Never happened before

[Arnold LeVine]

Whats amazing to me is the OP flying for 5 years, 100s of hours, and never needed DJI Assistant 2. He has a great! Mavic.

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Whats amazing to me is the OP flying for 5 years, 100s of hours, and never needed DJI Assistant 2. He has a great! Mavic.

What are the main things you (and others) use Assistant 2 for ?
I've had my M1P since 2017, and Spark 2018, had the original DJI Assistant on the device for years and never opened it (or needed it) either.

 

[sawyerbrownlive]

Whats amazing to me is the OP flying for 5 years, 100s of hours, and never needed DJI Assistant 2. He has a great! Mavic.

What's the purpose of DJI Assistant 2 outside the need to look at flight logs? I've never crashed or lost my drone, except my Phantom many moons ago when i was learning to fly. Maybe i'm underutilizing my UAV, but i fly alot and capture alont of footage that i upload to my laptop immediately after flying. I've lost signal many times but it almost always reconnects right away.

 

[AlbrechtMe]

I'm guessing the flight logs would help so I'd encourage you to have those ready. However, I'm thinking that maybe the drone didn't lose connection to the controller and it was just the tablet. If indeed that was the case, it would have stayed in that position. However, that idea falls apart because you said that you had no control whatsoever.

I had this experience too with Mini 2. The reason was: the cable from controller to smartphone lost connection, but this was not easy to be seen. As I did not touch the joysticks after the 'connection loss', the drone just keeps hovering, as it had continuous contact to the controller. In that case: look at the controllers green battery lights: as long as they do not flash, there is a connecion to the drone and your joysticks commands will be done by the drone. It will not RTH unless you pres the RTH button of the controller.
By the way: It is important to learn to watch these five green battery leds of the controller: if they are flashing, there is really no connection to the drone. When getting connection again, the flashing stops immediately, some seconds before the DJI App will continue to show the colored video of the drone.

 

[Rocket City]

Any input is appreciated. Been flying for 5 years, hundreds of hours, zero problems. Yesterday on a gorgeous sunny day i flew towards a mountain my wife/friends were hiking. 8000' from launch in a near straightline, i spotted them and started to record. As they spotted me and started to pose for the camera, i lost connection. 30' above them and i had no control as it just hovered. RTH didn't work on my tablet or controller. I rebooted the tablet but nothing changed. I drove to within 500' of it hoping it would reconnect, no luck. When the battery drained i got a "force landing" notification. It landed hard on a rock and did some damage. Wife was able to retrieve it. I've looked at my settings and it is set to RTH (not hover) when i lose connection. This makes no sense to me. The only notifications i received was "ambient lighting" and "max altitude reached." I will make necessary repairs as this is my favorite hobby, and i mostly fly to areas that i would never be able to retrieve it if this kind of problem happens. I got lucky this time that wife was nearby. But i'm a little shy about flying like that until i know what caused the problem and how to avoid/correct. Any advice or input? Thanks in advance!

Sawyerbrownlive,
That Just happened to me but I was'nt so lucy my went for a swim just as the sun wend town ..I was taking sunset pic's and when I was done I hit RTH and it started coming back and about half way it lost connection and never came back it showed in my flight logs that it was droping at 18mph then nothing !! I like you tryed everthing and I just got it one week ago for a back up as I'm starting and Drone Photgraphy Company ..If this is going to happening I will change brands Hello Alltell

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

The OPs crash was solved page 1, post 19 about summed it up.
Pilot error in setting max altitude too low, could not RTH over a rock spire when failsafe RTH kicked in on loss of signal.
Just hovered until it force landed.

 

[Jamesz]

How are you allowed to fly a mile and a half away when the ret of us are compelled by law to keep our drones in sight?

 

[Baron von Richthofen]

So why didn't it make a low battery RTH ? I believe it actually did ... but either you canceled it unintentionally by pushing the RTH button on the RC, below from the manual... or it encountered an obstacle blocking it's way & the OD sensors stopped it.

This is entirely possible. I believe I might have made a similar mistake a while back when I lost the app and just had the RC. In my panic I pressed the RTH button several times

 

[Baron von Richthofen]

My Mavic Pro is out on loan

 

[sar104]

This is entirely possible. I believe I might have made a similar mistake a while back when I lost the app and just had the RC. In my panic I pressed the RTH button several times

It's a possible scenario in general, but it won't prevent subsequent low-battery RTH, so the aircraft should come home anyway. If it doesn't then something else is happening.

In this case it was a failsafe RTH which obviously wasn't cancelled by an RC command, and it failed because the maximum set flight height was too low to clear an obstacle. The subsequent low-battery RTH will have failed for the same reason, of course.

 

[Baron von Richthofen]

It's a possible scenario in general, but it won't prevent subsequent low-battery RTH, so the aircraft should come home anyway. If it doesn't then something else is happening.

In this case it was a failsafe RTH which obviously wasn't cancelled by an RC command, and it failed because the maximum set flight height was too low to clear an obstacle. The subsequent low-battery RTH will have failed for the same reason, of course.

It couldn't come home because there was insufficient battery. My first mistake was to cancel the first low battery/RTH request, expecting to fly it straight back. Then I lost the app. I then wasted a valuable minute or two trying to get the screen back before finally hitting RTH on the RC. I think there may have been just sufficient battery at the first press, but as the seconds turned to minutes, I may have inadvertently cancelled it by pressing it a second time (or even a third or fourth time!) by which time the battery was too far gone for auto RTH. So it initiated a forced landing instead. I had no on-screen info by then. Just one of those situations you learn from. Began as a solvable problem, escalated into near disaster.

 

[sar104]

It couldn't come home because there was insufficient battery. My first mistake was to cancel the first low battery/RTH request, expecting to fly it straight back. Then I lost the app. I then wasted a valuable minute or two trying to get the screen back before finally hitting RTH on the RC. I think there may have been just sufficient battery at the first press, but as the seconds turned to minutes, I may have inadvertently cancelled it by pressing it a second time (or even a third or fourth time!) by which time the battery was too far gone for auto RTH. So it initiated a forced landing instead. I had no on-screen info by then. Just one of those situations you learn from. Began as a solvable problem, escalated into near disaster.

Ah - so you think that you cancelled the both the original RC RTH, and then later cancelled the low-battery RTH. That's possible, but requires the RC to be connected and you then ignore the status from the audible and/or RC screen display.

 

[Baron von Richthofen]

Ah - so you think that you cancelled the both the original RC RTH, and then later cancelled the low-battery RTH. That's possible, but requires the RC to be connected and you then ignore the status from the audible and/or RC screen display.

Yup, that's about right sar. I know I cancelled the original on-screen RTH request and I know I eventually pressed the controller's RTH button. Then, in my panic I pressed it again... and again... and again... We live and learn.