drone.

I have attached the log taken from the drone for that flight for reference.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

The RTH button is like a toggle, press once and hold briefly to engage, don't press again as this then disengages the button.
If you keep hitting it then it won't engage properly, and it will keep engaging/disengaging.
Bit like pressing the pedestrian crossing buttons, you only need press once.
Don't try changing to Sport mode either as this also disengages RTH unless you want to manually fly back.

 

[shannon88]

OK thanks for the info, the only reason i hit it again was because i could see the speed showing on the controller had stopped and there were no other controller inputs responding at all.

 

[Spinylizard]

OK thanks for the info, the only reason i hit it again was because i could see the speed showing on the controller had stopped and there were no other controller inputs responding at all.

Any chance the drone was headed toward the sun when doing RTH? OA might of kept kicking in and stopping it.

 

[shannon88]

It was fairly overcast but yeah. Deffianatly possible it was heading towards the suns direction.
I didn't realise the sun could cause oa to cancel Rth. Handy to know. Thanks mate

I'm sure it had something to do with the phone and app. Because it was the exact moment the screen went black and rth canceled and controller stoped responding. I did some calibrations hoping it doesn't happen again. Might not be as lucky next time

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

If it happens and you are close enough to see it, disconnect the phone completely, then use RC by itself to bring it home.
You could also turn the RC off and the Drone will return by itself.

 

[shannon88]

Your a champion mate, just rewatched the vid and yes directly looking into the sun as soon as it turned to return home. Another lesson learned.

 

[shannon88]

Yeah phone switched of completely so it was disconnected from phone. Now the only thing I can't figure out is why my controls were not responding.

 

[Michael Ainsworth]

Yeah phone switched of completely so it was disconnected from phone. Now the only thing I can't figure out is why my controls were not responding.

If it does that pull out both ends of the connecting leads.
Although your phone was down it was still physically connected to RC, this may have interfered with it.

 

[YngveN]

Also, switching to Sport mode will cancel all other flight modes and give you full control. Will also turn off all OA sensors, so be aware of that.

 

[shannon88]

I'll defiantly keep those both in mind from now on. Thanks for your help, I'm glad I will be able to fly it again with nearly complete confidence

 

[Balko]

Any chance the drone was headed toward the sun when doing RTH? OA might of kept kicking in and stopping it.

But if the OA was activated by, most likely, the sun's rays, wouldn't a notice pop-up in the screen that says there was an obstacle ahead?

 

[Spinylizard]

But if the OA was activated by, most likely, the sun's rays, wouldn't a notice pop-up in the screen that says there was an obstacle ahead?

Yeah but the OP had their app crash, so no notice I don't think.

 

[Balko]

What's "OP"?

 

[Balko]

This is quite confusing because how could you have seen the 2.2kmh and 15kmh speed, etc., had the phone "went to a black screen"? Kindly elaborate.

Hey guy's. I;m just after a bit of help as dji support has not been much of a help.
The end of the 2nd bat i hit RTH button on controller the drone turned towards the home point that exact moment my phone went to a black screen and turned off. I could see the controller was still connected to the aircraft but strangely doing 2.2 kmh the controller inputs were not responding at all and it just hovered. I then hit return to home button again, the speed picked up to about 15kmh and then stopped a few seconds later it dropped back to 1-3kmh. Controller was showing RPM and speed the entire time. But no control at all.


.

 

[geigy]

What's "OP"?

OP = Original Post.

You'll need to do something about the app crashing. The video downlink, as well as status info (such as the OA condition you encountered) is crucial for safe operation and to prevent you from losing your drone. If the app crashes at the wrong time, it could cause you to lose your drone, with no GPS coordinates recorded of its whereabouts.

Some Android devices just don't work well with the current versions of the DJI Go 4 app, unfortunately. Try turning off video caching, and put the phone in airplane mode (which kills the maps, unfortunately). Play with various combinations of stripping out unneeded apps, until you get something stable. Or do what I did, go to an IOS device, such as a used iPad mini on eBay.

 

[shannon88]

This is quite confusing because how could you have seen the 2.2kmh and 15kmh speed, etc., had the phone "went to a black screen"? Kindly elaborate.

The controller on the mavic displays a lot of info including speed. Although the app crashed I could still see speed altitude ect on the r/c.

I've flown it a few times after and all seems fine again. Í think it just might have been a coincidence. The app crashed leading to loss of contorls and It was trying to return home into the sun and cancelled. I will be testing what happens when I switch my phone of mid flight to see if the same conditions occur when I can take it to a safe location.

 

[Balko]

The controller on the mavic displays a lot of info including speed. Although the app crashed I could still see speed altitude ect on the r/c.

I've flown it a few times after and all seems fine again. Í think it just might have been a coincidence. The app crashed leading to loss of contorls and It was trying to return home into the sun and cancelled. I will be testing what happens when I switch my phone of mid flight to see if the same conditions occur when I can take it to a safe location.

Oh yes. I almost always only rely on the flight info on the iPad Mini that I totally forgot about the information the RC gives us.