RTH not working

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I just recently bought a phantom 3 standard. Everything seems to work perfectly except for return to Home. I calibrated the compass on it but for some reason when I hit the return to home button it just starts to land wherever it’s positioned when I hit the button. I’m using an iPhone 6s Plus would that have anything to do with it?
 
How close is your Phantom to the home point when you initiate RTH? If it's not further than 20 meters (65 feet) away, it'll auto land at its current location (by design). This is described in more detail in the RTH section of the Phantom manual.
 
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No I don’t think it was ever that far away when I was trying it. I was just trying out some of the features and I guess that explains why. Thank you for your help!
 
65 feet is rather far away to just land. 10 feet, even 20 feet, sure but not 65 feet.
Altitude should also be a factor.
 
65 feet is rather far away to just land. 10 feet, even 20 feet, sure but not 65 feet.
Can you explain this more in detail?
 
Looks like you were within the 20m radius, so most likely that was the problem, as @msinger explained. I just wanted to add that the P3S can also be configured to land (or hover) rather than return to home (DJI GO > Main Controller Settings > Advanced Settings > Remote Controller Signal Lost), so you might want to check that setting and make sure it says "Return-to-Home".
 
I just wanted to add that the P3S can also be configured to land (or hover) rather than return to home (DJI GO > Main Controller Settings > Advanced Settings > Remote Controller Signal Lost), so you might want to check that setting and make sure it says "Return-to-Home".
True, but that would only apply if the remote controller signal was lost. The OP said this happened after hitting the RTH button.
 
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True, but that would only apply if the remote controller signal was lost. The OP said this happened after hitting the RTH button.

Oh, right, that setting only affects how the AC will behave in case of control signal loss. Sorry, my comment was out of place.
 
65 feet is rather far away to just land. 10 feet, even 20 feet, sure but not 65 feet.
Altitude should also be a factor.


Altitude has no bearing on this .... in fact.

65ft is stipulated in the DJI Manual ... 20m for those who use such measurements ...

RTH does not operate inside of 20m radius of home point UNLESS triggered OUTSIDE of the 20m radius. Triggering RTH inside that radius as 'msinger' - writes and OP found out - initiates Auto Land at that spot.

People wonder why its 20m and not 2m or even not a limit at all .... GPS is NOT as accurate as people think. They tend to think about the Car Satnav and its ability to follow exactly along the road and think its sat acuracy. It's not. Car Satnav uses 'jump to road' coding ... where it will place your car on the nearest road .... watch what happens when you go through a complicated junction particularly with slip roads. The Car Satnav assumes you follow the direction it gives till it sees roads divide and you are NOT where it thinks you should be ! It then 'jumps to road'.
GPS is not pin-point accurate. It varies over quite a range in fact. If you have a boat and marine GPS plotter - you can leave it running and see after a while the zigzag lines of position in a radius of up to 10m and even odd ones outside of that. Luckily programmers came up with 'averaging' to smooth it out ...

So imagine your P3 .... outside the 20m - even with varying GPS accuracy - it can be reliably sent back RTH. But inside 20m - it becomes hit or miss ... AND you are well within visual range / should have connection to manually fly back.

GPS happens to be a serious instrument in my job ... and has been since its first days and even before that with Transit ... and Sextants before that !!

Nigel
 
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Whatever the reasoning behind DJI's decision, it was a bad design choice: the pilot is issuing a certain command (Return To Home) and the device responds by doing something else (landing where it is). Maybe a better strategy would have been to disable RTH within the 20m radius from Home Point, and in case of signal loss just hover (and land when the battery runs out).
 
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Whatever the reasoning behind DJI's decision, it was a bad design choice: the pilot is issuing a certain command (Return To Home) and the device responds by doing something else (landing where it is). Maybe a better strategy would have been to disable RTH within the 20m radius from Home Point, and in case of signal loss just hover (and land when the battery runs out).

Reasonable statement.

But as we all know - one of the fundamental errors of DJI - there is no manual in the box. In fact I do not recall any reference in their detailing to download the manual ...

With that - unless know to download - so many things are not known ...

Nigel
 

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