RTH to RC. Most people don't know this.

51 Drones · Oct 28, 2017

Almost crashed my MP in the water, because I thought wrong on how the RTH to RC works.

Plawa · Oct 28, 2017

I appreciate you trying to educate the public but whoever doesn't have the patience to read the manual will hardly have the patience to watch a 10 minute video explaining something that should take about 1 minute max..

Youser · Oct 28, 2017

So is there a way to have the Mavic return to the controller? Or you just have to keep manually updating the home point every time you move?

Plawa · Oct 28, 2017

Youser said:
So is there a way to have the Mavic return to the controller? Or you just have to keep manually updating the home point every time you move?

Litchi can do that, plus the latest Mavic FW has the option to keep updating the HP to the location of the drone (but not the RC) which really doesn't make much sense to me but it will keep this from happening.. but then again you might as well turn off Smart RTH and get the same results..

timmy1909 · Oct 28, 2017

Youser said:
So is there a way to have the Mavic return to the controller? Or you just have to keep manually updating the home point every time you move?

DJI go4: hit the 3 dots in the upper right or tap the copter icon next to the word Position in the center upper part of the screen...
under MC settings (or the copter Icon go to the home point settings as you see in the pic I attached... Chose take off point or your location... MAKE SURE YOU ADJUST YOUR HOME POINT ALTITUDE TO ALLOW FOR AN TREES OR OBSTRUCTIONS IN THE AREA YOU ARE FLYING.

Plawa · Oct 28, 2017

timmy1909 said:
DJI go4: hit the 3 dots in the upper right or tap the copter icon next to the word Position in the center upper part of the screen...
under MC settings (or the copter Icon go to the home point settings as you see in the pic I attached... Chose take off point or your location... MAKE SURE YOU ADJUST YOUR HOME POINT ALTITUDE TO ALLOW FOR AN TREES OR OBSTRUCTIONS IN THE AREA YOU ARE FLYING.

You do understand this continuously updates the HP to the position of the AIRCRAFT, not the RC, right?

Youser · Oct 28, 2017

Plawa said:
You do understand this continuously updates the HP to the position of the AIRCRAFT, not the RC, right?

Trying to think of when this would actually be required? You're always away from the AC..

Plawa · Oct 28, 2017

See above.. to keep the drone from trying to fly back to its last HP when the battery is getting low but you can achieve the same by switching Smart RTH off. To me this feature makes no sense and will only confuse people into thinking the HP is being adjusted to the the position of the RC, which would make a lot more sense..

timmy1909 · Oct 28, 2017

I have used this setting multiple times and it always came back to the controller. I am not talking about dynamic home point setting... the one with the 2 figures (arrow and the person) I set it to the person and it comes to me... not where I took off

Roamer105 · Oct 28, 2017

Plawa said:
Litchi can do that, plus the latest Mavic FW has the option to keep updating the HP to the location of the drone (but not the RC) which really doesn't make much sense to me but it will keep this from happening.. but then again you might as well turn off Smart RTH and get the same results..

If you use AUTOPILOT you can turn on dynamic home point. What it will do is what you would expect it would do: Update the homepoint using the Smart Phone/Tablet device GPS location (if it has a GPS). That is the true homepoint.

Plawa · Oct 28, 2017

timmy1909 said:
I have used this setting multiple times and it always came back to the controller. I am not talking about dynamic home point setting... the one with the 2 figures (arrow and the person) I set it to the person and it comes to me... not where I took off

Can you upload a log from a flight where that happened? Because it goes against everything DJI has published about this feature. If it truly comes back to the controller then I will gladly eat my humble pie.

Roamer105 · Oct 28, 2017

timmy1909 said:
I have used this setting multiple times and it always came back to the controller. I am not talking about dynamic home point setting... the one with the 2 figures (arrow and the person) I set it to the person and it comes to me... not where I took off

Note the reference to TRACK mode. That is the only time this makes a little bit of sense. The object it is tracking is probably not too far away from the controller, yet all of it may have moved considerably as of the original takeoff point. Again, the reason for it taking the AC position is because the controller does not have a GPS and GO 4 does not really care if the smart phone has one. the DJI implementation is smart phone independent - but not really all that appropriate for most missions short of the tracking missions where the person with the controller is the tracked object or is following closely the object being tracked.

timmy1909 · Oct 28, 2017

The question was can you have your mavic return to the controller... the answer is yes...
Here is the scenario... Flew the mavic to see if I could make it to the next town (3.5 miles away) hopped in a car with a friend... Flew it as we followed... made it to the park we wanted to fly too... switched to return to me as I showed above... App said your home point has been updated... hit return to home... mavic flew to altitude and then landed where I was standing...

I will see if I can find flight data but would have to remember what flight it was when I used it... but it dose work.

Gray_seagull · Oct 29, 2017

I found this video to be helpful

dscline · Oct 30, 2017

Plawa said:
Can you upload a log from a flight where that happened? Because it goes against everything DJI has published about this feature. If it truly comes back to the controller then I will gladly eat my humble pie.

I think you are talking about two different things. Timmy is talking about the home point "me" function, and everything I've seen DJI publish about that feature does say it should return back to the point of the RC. It sounds like you are talking about either Dynamic Home Point, or the manual home point "aircraft". Those update the home point to where the aircraft is.

Plawa · Oct 30, 2017

dscline said:
I think you are talking about two different things. Timmy is talking about the home point "me" function, and everything I've seen DJI publish about that feature does say it should return back to the point of the RC. It sounds like you are talking about either Dynamic Home Point, or the manual home point "aircraft". Those update the home point to where the aircraft is.

I'm talking about DJI GO updating your home point AUTOMATICALLY & DYNAMICALLY to your (=RC) position. I have yet to see that happen.

dscline · Oct 30, 2017

Plawa said:
I'm talking about DJI GO updating your home point AUTOMATICALLY & DYNAMICALLY to your (=RC) position. I have yet to see that happen.

It's not supposed to. With Dynamic Home Point, it periodically updates to the position of the aircraft. You have to use Home Point Me to get it to update to the position of the RC. It's the top right button in the screenshot Timmy provided. ABOVE the dynamic home point function.

51 Drones · Oct 30, 2017

Youser said:
So is there a way to have the Mavic return to the controller? Or you just have to keep manually updating the home point every time you move?

You have to continually update it to the controller. Kind of pointless I think.

Youser said:
So is there a way to have the Mavic return to the controller? Or you just have to keep manually updating the home point every time you move?

51 Drones · Oct 30, 2017

timmy1909 said:
I have used this setting multiple times and it always came back to the controller. I am not talking about dynamic home point setting... the one with the 2 figures (arrow and the person) I set it to the person and it comes to me... not where I took off

Do you hit the RTH on the app, or on the controller itself? Because if you are using the app, it will go back to wherever you were when you set RTH to RC. If you hit the RTH on the controller, it will come back to you wherever you are. (That's what I've been told. I'm doing a test on it as soon as the fricken wind gets below 30mph around here!)

51 Drones · Oct 30, 2017

Plawa said:
I appreciate you trying to educate the public but whoever doesn't have the patience to read the manual will hardly have the patience to watch a 10 minute video explaining something that should take about 1 minute max..

One thing to note, there is NOTHING in the manual about RTH to RC. The only place to find this info is when you click on the RC icon and it tells you that the home point will be set to your current location. So some things need to be explained a bit more, and it is my opinion that this info should be included in the manual.