What happens when your battery runs low?

[Marine0302G2/8]

As some of you already know, I crashed Mavic 1 last week. Low battery induced panic and pilot error. Mavic2 was delivered on Monday in time for my upcoming trip to western NC. So I have been practicing intelligent flight modes so I am better prepared to show off for friends and family and more importantly take some good photos and videos of my daughter's graduation party. MBA from the App. state. POI, gesture, active track, tripod mode etc. Any tips or advice would be much appreciated. However, just for sh*ts and grins, I decided to fly 100 yards away and wait for my battery to get low enough for RTH. Mavic2 function as programmed climbed to altitude and returned home. My phone during the return flight immediately started to lag with readings on the display and what the mavic2 was actually doing. Altitude reading on display froze, video record and or stop recording was delayed by 8 sec. My point is this I was okay and not panicked because I could see Mavic2 and knew it was safe. However is this lag a common occurrence under low battery, under 18%? If you are flying out of visual contact, I know the law is fly in your sight line. Or over water or rough terrain and you cannot trust the display reading on the remote, that is not good. has anyone experienced this phenomenon? Is there a fix?

 

[mkp2020]

I don't think the display freezing or lagging is a normal result of low battery. In general though I just like picking an end-of-flight target such as always getting back with at least 30 percent left to allow for unexpected "stuff".

 

[tcope]

Or over water or rough terrain and you cannot trust the display reading on the remote, that is not good. has anyone experienced this phenomenon? Is there a fix?

Personally I'd never turn flight over to an automated system that depends on many variables to work correctly. You've seen first hand where that leads. I'm not saying RTH is not good, it is. I just _never_ rely on it unless there are no other choices. Given that, I don't see any need for the display to be correct or anything else. The Mavic simply needs to return to range when there are no other options. Does it RTH work? Yes... and it works well. I can't comment as to the workings of the display during RTH as I've only ever had to use it once or twice on my Phantom 2 and only tried it once with my Mavic. All of these times the drone was more or less out of communication.

 

[Marine0302G2/8]

Cable internet service tech said he suspected random magnetic interference caused by some celestial event that has been occurring for the past week in this area.Said event would disrupt wi-fi and other electronic communication. Sounded good when he said it. lol. Who knows. I normally return home at the 30% power mark. Sometimes you can get so lost in the moment that you lose track of time and distance from the home point.

 

[Marine0302G2/8]

Wi-Fi & GPS jammers: Talked to a guy that said his neighbor hated his drone some much that the neighbor used a portable WiFi & GPS jammer to deter him from flying his drone in his yard. Once he figured out what was happening he would fly from the furthers point from the neighbor's house and the jammers did not have enough power to interfere with him.

 

[Kilrah]

I normally return home at the 30% power mark. Sometimes you can get so lost in the moment that you lose track of time and distance from the home point.

That's why there are configurable battery warnigns. And at this point you're better off flying it home yourself to land ASAP when you realize your mistake than let RTH do it for you since RTH takes significantly longer.