Spotlight Interference...

[Rapfife]

So I was shooting some video of the fire works in our little town. I was careful to not fly over the crowd, had in line of sight at all times, and got some great shots of the fire works from about 1300 ft AGL. Everything went great, started to come back to the home point and someone lit up the P4P with a very bright spotlight. It stopped the drone cold in place. It wouldn't move forward and the screen on my iPad was very bright from the light in the camera. It had me quite worried about being able to get the drone back home. After a short time they turned off the light and it resumed course for home. I was descending but was still about 700 ft AGL when this happened.

Can anyone tell me what they think caused it to stop mid-flight? Maybe the spotlight fooled the sensors into thinking there was an obstacle? This scared the bejesus out of me and i need to know if there was something i can do to prevent this from happening again.

Thanks, in advance

 

[BCBasher]

OA freaks out when it hits a beam of light, I have a little RC car race track and before sunset I get sunrays that stop my p4 like there was a wall in the way.

 

[Southern Style]

........... OK, so this might be a concern.. The Obstacle Avoidance freaks out when a very bright beam of light hits it?? Would it be possible to quickly turn off the OA when this happens? I am asking in case someone learn this, and holds a beam of light on the drone and you are low on battery.. Also for Search and Rescue / LEO purposes, it might be smart to lean how to overcome this.. Thanks for any input.. I am going to try and "lock" the P4 up with a light source and see if disabling the OA will allow it to come back..

 

[BCBasher]

........... OK, so this might be a concern.. The Obstacle Avoidance freaks out when a very bright beam of light hits it?? Would it be possible to quickly turn off the OA when this happens? I am asking in case someone learn this, and holds a beam of light on the drone and you are low on battery.. Also for Search and Rescue / LEO purposes, it might be smart to lean how to overcome this.. Thanks for any input.. I am going to try and "lock" the P4 up with a light source and see if disabling the OA will allow it to come back..

Not that I've had reason to try it I have seen the option to disable OA in the menu on your touchscreen, don't know about quickly turning it off.

 

[BCBasher]

Flip the mode switch to sport mode, apparently. I though I'd give that mode a try anyway tonight flew around fairly high and had a blast. My gimble did something weird for a few seconds so I switched back to GPS mode and did an RTH. It started to come back then stopped and gave me a warning about not being able to fly over the obstacle because we were already at max height, the sun was the obstacle. I could see my aircraft and see some landmarks through the camera but not head directly home, I switched back to sport mode and flew home manually.