My waypoints accident

[AntoineD]

I recently crashed my Mini 5 Pro and I feel really stupid!

I was doing a waypoints flight. Up until then, those flights had been either straight or just a bit curved, and when I triggered the mission, the drone would return exactly along the path I'd planned, then turn around and make the 'real' flight. I'd turn on the camera just before it did this.

However, this particular flight was a U shape, and when the drone went back to the start, it didn't retrace its path, but cut straight across. This meant there were obstacles I hadn't catered for in the WP plotting, and I watched the screen as it went straight towards a tree. As the tree was bare, I knew it would present a challenge to the obstacle avoidance, and I should have paused the flight, but like an idiot, I thought, "The Mini 5 Pro is so advanced, it'll handle this", so I did nothing. You can guess the rest. Luckily, it didn't stay in the tree, Find My Drone did a great job, and the person in whose back garden it had fallen was very understanding.

But here's a question: if you're doing a WP mission, can you force the drone to retrace the route exactly before it starts the mission, so you can be sure you don't encounter an unexpected obstacle?

 

[PINEBARON]

This is from DJI
During a Waypoint flight, the waypoints cannot be executed in reverse order.
You must manually plan and save two separate missions: one for the forward flight and one for the return trip, as the default software does not support automatically reversing the route in a single mission.

 

[mavic3usa]

I recently crashed my Mini 5 Pro and I feel really stupid!

I was doing a waypoints flight. Up until then, those flights had been either straight or just a bit curved, and when I triggered the mission, the drone would return exactly along the path I'd planned, then turn around and make the 'real' flight. I'd turn on the camera just before it did this.

However, this particular flight was a U shape, and when the drone went back to the start, it didn't retrace its path, but cut straight across. This meant there were obstacles I hadn't catered for in the WP plotting, and I watched the screen as it went straight towards a tree. As the tree was bare, I knew it would present a challenge to the obstacle avoidance, and I should have paused the flight, but like an idiot, I thought, "The Mini 5 Pro is so advanced, it'll handle this", so I did nothing. You can guess the rest. Luckily, it didn't stay in the tree, Find My Drone did a great job, and the person in whose back garden it had fallen was very understanding.

But here's a question: if you're doing a WP mission, can you force the drone to retrace the route exactly before it starts the mission, so you can be sure you don't encounter an unexpected obstacle?

Whenever I have planned a WP mission in the past, once I finished the last point I would add one additional point which caused the drone to rise up to the highest point and come home. The last WP would be a stop right near to me and at the end of the mission, the drone can just land. Never ever depend on the OA on a DJI drone.