Home Lock AND Course Lock....AND....

[Peter Patricelli]

After owning my P1 (and NAZA V2) for a year I am just beginning to play with IOC. After confirming that the bird really would come straight home with a pull back I then began to wonder.....what would happen AFTER the bird passed over the home point if one continued to pull back on the stick? Today I tried that. The bird passed over me....AND KEPT GOING (South) even though the bird was nose North and I was pulling back on the stick.

Hmmmm... I went back to the DJI literature and found that, in Home Course and returning to Home Lock.....if the bird passes within 60 feet of the Home Lock position then Home Couse operation is disabled and IOC reverts to COURSE LOCK (even though the switch remains in HC position)!!! And indeed, my initial orientation was nose North....so pulling back on the stick made it go SOUTH....Course Lock)....away from the Home Lock position.

This is important for everyone using IOC Home Course as a safety RTH system to realize. You can only use it ONCE if you pass near the Home Lock position. If you are playing around, use it to RTH, then....with no change in your switch positions or other indication from the bird (other than responding differently to the stick controls)....you are NO LONGER in Home Course IOC!!

What I couldn't determine from the DJI literature is whether the original Home Lock position is then lost?? There are ways of RE-setting Home Lock in flight by toggling the IOC switch, but if after passing close, without toggling, can one switch IOC to Off and then back to HC....and re-enable Home Course WITHOUT re-setting the Home Lock position?

It seems, from my experience, that the bird can simultaneously record BOTH Course Lock direction AND Home Lock position.

Is so, then the following weird scenario should play out. With IOC OFF boot the bird pointing nose north (for example) and allow GPS Home Lock...AND establish Course Lock (NORTH). Then fly in IOC OFF....GPS or ATTI and swing the bird SOUTH of the Home lock position...pointing the nose anything but SOUTH. Then switch IOC to Home COURSE and pull BACK on the stick. What SHOULD happen is that the bird should fly straight north to the Home Lock position....THEN ?STOP?....and reverse course 180 degrees and fly straight SOUTH.....all without changing a switch OR changing the pulled back stick position!

If I am understanding this all correctly....that should happen. I will try this tomorrow. And if I am misunderstanding this, hopefully someone will correct me.

Peter Patricelli

 

[ElGuano]

After owning my P1 (and NAZA V2) for a year I am just beginning to play with IOC. After confirming that the bird really would come straight home with a pull back I then began to wonder.....what would happen AFTER the bird passed over the home point if one continued to pull back on the stick? Today I tried that. The bird passed over me....AND KEPT GOING (South) even though the bird was nose North and I was pulling back on the stick.

Once it auto-switches from HL to CL within 10m, it stays in CL until you flip S2 to select a new IOC mode. It autoswitches from HL into CL when it's <10m from home point. So if you set up your Phantom facing away from you when you take off, you'll get it passing over you and continuing to fly. But if you set a more complex scenario (taking off facing you, etc.), it will never pass over your head in the first place with HL back-stick!

It does NOT lose home lock just because it switches to course lock. The switch occurs because HL mode is radial, and within 10m it doesn't have the precision in flight to guarantee it can circle around you with aileron movement. But throughout, your recorded home point stays. And you can switch out and back into HL and pull back on the stick until you hit 10m again.

You can INDEPENDENTLY reset course lock and home lock with S2, with some caveats depending on how you set up the switch (position 3 as CL and position 2 as HL, for instance).

 

[cokeaddict]

interesting read

 

[locoworks]

interesting read

yep, fried my head, i was under the impression that homelock was a sort of emergency measure? if you lost sight of your bird or it's orientation and couldn't tell what the right stick was doing to it you could just flick a switch and basically drag it back home?? as such once you can see it and it's close emough to tell which way it is facing etc you should be taking back proper control and going from there either in normal GPS or course lock or atti or manual for those with skill. i don't see the use ( maybe there is one?? ) in wanting it to stay in homelock once it is effectively home???

 

[QYV]

interesting read

yep, fried my head, i was under the impression that homelock was a sort of emergency measure? if you lost sight of your bird or it's orientation and couldn't tell what the right stick was doing to it you could just flick a switch and basically drag it back home?? as such once you can see it and it's close emough to tell which way it is facing etc you should be taking back proper control and going from there either in normal GPS or course lock or atti or manual for those with skill. i don't see the use ( maybe there is one?? ) in wanting it to stay in homelock once it is effectively home???

some people see it that way, in my opinion the real "emergency measure" is the Failsafe / Return To Home feature. Most people who use CL/HL do it for filming purposes... locking course is I guess necessary or way better to achieve certain types of camera shots, but I'm not that advanced.

I run in Naza Mode purely so that I can flip to ATTI and drift with the wind, or get the extra lateral speed... I haven't really gotten into CL / HL yet but you're right about HL and the "dragging it back home" thing. Personally I prefer to just flip the switch to Failsafe and let the bird fly itself back home. I then of course flip the switch back and take control and do whatever... fly off, catch/land, etc. like you say once it's close enough you should be able to fly visually again

EDIT: I just realized the OP is talking about a P1 not a P2, I'm talking about a P2 so I'm not sure how different those features are

 

[HarryT]

They're no different. They are features of the Naza flight controller, which is the same on the P1 and P2.

 

[rrmccabe]

Most people who use CL/HL do it for filming purposes... locking course is I guess necessary or way better to achieve certain types of camera shots, but I'm not that advanced.

In my case I use HL for bringing the bird back closer to home. This saves waiting for the failsafe to kick in and the camera doing a 180 and then getting it back into GPS mode again and the bird turned around 180 again (usually).

Both methods work of course but I find it nice for reeling it in a little closer to home without changing much.

 

[Peter Patricelli]

Today was TEST day for my 1 year old ANCIENT P1-NAZA V2. I was able to confirm both El Guano's statement that Home Lock is NOT lost by flying into the 10M area of Home Lock and forcing a switch to Course Lock....it still exists and will re-operate with a switch flip (single flip.....3 flips will RESET Course Lock or Home Lock) out of HC and back to HC....AND.....my weird sudden direction change scenario.

I went to a very large 360 degree field and booted the bird up with the nose pointed North. In GPS, IOC OFF, I took off and confirmed both Course Lock flying and Home Lock flying appropriately in front of me...and the Home Lock spot. I then, in Home Lock, took the bird on a wide swing 180 degrees around to exactly SOUTH avoiding passing near the Home Lock point. I then oriented the bird nose EAST and pulled full back on the right stick.....and held it back.

The bird dutifully came straight NORTH to the Home Lock point. As it approached almost exactly overhead the bird suddenly stopped and reversed it's direction 180 degrees and flew straight SOUTH....in Course Lock....with no change in the stick DOWN position....as predicted. I confirmed the bird was in Course Lock....in spite of the switch being in Home Lock position...took the bird North, flipped the IOC switch to Off, then back to HC, and confirmed that the bird was again in the Home Course mode keying on the original Home Lock point.

Now that I am getting comfortable with the IOC options, I anticipate doing a lot of video flying in HC and to a lesser extent CL. In a scenario where one is visually flying the bird and controlling it from the Home Lock point, then by simply facing the bird, the filming scenario becomes simple....the bird itself and it's movement (altitude stable) is simply and completely controlled with the right hand sticks....right, left, back, close.....no confusing orientation-switching....and the CAMERA view is independently and simply controlled by the left hand YAW adjustments. In HC I can do a 360 degree fly around the Home Lock spot keeping the camera centered MUCH more easily than I have ever done it without IOC. In CL, in the appropriate setup, one can similarly control the bird totally in the 180 degree hemisphere of the Course Lock controlling the bird directly with the right hand, right, left, back, close controls and pan the camera up to 360 degrees with the right hand YAW controls. Again, the right hand directly controls the bird, no orientation switching (or thought) and the left hand controls the camera view. Interesting possibilities.

I can't wait to try out a straight line HC or CL flight while doing a seamless 360 pan with the camera......something that is VERY difficult (for me at least) without these IOC options.

Peter Patricelli

 

[ZAPPATA007]

Since we are in the subject of IOC I would like to ask a question: I tried today to set a new "homelock" by toggling the left swtich between the OFF and the rest (HL and CL) many times to set up a new "home". It worked fine and I tried various scenarios as I am testing how the bird reacts when I would go and capture objects for filming purposes (fly around). And then i let as and too the bird far away. When the battery warning came at 20%; it started automatically the SafeHome process as usual. BUT, of course, it went to the "2nd" homepoint that I set up as explained and tried to land until I aborted the whole thing and brought it back to me. My question is: Once a new Home position is set up like this, is it "final" or can it be somehow overriden so the initial and original 'home" used?

 

[rrmccabe]

You can set home as many times as you like. But to get the original homelock (or close to it) you would actually have to fly back to your home location and reset it.

Unless there is special up down left right hidden sequence I am not aware of

I have set homelock several times when walking through trees and navigating the bird around.

 

[ZAPPATA007]

Thanks for the feedback. I would be interested to know if anyone else knows of any "special" way to reset it to the original homelock?

 

[ProfessorStein]

What rrmccabe said. There is always only one homepoint. If you reset it to a new location, it overwrites the previous homepoint.
You would need to fly over your takeoff location and reset the homepoint to get the original home back.

And big lol on the up down up down left right! wouldn't that be cool if there were hidden codes like that? Though... come to think of it... I suppose it'd be pretty dangerous to do while you were flying.

 

[ZAPPATA007]

Thanks guys for the prompt feed-backs. Much appreciate it..........better be safe than sorry.....my conclusion is to be EXTRA careful when setting a new homelock for filming purposes and don't forget that the bird would not come back to you in case you run out of batteries or you take it out of the stock range.