Lost my P3 at Sea -Question

tmadrone · Sep 30, 2016

hello.

So I'm fairly new to droning, specifically with phantom flying so I know the risks I was taking flying it off my boat. That said, all the amazing shots I was getting on the water were too addicting and I was slowly gaining confidence with what I could do. Well.. her last flight I wanted to get some footage of the boat running and everything was going great........ until.... (how many times do you hear that) The battery got to 50% and I assume the drone thought I was about 3 miles back where the flight started but in reality I was within 300 ft of it. My poor assumption was that it would know this.. hindsight now I think.. how could it have known this....?

Anyway, at 50% battery the drone said FU I need to head back and it started its emergency rth. In a panic I tried to land it before it started its return course not knowing if I would be able to take control of it. I was 2 feet from it when I lost it in the drink.. It was devastating and yes I know I can only blame myself and my inexperience. I had about 15 hours flight time so I was flying with a false sense of confidence.

I have a couple of questions.
If I didnt panic and let it start to fly back. What should have I done?

What is the best course of action / settings so I could have the drone follow me in the scenario to which the original gps location is void.

Thanks guys.

msinger · Sep 30, 2016

You could have either turned off the Smart Return-to-Home feature in DJI GO or cancelled the RTH before it occurred. DJI GO will display a prompt for 10 seconds to give you time to cancel it before it starts to return home. After it starts returning home, you can easily cancel it by pressing the RTH button on the remote controller.

When taking off from a boat, it would be best to reset the home point to your current location as you move to new locations. You'll need a device that has a built in GPS receiver in order to reset the home point to your current location. If you do reset the home point, keep in mind that your Phantom will land at its current location if RTH is initiated and your Phantom is within 20 meters of the home point. So, you would never want to initiate RTH when your Phantom is nearby.

jephoto · Oct 1, 2016

2 questions-
-I have a Dual xgps 150a Bluetooth receiver- if on the water and there no cell service- will that allow resetting the Home point to my current position
Normally when I fly- using my wi-fi only iPad mini 3, I turn on Personal Hotspot on my phone to update the map and Homepoint in Go app.
But out on the water I'll bet offer you loose cell service.

- How do you reset the Home point to the current location of the RC?
I know it's relatively simple, just forgot how to do it....

Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

Meta4 · Oct 1, 2016

jephoto said:
-I have a Dual xgps 150a Bluetooth receiver- if on the water and there no cell service- will that allow resetting the Home point to my current position
Normally when I fly- using my wi-fi only iPad mini 3, I turn on Personal Hotspot on my phone to update the map and Homepoint in Go app.
But out on the water I'll bet offer you loose cell service

Cell service should be irrelevant.
Your GPS receivers get their GPS data direct from GPS satellites and the Bluetooth device communicates via bluetooth - no cell service involvement.

jephoto said:
How do you reset the Home point to the current location of the RC?
I know it's relatively simple, just forgot how to do it....

In recent app versions DJI hid it in the MC Settings.

For anyone in this situation, flying from a moving boat, (unless you are flying way out of sight from the boat),resetting home to the current location of the Phantom is just as good as resetting to the current location of the controller.
The main point is to make sure that in an RTH situation, the Phantom doesn't want to zip back to where the boat was at launch time and that it doesn't think it's that far away when it's calculating battery requirements.

jephoto · Oct 1, 2016

Um... Resetting Home Point to the location of the P3 - unless directly above me- wouldn't that make it want to come "home"'and land wherever it is at that moment - and not where I am with the controller??

I want to know how to set the new Home Point to exactly where I am- not where the bird is.
Define "hid it in the MC settings" please.

msinger · Oct 1, 2016

jephoto, you can also reset the home point to your current location at the top of the "Main Controller Settings" section in DJI GO. That setting used to always be visible on the left side of DJI GO -- until DJI moved it into the "Main Controller Settings" section. You'll only see that option if your Phantom is connected to DJI GO and it'll only work if you're using a mobile device that has a GPS receiver.

jephoto · Oct 1, 2016

Thanks. And that's why I asks about the Dual Xgps 150a
My iPad is wifi only- but I use the Bluetooth Dual GPS device won't that give the GPS data of my location to the Go app? Or not?

msinger · Oct 1, 2016

Yes, it should.

jephoto · Oct 1, 2016

I'll test it in a couple days when the rain lets up.
On land....
I found this thread- illustrates what you are saying:
Resetting home point

Meta4 · Oct 1, 2016

jephoto said:
Um... Resetting Home Point to the location of the P3 - unless directly above me- wouldn't that make it want to come "home"'and land wherever it is at that moment - and not where I am with the controller??

I want to know how to set the new Home Point to exactly where I am- not where the bird is.
Define "hid it in the MC settings" please.

Unless you are sailing something more than 100 ft long, you don't want to be letting your phantom land itself, you will be hand catching so whether the reset home point is above or near the boat won't matter.
The important point is that your phantom doesn't think home is back where you launched.

Sent from my SM-G900I using PhantomPilots mobile app

jephoto · Oct 1, 2016

Meta4 said:
Unless you are sailing something more than 100 ft long, you don't want to be letting your phantom land itself, you will be hand catching so whether the reset home point is above or near the boat won't matter.
The important point is that your phantom doesn't think home is back where you launched.

Sent from my SM-G900I using PhantomPilots mobile app

Agreed. But by same token, if it loses connection for any reason i dont want to to RTH somewhere i USED to be and could be very far away. But at least fly back to where I AM - and I can cancel when overhead & bring it down manually. That's my point.

Meta4 · Oct 1, 2016

jephoto said:
Agreed. But by same token, if it loses connection for any reason i dont want to to RTH somewhere i USED to be and could be very far away. But at least fly back to where I AM - and I can cancel when overhead & bring it down manually. That's my point.

I thought I covered that base when I said ....
For anyone in this situation, flying from a moving boat, (unless you are flying way out of sight from the boat),resetting home to the current location of the Phantom is just as good as resetting to the current location of the controller.
The main point is to make sure that in an RTH situation, the Phantom doesn't want to zip back to where the boat was at launch time and that it doesn't think it's that far away when it's calculating battery requirements.

If you are doing what most boat flyers do and film your own boat, resetting home to be wherever the Phantom is, is going to be close to the boat.
But if you are off in the distance shooting scenery, obviously resetting to the controller's location is what you want.

The important thing is that your Phantom doesn't trigger smart RTH when you have gone 3 miles from starting.
On a moving boat if it loses connection for any reason RTH will always be to somewhere you USED to be regardless of how you reset home.
Near enough is good enough, anywhere within 100 metres should be fine because even if you reset to the controller's location, that will be out of date in a short time.

m0j0 · Oct 2, 2016

tmadrone said:
hello.

.. how could it have known ...
.

Sorry for your loss tma.... I would say the best thing you could have done was practice flying first and carefully go through the manual. Paying specific attention to the return to home functions.. Then practice them so when it initiates unexpectedly you have experience cancelling it and or working around it..

tmadrone said:
hello.
If I didnt panic and let it start to fly back. What should have I done?
.

The best thing would have been to cancel return to home.

Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

jephoto · Oct 2, 2016

When you reset the Home Point to the birds current position - does it take Altitude into account?
I mean if you launch from a boat on the water- and maybe the MSL at that place is say 595' (Lake Michigan) and you reset the Home Point while 100' in the air, will that have any affect on the RTH as far as trying to land- thinking it's now Home- 100' up in the air ???
Or is this not an issue?