Question about Dynamic Home Point

[Chrislaf]

I am planning on using AutoPilot for some upcoming Follow missions where I will have the AC follow me on my X-country skis or snowmobile. I will mostly be using my Phantom 3 Standard but may occasionally use my Spark as well. I have tried a number of Follow missions with both aircraft and it works great. AutoPilot has the option to turn on Dynamic Home Point which I have done but I am not quite sure how this will work with RTH. In all of my testing so far, the flight log in Airdata shows the home point as my takeoff point. Do I have to continuously reset the home point in AutoPilot to my location or will the AC know where I am (since it is following my iPhone GPS coordinates) if RTH is activated? I am hoping that I will not have to continuously reset the home point as this will be inconvenient especially in cold sub-zero temps.

The AC will always be close by (height around 25m, distance around 25m) so the connection to the controller should not be a problem. The only problem I would likely have is that if the AC calculates the distance from Home Point (take-off) location and remaining battery and determines that it should RTH then I would be forced to cancel and land it at the current location cutting the mission short prematurely.

I welcome any suggestions to help my Follow missions go smoothly.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Meta4]

The AC will always be close by (height around 25m, distance around 25m) so the connection to the controller should not be a problem. The only problem I would likely have is that if the AC calculates the distance from Home Point (take-off) location and remaining battery and determines that it should RTH then I would be forced to cancel and land it at the current location cutting the mission short prematurely.

No experience with Autopilot so I'm not sure what it des but some simple testing should work things out for you.
Take it for a test run with the dynamic home point feature enabled.
Watch the home point distance on the screen and if it continues to show a short distance, your home point is updating.
If the number just gets larger as you move away from where you started, it's not updating.

 

[Chrislaf]

No experience with Autopilot so I'm not sure what it des but some simple testing should work things out for you.
Take it for a test run with the dynamic home point feature enabled.
Watch the home point distance on the screen and if it continues to show a short distance, your home point is updating.
If the number just gets larger as you move away from where you started, it's not updating.

Meta4, thanks for the reply. I’ll give that a try in a soccer field that I have been using to test AutoPilot Follow missions. I also might try initiating RTH while away from home point in the field so that if it doesn’t behave as expected, I can cancel the RTH.

Chris

 

[Chrislaf]

Went out today and tried it in a wide open soccer field. Did a short walk around and the home point seemed to be updating continuously. Need to go out and test a bit more when the weather is better (was wet heavy snow and cold today) and maybe try RTH and see what the AC does. So far it seems like Dynamic Home Point is working the way I thought it would [emoji108]

Chris