I am a new phantom 2 vision plus pilot. I have flown it around various placed for about two weeks. On this flight, I used the ground station feature for the first time. I started by running a short test to make sure it worked properly. I set way points on each corner of a large field, and then had it return to the center of the field. All worked well. I was ready for a real flight, or so I thought. I set a way point at a friend’s house, about 1 mile away from the field, and another at one edge of the field, and then had it fly back to the center of the field. Then, I pushed GO. Off it went. I lost sight of it after a few minutes. Then I lost the control signal (“Phantom connection broken”) another few minutes later. Another few minutes later, I lost video. The ground station altitude indicator read "0". Was that because I lost connection, or is it no longer in the air? I had no idea, but I decided to wait patiently.
I was a bit worried, but I was not panicked. I had lost sight of the phantom before, and experienced the failsafe return to home feature. I simply turned off the controller, and it came racing home. But I was beginning to think that this was not happening this time. Another five minutes passed, and there was still no sight of the phantom. Now I was getting quite worried. It was getting obvious to me that the Phantom had not returned home when it lost WiFi connection. What to do?
I jumped in the car and drove to my friend’s house, trying to regain the signal while I was driving. No luck. Nor did I see it in the sky. When I arrived in at my friend’s house, I stepped out of the car and made a concerted effort to reconnect to the phantom. I power cycled the controller. I restarted the vision app. I still had no video, but I saw a sign of life! The ground station section of the DJI Vision app had an altitude indication of 180 feet. That sounded promising. I clicked on the “return home” icon on ground station. The app asked me to verify the “return to home” instruction, which I did. I then drove back to the field.
When I got back to the field, the phantom was hovering over the center of the field. I flipped the S1 switch down and up, regained control over the phantom, and brought it in for a landing. I really thought I had lost it. I was relieved and delighted that I retrieved the phantom. But I still did not know what happened.
I checked out the video to see what the phantom actually did. This is what the video showed: It flew from the field to the first way point (my friend’s house). Then it hovered at that location for about 9 minutes. Then it turned around, and headed back directly to the field, bypassing the second way point. I read through the manual and forum posts to try to understand this behavior.
I learned that the phantom does NOT return home when the WiFi signal is lost when using ground station. Instead, the phantom continues the mission that was defined in ground station. So that explains why it did not return home. However, it does not explain why it decided to hover over the first way point. As I understand it, the phantom should have continued to the second way point, and then return to the field. Had the video shown a one-minute hover, I would have concluded that everything would have been fine if I just waited longer in the field. Instead, the phantom hovered over the first way point and skipped the second way point when returning home. This suggests to me that the phantom was stuck hovering over the first way point until I drove closer to re-establish WiFi contact. I assume that the phantom returned home in response to the “go home” instruction after I regained contact.
Does anyone understand why the phantom behaved this way? Or is this operator error of some sort? Until I understand what went wrong, I am hesitant to trust ground station again. Any ideas would be appreciated!
I was a bit worried, but I was not panicked. I had lost sight of the phantom before, and experienced the failsafe return to home feature. I simply turned off the controller, and it came racing home. But I was beginning to think that this was not happening this time. Another five minutes passed, and there was still no sight of the phantom. Now I was getting quite worried. It was getting obvious to me that the Phantom had not returned home when it lost WiFi connection. What to do?
I jumped in the car and drove to my friend’s house, trying to regain the signal while I was driving. No luck. Nor did I see it in the sky. When I arrived in at my friend’s house, I stepped out of the car and made a concerted effort to reconnect to the phantom. I power cycled the controller. I restarted the vision app. I still had no video, but I saw a sign of life! The ground station section of the DJI Vision app had an altitude indication of 180 feet. That sounded promising. I clicked on the “return home” icon on ground station. The app asked me to verify the “return to home” instruction, which I did. I then drove back to the field.
When I got back to the field, the phantom was hovering over the center of the field. I flipped the S1 switch down and up, regained control over the phantom, and brought it in for a landing. I really thought I had lost it. I was relieved and delighted that I retrieved the phantom. But I still did not know what happened.
I checked out the video to see what the phantom actually did. This is what the video showed: It flew from the field to the first way point (my friend’s house). Then it hovered at that location for about 9 minutes. Then it turned around, and headed back directly to the field, bypassing the second way point. I read through the manual and forum posts to try to understand this behavior.
I learned that the phantom does NOT return home when the WiFi signal is lost when using ground station. Instead, the phantom continues the mission that was defined in ground station. So that explains why it did not return home. However, it does not explain why it decided to hover over the first way point. As I understand it, the phantom should have continued to the second way point, and then return to the field. Had the video shown a one-minute hover, I would have concluded that everything would have been fine if I just waited longer in the field. Instead, the phantom hovered over the first way point and skipped the second way point when returning home. This suggests to me that the phantom was stuck hovering over the first way point until I drove closer to re-establish WiFi contact. I assume that the phantom returned home in response to the “go home” instruction after I regained contact.
Does anyone understand why the phantom behaved this way? Or is this operator error of some sort? Until I understand what went wrong, I am hesitant to trust ground station again. Any ideas would be appreciated!