Critical battery-landing mode- rth? Yes/no?

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

It will try to return to home until the critical battery alert happens... then it will attempt to land there.

 

[msinger]

It's a tough question to explain to some ppl.

I think so. Some of the responses here are pretty wild

 

[NoBiffBetter]

And if SMART RTH is active you should (In visual sight to drone ) Be able to scream, using sticks to lower the "Baby" to a safe spot.

I always have smart return to home disabled before my long distance flights.. Or else it will try to come back soon as I get out too far, wasting precious battery time and having to stop it, correct it, and turn back around to continue the direction I was trying to go in. Lol


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[Kirby Johnson]

Idk what this means... And you clearly didn't understand what I was asking.


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Oh don't take it wrong, I was just poking a little fun at you. The crux is, once you are in low battery, it does not make any difference what else happens, your bird will land, and it cares not whether it is at 1000 feet altitude or over water. It is a failsafe you do well to avoid.

 

[NoBiffBetter]

It will try to return to home until the critical battery alert happens... then it will attempt to land there.

Well that's why I do not and would not try to land UNTIL critical battery has hit.. Once it has, then find a safe spot to land it.. Now that I know with out a doubt it will continue to land once I get too long for the aircraft to receive signal from the controller


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[NoBiffBetter]

Oh don't take it wrong, I was just poking a little fun at you. The crux is, once you are in low battery, it does not make any difference what else happens, your bird will land, and it cares not whether it is at 1000 feet altitude or over water. It is a failsafe you do well to avoid.

It's a good fail safe.. And I wasn't asking for the reason of knowing it's just gonna land or not.. But for the reason that if I know I can't make it back.. And it's obvious like it was last time.. Then all I would have to do is fly to a safe location.. Hover with good signal over the spot I plan to land at.. Wait for critical battery to kick in, and then start landing the quad in a safe spot, this way, once I get bellow a certain altitude and the quad looses signal with the Rc.. I can rest assure knowing the quad is going to continue to land right where I put it.. So again, in my case it's a good thing..

I WANTED it to land when critical and override rth. This is great news.

As I said in my post, it has already happend to me once, and I successfully landed it exactly the way I described it above.. And I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't a fluke.. Or that I got lucky and somehow rth just didn't activate Or glitched.

But now that I am certain it will do this everytime, once in critical battery mode, this gives me more confidence in that if I get myself in trouble or realize I can't make it home, that I can always rely on the critical battery to override rth, even when Rc signal is lost (due to lowering altitude in attempt to land) and I will be able to put the quad in which ever safe landing spot I choose, and know for a fact once I loose connection that the quad is just going to continue its way straight down to the ground.

This is awesome. And I think anybody who flys long range should know this and do this if they can't make it back.. Because it is the safest way to go about the matter, rather than hoping you can make it home and pushing it, possibly hurting somebody or causing damage to someone's property cuz the quad looses power and drops out of the sky unexpectedly and suddenly.

Thanks for all the help guys. Glad my theory works then.


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[AWD]

If I understand the logic of this. Once you reach the "Critical Battery" mode where it goes into an automatic landing (beeping and notice on screen) you can still override that with the throttle and stick (which I normally do as I'm in close and visual) to guide it to a more suitable position to land once you lose the signal completely.

Like you explained, the battery went critical low, you kept it moving to a safe point and when it lost signal it then landed, as it tried to do before you used throttle/stick to move it. Correct?

AD

 

[NoBiffBetter]

If I understand the logic of this. Once you reach the "Critical Battery" mode where it goes into an automatic landing (beeping and notice on screen) you can still override that with the throttle and stick (which I normally do as I'm in close and visual) to guide it to a more suitable position to land once you lose the signal completely.

Like you explained, the battery went critical low, you kept it moving to a safe point and when it lost signal it then landed, as it tried to do before you used throttle/stick to move it. Correct?

AD

Yes you are correct. But In my case I didn't move the aircraft much after it hit critical low voltage.. I knew that it would be hitting soon.. So before hand I picked out a safe spot to land on the map, then hovered over that spot for maybe 30-40 seconds until low voltage came on.. Once it did I already had it positioned and allowed the aircraft to descend.. I actually was descending it faster than it would automatically cuz I knew my battery's were fatigued and wanted to get it down, but yes once I lowerd to around 100 feet or so I knew I would be loosing my signal.. 12k feet away + tons of trees, buildings and other obstructions =no signal. And I had never done this before so I wasn't sure what the quad would do once disconnected.. I knew if it would just continue to autoland I would be ok .. But I wasn't sure if it would or not..

But in the end it did and I thought wow either I got lucky that it didn't rth, or maybe the aircraft is just set to override rth when it's in critical battery (even if it has lost signal) but just wasn't sure which one it was..

So that's why I made this thread today to see if anybody else knows or has done this.. And was able to confirm that YES, the aircraft will ALWAYS override the rth when in critical battery -landing mode.. Even if it has lost signal. As I said before this was a smart move by dji imo.

And as long as you know what your doing and how to fly/land on the spot.. You can take advantage of this override feature when doing long distance...so now what I will do is always find myself a "safe zone" or multipul safe zones for when I go on a long voyage.. I will check them out before hand so I will know if there is an issue on the way back, that I can make sure that I will be flying in the path of these safe landing zones I have found..

This way if I were to ever run into trouble and couldn't make it back, I will do exactly what you said.. Either by holding the left stick up and pushing forward on the right stick till I reach my safe zone, or I will do what I had done the other day which was fly to the closest safe zone and from there I will hover until critical battery, once it hits critical battery I will begin my descend downward and even if I loose signal halfway down I can rest assure that my quad will be waiting for me right where I had directed it.. Safe and away from harm on solid ground.

I feel like it's a MUST if you wanna fly long distance and very smart as well To plan your path out, know the ground you are flying over (which in my case I did) and find yourself some safe zones(safe place to land) that's along the way of your flight path.
Making sure it's far enough away from other ppl, trees, buildings, or other obstructions. Yet not so far off the beating trail to where you can't get at the quad to retrieve it.

This is the best way IMO, to fly long distances and not be blowing through quad after quad because you keep loosing one after another. Cuz let's face it, long distance junkies like me are always gonna push the envelope, and there's gonna be days where you push just a little too hard or too far, and don't make it back. So why not be prepared for it if or when it ever does.



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[NoBiffBetter]

Hey guys here is a good video I found.. It's a good example of things that can go wrong when doing long range.. The guy finds a safe spot to ditch the quad, and literally does exactly what I had to do the other day.. Only mine wasn't on film lol

Check it out:

It's a good example of how quick thinking and a thought out landing area (safe zone) can save your quad, and how you can get it back even when things go way wrong, that far out. Vs loosing it forever.

If the link won't play Google search "phantom 3 distance world record attempt" should be the first video to pop up.

I like this video for the fact that it shows you exactly what the quad is doing after you get disconnected. (Which I couldn't see cuz I was not recording video that day) And again makes you feel more confident that If you were ever in this situation that with good planning you will most likely get it back in one piece.

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[Digdat0]

This pertains to, if in your settings you select "control signal lost" -(RTH)- function enabled... I want to know for a fact or not that when a phantom 3 is in "critical battery- landing mode" and you loose signal completely with the rc to the ac will the phantom 3 STILL try to return home, or will it just STAY where it's at and continue to LAND?

Ive had this a couple times .. there were atleast two occasions i was coming back from a distance flight and had a battery cell die, or voltage issues and critically low power and forced autoland. In both occasions, autoland started from 400 feet altitude and when it hit 300 feet i lost signal (this was with windsurfers). In both cases, landing continued and no rth. However, landing in this case is tricky .. because once you are in critical low battery, GPS "hold" no longer works (in my experience). It goes into a psudo ATTI mode, where the craft will drift with the wind.

Watch this video (its sped up), at 2:40 i lost signal, I think i was about 8% battery. You can see drift on its own during landing, did not hold position with GPS. That was in a no signal/autoland state. I was aiming for that road and decreasing altitude right before losing signal, luckily i managed to get the camera pointed down and it recorded it.

 

[kennedye]

I feel like it's a MUST if you wanna fly long distance and very smart as well To plan your path out, know the ground you are flying over (which in my case I did) and find yourself some safe zones(safe place to land) that's along the way of your flight path.
Making sure it's far enough away from other ppl, trees, buildings, or other obstructions. Yet not so far off the beating trail to where you can't get at the quad to retrieve it.

Think of it as the equivalent of planning an alternate airport if you were flying a Cessna.

 

[GrammatonxXXxCleric]

Ive had this a couple times .. there were atleast two occasions i was coming back from a distance flight and had a battery cell die, or voltage issues and critically low power and forced autoland. In both occasions, autoland started from 400 feet altitude and when it hit 300 feet i lost signal (this was with windsurfers). In both cases, landing continued and no rth. However, landing in this case is tricky .. because once you are in critical low battery, GPS "hold" no longer works (in my experience). It goes into a psudo ATTI mode, where the craft will drift with the wind.

Watch this video (its sped up), at 2:40 i lost signal, I think i was about 8% battery. You can see drift on its own during landing, did not hold position with GPS. That was in a no signal/autoland state. I was aiming for that road and decreasing altitude right before losing signal, luckily i managed to get the camera pointed down and it recorded it.

Wouldn't it been horrible if the last thing you saw on screen as it came down was a group of teenagers on bikes reaching up and grabbing it then riding away..........

 

[Ged2217]

This has just happened to me, I really wasn't expecting my P3A to just land where it was. I was only about 400 meters out and appropriately 40-50 meters up, I was altered to critical battery warning although it was still showing 25% and then notified 'aircraft will land' I immediately started losing altitude above houses! If it would have landed in situ I would have hit a house in the far distance and would never have been able to recover. The return to home button had disappeared from my screen so I started to panic, thankfully I was still able to override the auto landing process, although every time I released the controls it continued to lose altitude and try to land. I managed to bring it back and land safely in the field I took off from . I'm really worried about flying distance or over water in the future, especially when I was showing 25% battery. Any advice is very welcomed.

 

[bsartist]

Ha ha. This thread reminds me of this:

 

[solentlife]

The sequence of events is simple - and we assume that Smart RTH is enabled.

1. When battery level approaches minimum needed to get back home : You get warning to RTH.
2. When battery level approaches low battery level : You get warning battery level is low.
3. When battery level approaches Critical level : You get warning and auto-land initiates.

With 3 - it makes no difference if you have signal or not - Auto Land is fixed action. You can as Msinger posts, if you still have signal connection - alter the actual position where it lands, but note that you are then pushing battery hard and you may have battery failure - but that is all. The AC will land regardless. Loss of control signal during Critical will not initiate RTH in any form.

Note that the Standard P3 is less able to be directed in Critical Auto-land than the Adv / Pro versions. I know this from my own bitter experience.

Nigel

 

[umanbean]

Ha ha. This thread reminds me of this:

lol... or Who's on First

skip to 1:30

 

[Meta4]

I'm really worried about flying distance or over water in the future, especially when I was showing 25% battery. Any advice is very welcomed.

The % indicator is only a rough guide and can be affected by some other factors.
What is important to the Phantom is the voltage the battery is able to deliver and that is what sets off the critical battery level alert.
You'll be able to look further into this and possibly learn what was really happening by looking at the recorded flight data.
Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.

 

[solentlife]

I will not fly over water if only 25% .... that's daring the Gods ... I prefer to be over dry land and near home when I hit low warning 30%.

There are two reasons :

1. Because battery drain increases dramatically at low charge levels..... watts = Volts x amps

2. I like to land with about 30% or slightly more and then I can safely bench my batterys without need to top up to storage.

Nigel