Questions regarding drone-on-a-boat

[09KR0058]

Relatively new drone pilot, as I got my Air back in November. Have a pretty good feel for flying it now and am finally ready to fly it from my boat. I've practiced hand launching and retrieval on land so I'm hoping there won't be any surprises. So many great threads here covering drones and boating, but I have some questions that I may have missed in all those threads.

The first thing I'll do this week is to have it follow me around the lake for a bit to get the hang of it. I was just going to do the Follow Me setting but am curious if Active Track offers any advantage in this environment? I haven't used either of these features yet. Pros/Cons of using one or the other of these settings to track a boat in motion? Also, which one will be the fastest? My boat can do 62mph but I don't expect the Air to be able to keep up with it going that fast.

The biggest thing for me is that I really want to get some video footage of my grandkids tubing behind the boat, but not sure how to accomplish this. Ideally, I'd like to have the drone flying directly above the boat with the camera pointing backwards and the drone flying backwards. Got the feeling I'm missing something obvious here.

Final question, at least for now, regards RTH. I know to set it to return to the controller and NOT to where I launched. I've noticed that when I use RTH, it comes back to the correct place, but it hovers about 3-4 feet off the ground when it gets back. Is there a way to change that value? Ideally I would want it to hover at about 8 feet so that I can retrieve it by hand.

Thank for any tips!

 

[Meta4]

Final question, at least for now, regards RTH. I know to set it to return to the controller and NOT to where I launched. I've noticed that when I use RTH, it comes back to the correct place, but it hovers about 3-4 feet off the ground when it gets back. Is there a way to change that value? Ideally I would want it to hover at about 8 feet so that I can retrieve it by hand.

When you reset home to the controller's location, that will be the location at the time you reset ... it's not going to continue to track you.
On the boat you never want to allow RTH to land on the boat (or close to it!).
You always want to cancel RTH well before it gets close to the landing phase of RTH, and resume control and bring the drone in manually.
And always leave a comfortable safety margin with your battery time because it might take a couple of attempts to bring it in if the boat is moving a little.

 

[brett8883]

Relatively new drone pilot, as I got my Air back in November. Have a pretty good feel for flying it now and am finally ready to fly it from my boat. I've practiced hand launching and retrieval on land so I'm hoping there won't be any surprises. So many great threads here covering drones and boating, but I have some questions that I may have missed in all those threads.

The first thing I'll do this week is to have it follow me around the lake for a bit to get the hang of it. I was just going to do the Follow Me setting but am curious if Active Track offers any advantage in this environment? I haven't used either of these features yet. Pros/Cons of using one or the other of these settings to track a boat in motion? Also, which one will be the fastest? My boat can do 62mph but I don't expect the Air to be able to keep up with it going that fast.

The biggest thing for me is that I really want to get some video footage of my grandkids tubing behind the boat, but not sure how to accomplish this. Ideally, I'd like to have the drone flying directly above the boat with the camera pointing backwards and the drone flying backwards. Got the feeling I'm missing something obvious here.

Final question, at least for now, regards RTH. I know to set it to return to the controller and NOT to where I launched. I've noticed that when I use RTH, it comes back to the correct place, but it hovers about 3-4 feet off the ground when it gets back. Is there a way to change that value? Ideally I would want it to hover at about 8 feet so that I can retrieve it by hand.

Thank for any tips!

I think active track is the way to go. The trick with active track is to fly close and have the thing you are tracking take up a lot of the frame. Active track profile is the one I’d use

 

[09KR0058]

When you reset home to the controller's location, that will be the location at the time you reset ... it's not going to continue to track you.
On the boat you never want to allow RTH to land on the boat (or close to it!).
You always want to cancel RTH well before it gets close to the landing phase of RTH, and resume control and bring the drone in manually.
And always leave a comfortable safety margin with your battery time because it might take a couple of attempts to bring it in if the boat is moving a little.

Oh wow, thanks so much @Meta4. You may have just saved my drone from drowning. I had assumed that setting the location to the controller would be dynamic and it would be constantly updated.
Next question would be can this be changed while the drone is in flight? I thought I read somewhere that RTH location can only be changed before taking off. If that is indeed the case, then it really is of no use in a boating situation or in fact any situation where the user is constantly moving about.

And yes, I just wanted to use this functionality to get the drone back close to the boat where I would then manually bring it back in.

 

[theDRONEranger]

When you reset home to the controller's location, that will be the location at the time you reset ... it's not going to continue to track you.
On the boat you never want to allow RTH to land on the boat (or close to it!).
You always want to cancel RTH well before it gets close to the landing phase of RTH, and resume control and bring the drone in manually.
And always leave a comfortable safety margin with your battery time because it might take a couple of attempts to bring it in if the boat is moving a little.

Good advice! Always have a backup plan to the backup plan. I would recommend practice the RTH and cancel functions. All the while moving to a new location a short distance away from original HP. Also, be sure to remain aware of your environment to include other boaters.

 

[Meta4]

Next question would be can this be changed while the drone is in flight?
I thought I read somewhere that RTH location can only be changed before taking off.
If that is indeed the case, then it really is of no use in a boating situation or in fact any situation where the user is constantly moving about.

The original home point is recorded at the time the drone initially gets good GPS location data.

But the app has a feature that enables you to reset the home point during the flight.
It can be reset to the current location of either the controller or the drone.
Because you won't be allowing RTH to land the drone, either option is probably just as good (unless you've flown far away from your boat).

 

[09KR0058]

The original home point is recorded at the time the drone initially gets good GPS location data.

But the app has a feature that enables you to reset the home point during the flight.
It can be reset to the current location of either the controller or the drone.
Because you won't be allowing RTH to land the drone, either option is probably just as good (unless you've flown far away from your boat).

Thanks again @Meta4. After doing a ton of searches here, I found a thread where you were talking about the bug where we get the message about GPS signal is weak. I tested this today in a empty soccer field near me and indeed have the same issue on my iPhone 8 Plus running iOS 13.3.1 connected to the controller. Of course, when I just use the phone by itself, all my GPS-based apps work perfectly.
From what I've seen the workaround is to launch the drone, unplug the controller connector from the iPhone and plug it back in. ?
I just sent an email to DJI Support and very politely asked if they will ever get this fixed.

 

[KingRat]

Something I read sparks a warning:

If you are doing 50 knots, you are going to cover a lot of ground very quickly. **** near 1 mile in a minute. In the intelligent flight menu, for the active track, one video I watched (a chap on his bicycle) explained that there is a 100m limit to the flight.... you might want to look into the settings you need to prevent the drone coming to a grinding halt and you powering away and then losing sight of it, or losing control connection.

I have no experience of flying the drone automatically yet, but it was something in one of the tutorial videos I have been watching. Hopefully someone with proper knowledge can enlighten both of us as to the validity of my concern and how to deal with it.

 

[Yanix]

When I'm flying from the boat on a river I use another strategy. I fly to the nearest river bank, reset the homepoint there and then just continue flying wherever I want. This way you don't need to worry about canceling rth to avoid drowning. Because there can be different situations - remote battery low, reception problems etc. In my strategy if everything is good - you can cancel rth and hand-fly to your boat and in case of a problem at least the drone lands on the hard surface

 

[09KR0058]

Thanks again @Meta4. After doing a ton of searches here, I found a thread where you were talking about the bug where we get the message about GPS signal is weak. I tested this today in a empty soccer field near me and indeed have the same issue on my iPhone 8 Plus running iOS 13.3.1 connected to the controller. Of course, when I just use the phone by itself, all my GPS-based apps work perfectly.
From what I've seen the workaround is to launch the drone, unplug the controller connector from the iPhone and plug it back in. ?
I just sent an email to DJI Support and very politely asked if they will ever get this fixed.

Here is the response from DJI support:

We are sorry to hear about the issue you are having with using the GPS with your phone. This is certainly not the experience we want for you.

We understand how difficult it is to deal with this issue, please note that this is due to the weak signal of the iPhone's GPS. iPhone GPS accuracy is not good enough, so it can not reach the GPS accuracy requirements of drones. We don't recommend iOS device, you may try to use an Android device and have a try.

We appreciate you for raising your concern, feedback such as yours can help us improve our service and software for the convenience of our customers. We would want to let you know that we will forward your Inquiry to our Research and Development Team. I'll get back to you once I received their response.

?

 

[09KR0058]

When I'm flying from the boat on a river I use another strategy. I fly to the nearest river bank, reset the homepoint there and then just continue flying wherever I want. This way you don't need to worry about canceling rth to avoid drowning. Because there can be different situations - remote battery low, reception problems etc. In my strategy if everything is good - you can cancel rth and hand-fly to your boat and in case of a problem at least the drone lands on the hard surface

Actually that's a pretty good idea.

I now have a much better understanding of using RTH from a boat. My reasoning was, when I'm done making a run, either just shadowing the boat or tracking people tubing from my boat, have the ability to then set the RTH to the controller location to get the MA back to the boat automatically. Once its within 20-30 feet from the boat, then cancel RTH and bring it in manually. Just using it as a time saver vs bringing it all the way back to the boat manually.

 

[Yanix]

Something I read sparks a warning:

If you are doing 50 knots, you are going to cover a lot of ground very quickly. **** near 1 mile in a minute. In the intelligent flight menu, for the active track, one video I watched (a chap on his bicycle) explained that there is a 100m limit to the flight.... you might want to look into the settings you need to prevent the drone coming to a grinding halt and you powering away and then losing sight of it, or losing control connection

There is 100m limit ftom the homepoint when using active track, but this limitation only applies when you run your drone using the smartphone wifi connection (directly, without remote controller). So active track is somewhat useless in this mode unless you want to press the button on the screen resetting the home point every minute or so.

If you run the drone using the remote controller there is no distance limit, it's just if you are tracking yourself biking or doing some other fast activity you'll eventually get to the point where the drone will want to initiate rth thinking there is just enough battery to return to the original take-off point. In this case again you can reset the homepoint and get some more flight time

 

[KingRat]

There is 100m limit ftom the homepoint when using active track, but this limitation only applies when you run your drone using the smartphone wifi connection (directly, without remote controller). So active track is somewhat useless in this mode unless you want to press the button on the screen resetting the home point every minute or so.

If you run the drone using the remote controller there is no distance limit, it's just if you are tracking yourself biking or doing some other fast activity you'll eventually get to the point where the drone will want to initiate rth thinking there is just enough battery to return to the original take-off point. In this case again you can reset the homepoint and get some more flight time

Thank you. I partly understood it then! I didn't realise he wasn't using the controller, because in the video he is! Maybe not when riding the bike, only when he has got to where he is going... I don't know. He had a fancy gadget that attached the 'control mechanism', to his handlebars. BUT, both the origininator of this thread and myself have learned another little snippet to file away.