For Drone Pilots

[Hurricane]

I'm still learning to fly but my biggest concern is flying over water.
In particular, the recorded "Home Point"
For those who don't know, the "Home Point" is the physical location to where the drone will automatically fly in the event of a problem.
The significant problems being Battery Low and Loss of Communication with the Remote Controller.
This is all fine over land but what happens if you launch from a boat - more particularly, if you launch from the boat you wish to take "running shots" of.
If there was a failure (Battery Low) it might return to a position several miles from where you (and it) currently are.

I am still in the learning phase but it seems to me that we have a bit of a problem.
There is a "Dynamic Home Point" setting but after a lot of Googling, it seems to me that DJI have a different interpretation of "Dynamic" than most of us.
Dynamic to them means that you can set the Home Point Dynamically - not that it continues to "Dynamically Update the Home Position".
I will test this on solid ground but this does seem to be the case.

I guess that most people don't run into the problem but the drone is continually calculating how much power is required to "get home" so, it seems to me that it could suddenly fly away (back to its home point) - back to where there is just water - no landing point - splash down.
I really haven't played with the drone enough yet.
Does this kind of thing happen - and if so is the RTH function easily overridden.

Whilst googling, I came across this video - all about boating with Phantoms.
Some really good points but the video is pre P3/P4 so things may now be different.
Worth watching for a number of reasons - some nothing to do with drones!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp3TqA7Pv64

 

[Firefly625]

not that interested in drones, but watched the video, that did make me smile!

thanks for posting!

 

[scubaman]

An unexpected return-to-home happened on me whilst on MapisM's boat. He was reaching out to recover the drone while under way and literally a meter or so before catching it, the drone decided to return to home due to low battery.

A pop-up menu appeared from which it was a simple tap to cancel the rth, so not a big deal if it happens. It was one of my very first flights so it did make my palms sweat though .

 

[Hurricane]

An unexpected return-to-home happened on me whilst on MapisM's boat. He was reaching out to recover the drone while under way and literally a meter or so before catching it, the drone decided to return to home due to low battery.

A pop-up menu appeared from which it was a simple tap to cancel the rth, so not a big deal if it happens. It was one of my very first flights so it did make my palms sweat though .

Interesting
Has it ever happened before - or since?
Is it easy to regain control?
There mus be a time when it ignores you and flies home anyway - what do you think?

 

[scubaman]

Interesting
Has it ever happened before - or since?
Is it easy to regain control?
There mus be a time when it ignores you and flies home anyway - what do you think?

It has happened to me twice since, last time only a week ago. On both occasions it was due to losing contact with the controller (too far away from base and/or interference). As the drone got closer to the base, the connection was re-established and again tapping 'cancel' on the displayed pop-up menu I was able to abort the rth and regain control of the drone.

I don't think there is an overriding RTH before the 'point of no return' but that's just my guess. I don't have any hard info or experience of that.

 

[Hurricane]

It has happened to me twice since, last time only a week ago. On both occasions it was due to losing contact with the controller (too far away from base and/or interference). As the drone got closer to the base, the connection was re-established and again tapping 'cancel' on the displayed pop-up menu I was able to abort the rth and regain control of the drone.

I don't think there is an overriding RTH before the 'point of no return' but that's just my guess. I don't have any hard info or experience of that.

OK so if I want to take some running video boat shots, I could do something similar to the suggestion in the above video.
i.e. set a home point at sea and work close to that home point so that if RTH was triggered, we could take control and land it back on the boat.

It is a shame that you can't set the home point to continually update as the position of the remote controller.
I believe that the old Phantom 2 did just this.
In this case, I believe that the position of the remote is continually uploaded to the aircraft.
It seems that the developers consider that it is easy for the data to become corrupt if one of the other looses a good GPS fix.
Shame - I would have thought that it is the lesser of two evils but I know they were getting lots of "fly aways" where for no reason, the Phantom would just "fly away".

 

[scubaman]

OK so if I want to take some running video boat shots, I could do something similar to the suggestion in the above video.
i.e. set a home point at sea and work close to that home point so that if RTH was triggered, we could take control and land it back on the boat.
.

That was a nice idea on the vid but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. You are unlikely to lose the connection on open sea or run out of juice on the controller, so just aborting the rth and landing on where ever you are seems a lot simpler. The good thing is that you get a warning of a weakening signal so you know when you to turn back.

On the first of my cases, I was trying to fly the drone around a chuch spire which was already on the limits of the range, the second time was around a lot of interfence from large metal objects, but so far the connection has always been fine while on open sea.

 

[jfm]

I frequently fly till battery is so low that it decides to Rth. You just cancel it on the menu and manually fly drone to boat then grab it. You're worrying about nothing Mike. Rth allows you very easy cancellation on a pop up menu.

 

[Hurricane]

That was a nice idea on the vid but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. You are unlikely to lose the connection on open sea or run out of juice on the controller, so just aborting the rth and landing on where ever you are seems a lot simpler. The good thing is that you get a warning of a weakening signal so you know when you to turn back.

I frequently fly till battery is so low that it decides to Rth. You just cancel it on the menu and manually fly drone to boat then grab it. You're worrying about nothing Mike. Rth allows you very easy cancellation on a pop up menu.

Thanks for that - both of you.
Thats what I needed to hear.
Off to the boat tomorrow
A couple of things to fix - lift and pressure wash - then off.
I really hope to get some good drone footage.
Thanks for the advice.

 

[scubaman]

Thanks for that - both of you.
Thats what I needed to hear.
Off to the boat tomorrow
A couple of things to fix - lift and pressure wash - then off.
I really hope to get some good drone footage.
Thanks for the advice.

Please post the vid when you do. We haven't had a med vid on here for a while (wink wink, jfm )

 

[michaf]

Reminds me the days when I was flying the DJI f550 while on a friend's boat. The return home feature at the time with the NAZA controllers wasn't advanced. Anyway we were cruising at 20 knots when suddenly I lost the link. I still had the telemetry in my goggles and knew we had about a minutes. At that time when the drone was out of link it would just hover and stay put. I screamed to my friends he had 45 seconds to stear the boat right under the drone. We were about 300m away. The boat was a 40 ft. It was pretty epic, but I did end up grabbing the drone right before the batteries died. Here is the footage

 

[Anders_P42]

I bet they can fix this with software tweak. If they query GPS position from iPad interfaced with controller, the drone would know where it's dynamic home was all the time. If it went out of range, it flies back towards controllers last known position going back in to range (if drone speed is greater than boat speed, let's assume so since boat owner slowed down when it went out of range). Soon as it's back in range, it gets latest dynamic position again and adjusts course to controllers new position.

Or for the price of GPS chip, build it in to controller or give customers option of buying GPS enabled controller?

I don't own one btw, but enjoy watching the drone vids you all take time to produce.

 

[elton]

I don't own one btw, but enjoy watching the drone vids you all take time to produce.

A common scenario is when the pilot flies the drone around an island, or over a building, then loses comms. How do you get it back?