I got my mavic a few days ago and when I was flying it in my city I only flew it around 2,500 feet away from home and I received a warning that my remote signal was low/lost. I was hoping to place my complete confidence in the mavic that something like this wouldn't happen within a 4 mile radius, to lose signal at such a low distance is startling, anyone know what's going on?
Remote control signal lost
- Thread starter Ali Saleh
- Start date
No that's normal. Probably an obstacle or radio interference because you are as you say, flying in a city. You can lose reception 100 feet away if you fly behind an obstacle such as a building.
Go out into the country side away from obstacles and EMI if you desire greater range.
Go out into the country side away from obstacles and EMI if you desire greater range.
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I had a controller no response issue yesterday. I am a new pilot. Yesterday was my 5th flight with the Mavic. We were in a ball field and never left the field area and never above 50 ft except during RTH. Used the DJI Go app. The battery reached the emergency low status .. I wish DJI used voice (like they do for other events) for low battery alerts instead of beeps. The Mavic climbed to RTH altitude (default), flew over the Home location and abruptly hovered but didn't come down. I tried full down stick and nothing. I tried the X to cancel RTH .. no response. Nothing I did from the controller worked. It was just above me at RTH altitude and I couldn't get it down. I remembered the controller lost of signal feature so I turned the controller off and got it down that way. I had calibrated the compass before flight although I can't see why that would be an issue in this situation. We were in an open field and I was close to the Mavic so GPS and controller signal strength should not have been a problem. I don't know why it got "stuck" in the air and wouldn't come down. One lesson learned .. don't let the battery get that low and don't depend on auto RTH if it ever does again. Any ideas on what I could have done better?
Maybe it's because the obstacle avoidance feature was triggered, I had a similar problem when I was in the middle of the air and there was nothing around it but for some reason the obstacle avoidance sensors were triggered and I couldn't move it. Could be because there was a bug in the air or something
This +1. You will not get 4 mile range in a city, there is too much interference and also unlikely to maintain LOS.
To quote the ever helpful msinger, upload your logs here https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Might be able to help you determine what happened.
Thanks! I uploaded the flight log .. very cool feature! The last events were Mode = Go Home, the altitude stayed at 111.9 ft and distance to Home was in the 0.4 to 0.0 ft range for the last logged events. But then the log ended .. because I turned the controller off to get it down. So I'm not sure the log helps in this case.
Looking at the log in more detail I can see where it changed from Tripod to Go Home mode. It was at 18 ft altitude and 54 ft from Home when it changed modes. It climbed to 75 ft and got to within 34 ft of Home .. then backed away to 52 ft from Home. BTW .. it was seeing 18 satellites at the time. It climbed to 112 ft still 53 ft from Home. Dropped to 90 ft and now 36 ft from Home. Then back up to 112 ft then down to 88 ft at a distance of 14 ft from Home and then backed away to 33 ft from Home.
I remember seeing this up and down and back and forth movement. It did act as if its front collision avoidance was stopping it a couple of times but I was at altitude above an open baseball field with no obstacles anywhere nearby. And even if a bug could activate collision avoidance I can't imagine it would happen multiple times. It got back to Home but just wouldn't come down.
Hmm yea the log doesn't show much. Next step would be to look at the DAT log from the craft itself, which you need to use the DJI Assistant 2 program and connect and power up the craft. And use this program here to view the actual log to see what the craft was seeing. CsvView/DatCon
how to get dat file from mavic How to retrieve a .DAT
how to get dat file from mavic How to retrieve a .DAT
I'm glad you are open to it. If I were you I'd want to dig into everything I can to figure out what happened and why!
Here is a link to the DAT files. I uploaded all for yesterday. The last one (latest time) is the flight in question.
Dropbox - Mavic Pro DAT Files 12-28-16
Futureroads, you did well to cycle the remote, reconnect it and land it again. Just for future reference though, had you done nothing it would have landed at critical battery regardless of any obstacles. So if you were satisfied with where it was located at the time, another option would have been to sit on your hands. It does not fall out of the Sky at critical battery, It simply announces "Critical Battery Landing" at ~12%, descends and lands. If you end up in this state with RC actually connected (not your scenario), keep in mind, while you have no control over elevation & it descends regardless with left stick unresponsive, YOU STILL HAVE PITCH so can fly it around obstacles which is most useful. This will allow you to fly maybe 50 yards laterally if it occurred when the Mavic is at 50' for example.
You seemingly had Low battery RTH triggered and most probably it sensed spurious obstacles. The log will divulge more no doubt. I am interested to see what others find although I don't have enough spare data to download it myself.
You seemingly had Low battery RTH triggered and most probably it sensed spurious obstacles. The log will divulge more no doubt. I am interested to see what others find although I don't have enough spare data to download it myself.
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THANKS! I was just worried that even though it had made it back Home the battery was going to die and drop out of the sky from 100+ ft. I couldn't figure out what it was just hovering at altitude and not decending as i had expected. I like learning experiences that don't involve repair costs. LOL
Yaw only lets you spin the craft but doesn't move its position, so I'm not sure how you could yaw around obstacles.
So it looks to me as if the vision position system thought that for some reason you were near ground and that's why your drone did what it did. The last flight had a ton of log entries like this:
209.831 : 3256743580 : 83674 [L-FMU/FSM]near ground
209.986 : 3257441349 : 83681 [L-FMU/FSM]not near ground
211.286 : 3263291326 : 83746 [L-FMU/FSM]near ground
211.291 : 3263313598 : 83747 [L-FMU/FSM]not near ground
Are the bottom vps sensors clear of debris? Do you have any mods done to the landing gear of your drone? You are flying at a ball field, is it possible some dust/dirt/debris got kicked up into the sensors?
Sorry my mistake - incorrect terminology indeed. I should have said Pitch as it retains Pitch and Yaw in fact Have corrected my post accordingly. Last week I was flying over a field filming haymaking. Shot up to ~ 200' to capture the hay rake do the final run across the center of the paddock having passed off all of the RTH battery warnings. With tractor and hay rake converging on my spot at paddock centre to complete the job (and my movie) I got "Critical Battery - Landing" and down she came. Whilst contemplating the lack of vertical control and the thought of my Mavic ending up in a large round bale of hay it occurred to me to use the functioning controls I had left and flew it at least 200m home. Pretty much like an engine failure in a light aircraft really.Yaw only lets you spin the craft but doesn't move its position, so I'm not sure how you could yaw around obstacles.
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