Weird goings on near water... Home location miles off!

Yes. Everyone should do this. Learn to fly ATTI mode and use it in cases like this. And unless your battery is dangerously low or the drone is flying away, stop, breathe, take stock of what's going on and only then do something. And if it's flying away, switch to ATTI and correct for wind. Try re-engaging GPS briefly to see if it behaves. If not, bring it in under ATTI.



There is no AP in the P4. It's not using WiFi. Most likely the phone is using basic WiFi triangulation to determine location. Why DJI allows this is beyond me. But, it's a good reminder. DJI introduces features quickly and haphazardly. They often have bugs. YOU are the beta tester. Try each feature carefully and with a back up plan.

I look at a lot of code so possibly mistaken, but pretty sure I saw a configuration file in the apk installed to the phone that had APNAME=0123456789ABCDEF or suchlike, can't find it today so... What I do notice are mentions of facebook accountname and such like, so looks like that'll be here soon...

What's your thinking Ian, in the situation I found myself in, even if I had at that point enabled multi flight mode, because I was beyond the max distance (still in strong radio contact), would it have let me switch to ATTI etc? Also could I have enabled multiflight mode while the bird was in the air, or would it have honored a max distance setting change?
 
Why not ATTI?
Use your map (if loaded) and point the triangle (drone) towards you, follow the line.
Use the radar info to bring it to you.
When windy we play games as lift it up to about 150 ft and set it on ATTI, let it drift a good distance away (about 1 mile) and fly it back by hand.
Not too many people can handle this and are afraid, when something happens they do not know how to handle it.
Like your suggestion Dacon! But I use this method all the the time to come back home in P mode as well. Are you saying use ATTI because he thinks that the bird is being pulled by GPS toward a false Home Point? Do you fly in Atti while filming? I've flown in Atti a several times indoors, but not much outside. How consistent is altitude outside when just motoring around? Because GPS is off right? Still uses front and bottom cameras for OA right?
 
There is no AP in the P4. It's not using WiFi. Most likely the phone is using basic WiFi triangulation to determine location. Why DJI allows this is beyond me. But, it's a good reminder. DJI introduces features quickly and haphazardly. They often have bugs. YOU are the beta tester. Try each feature carefully and with a back up plan.

Check the hidden MISC directory on your SDCARD for the wifi.conf file interesting... Created by the DJI GO app (or the drone?), and that's not my wifi details shown nor my IP/subnet. Not sure if or when it's used though. Maybe it's a future thing - flying repeater mode anyone?
 
Allow me to jump in with an off topic opinion.

I understand $$$ is always scarce but am a strong advocate of using a separate device for flying. Dedicate a good GPS enabled tab and keep your phone for other stuff. A couple a hundred bucks gives much peace of mind.

Skyward ho...!


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app
 
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Allow me to jump in with an off topic opinion.

I understand $$$ is always scarce but am a strong advocate of using a separate device

Phone gps generally tends to be better than a lot of tablets, I've a couple of decent ones but they're both 10", I've seen people commonly using older tech stuff like iPads! It would appear to be GPS in my case, but I'd rather be aware of it than use older tech. We already know not to always trust GPS, but it seems the p4's trust it implicitly!
 
Why not ATTI?
Use your map (if loaded) and point the triangle (drone) towards you, follow the line.
Use the radar info to bring it to you.
When windy we play games as lift it up to about 150 ft and set it on ATTI, let it drift a good distance away (about 1 mile) and fly it back by hand.
Not too many people can handle this and are afraid, when something happens they do not know how to handle it.
So true.

Never even understood the notion of a "fly away" (this is not directed at the OP by the way, at a glance you sound like you handled it correctly). If the thing isn't doing what you want on auto-pilot, time to use you instuments and your ability as a pilot to bring her on in and then troubleshoot.

The map is super easy to read but the triangle orientation thing (I don't know the name) that you are describing Dacon is exactly what I use when disoriented. If I'm not mistaken, and I could be, that always looks at the GPS receiver on your phone/tab and not at the homepoint.
 
So true.

Never even understood the notion of a "fly away" (this is not directed at the OP by the way, at a glance you sound like you handled it correctly). If the thing isn't doing what you want on auto-pilot, time to use you instuments and your ability as a pilot to bring her on in and then troubleshoot.

The map is super easy to read but the triangle orientation thing (I don't know the name) that you are describing Dacon is exactly what I use when disoriented. If I'm not mistaken, and I could be, that always looks at the GPS receiver on your phone/tab and not at the homepoint.

Thing is, being new to flying I didn't think I had need to enable the multiple flight modes just yet - by default they're off (They're enabled now though!), if you could see a playback of the flight logs, you'd see me making sure the drone was facing me on the map/radar (Could see flight path and knew where I was as well as original take off point) and giving it full throttle forward towards me (N), yet the bird kept drifting away (S) at 5mph approx. I've heard the regular RTH is 22mph, Maybe max distance restriction returns bird at slower speed, or maybe me fighting to gain control managed to at least slow it down. At one point I tried turning around just to be *sure* my orientation wasn't off, and throttle forward did increase speed in that direction (S). At the time it kinda felt like the controller just didn't want to respond - I had no idea what had happened, only afterwards in the logs did I see the RTH point change.

Similar threads are appearing since this, and seems changing to ATTI mode maybe doesn't get honored in these circumstances - I'm not willing to put that to the test unless I really needed to. I very much doubt I'll be using return to home until we're sure these things are debugged or that I have an 'override'.

I've now enabled the other flight modes (although gonna wait for zero wind before I practice), I've also removed the max distance.

DJI have the logs and are progressing them through their 'system', part of me wanted to know if I could have done things better, and I urge all of you guys fluent in DJI logs to tell me. If pilot error it's something we can learn from, it currently seems however that this is something we can only wait on DJI learning something from.
 
Thing is, being new to flying I didn't think I had need to enable the multiple flight modes just yet - by default they're off (They're enabled now though!),
I see that you've also got a thread about this over on the DJI forum and it seems that someone there sorted this out pretty well for you.
The problem was that the home point jumped 2.2 kms to the south which put your location beyond your Max Distance limit from the new home point.
The max distance limit is like an invisible fence in the air and the Phantom just won't go past it.
The solution at the time would have been to reset the home point back to the current location of the controller and so leapfrog over the invisible wall.
I doubt atti would have helped much.

Perhaps you'll never see this again - it has only been reported a couple of times and most Phantoms are happily flying as they are supposed to.
Just keep an eye on your distance from home indication to make sure it doesn't suddenly jump.
And practice resetting home point to the controller's location so that if ever you need to, it will be a piece of cake to do it.

As for some of the guesses about wind farms, water affecting compass or GPS - none of these would have had any effect.
It would be interesting to know if any similar cases of jumping home point were also related to using a phone or device that might be using triangulation from cell towers and more likely to have a bad location than a straight GPS-only tablet.
Although I'm still not sure how that might cause the homepoint recorded in the Phantom to jump.
I've never heard of anything like that happening before the last week or two.
I'm not aware of anything like that in over a year of the P3.
Whether it's a P4 thing or a new firmware thing ... or something else is a mystery.
 
I see that you've also got a thread about this over on the DJI forum and it seems that someone there sorted this out pretty well for you.
The problem was that the home point jumped 2.2 kms to the south which put your location beyond your Max Distance limit from the new home point.
The max distance limit is like an invisible fence in the air and the Phantom just won't go past it.
The solution at the time would have been to reset the home point back to the current location of the controller and so leapfrog over the invisible wall.
I doubt atti would have helped much.

Perhaps you'll never see this again - it has only been reported a couple of times and most Phantoms are happily flying as they are supposed to.
Just keep an eye on your distance from home indication to make sure it doesn't suddenly jump.
And practice resetting home point to the controller's location so that if ever you need to, it will be a piece of cake to do it.

As for some of the guesses about wind farms, water affecting compass or GPS - none of these would have had any effect.
It would be interesting to know if any similar cases of jumping home point were also related to using a phone or device that might be using triangulation from cell towers and more likely to have a bad location than a straight GPS-only tablet.
Although I'm still not sure how that might cause the homepoint recorded in the Phantom to jump.
I've never heard of anything like that happening before the last week or two.
I'm not aware of anything like that in over a year of the P3.
Whether it's a P4 thing or a new firmware thing ... or something else is a mystery.

Yeah I've gotten some good info on DJI forum, but in this case I'd like to have as much feedback as possible - it's seriously knocked my confidence with what happened! The day it happened there had been an android update to the GO app, could be coincidence but with seeing some other very similar things happening it does make one wonder.

tbh I doubt I'll even be touching anything to do with RTH, which is a shame as it was one of the failsafes that pushed me toward buying a drone in the first place, incidentally my phone uses (GPS, A-GPS, Glonass) Which I believe is pretty much the same as the P4? Maybe the app could have a way of figuring out how many sats the phone gps has and disabling return to controller (replace it with return to take off point) if it's unstable? Generally speaking though my phone seems very accurate in other apps.
 
tbh I doubt I'll even be touching anything to do with RTH, which is a shame as it was one of the failsafes that pushed me toward buying a drone in the first place
To avoid using RTH would be a mistake.
It's one of the most important things to learn for ensuring you come home with your Phantom every time.
And it's very reliable.
The day you need RTH is the worst day to try to learn how it works.
Quite a few people have lost Phantoms because they didn't know how to activate the RTH switch properly.
 
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Seem a discrepancy in the manual on RTH, page 33 states press and hold to initiate return to home, page 45 says just to tap it? What are the differences, and which should we be using? I've used the RTH in the GO app and that seems to work right, but you'll understand my hesitation. At some point (I think during the flight I mention in first post) I saw the option return to controller point, so I'm guessing there are RTH options other than those detailed in the manual? I thought I understood all 3 of them, but the controller point would add at least a 4th?

RTH button on the controller - tap once, or tap and hold to initiate a return to take off point?

Obviously there are the other RTH on out of controller range or battery at low level.

I was told of an option in the app to set a new RTH point, in one of the menus, I can't see this on mine, am I looking in the wrong place? (I honestly don't want to hit it by accident!)
 
Thing is, being new to flying I didn't think I had need to enable the multiple flight modes just yet - by default they're off (They're enabled now though!), if you could see a playback of the flight logs, you'd see me making sure the drone was facing me on the map/radar (Could see flight path and knew where I was as well as original take off point) and giving it full throttle forward towards me (N), yet the bird kept drifting away (S) at 5mph approx. I've heard the regular RTH is 22mph, Maybe max distance restriction returns bird at slower speed, or maybe me fighting to gain control managed to at least slow it down. At one point I tried turning around just to be *sure* my orientation wasn't off, and throttle forward did increase speed in that direction (S). At the time it kinda felt like the controller just didn't want to respond - I had no idea what had happened, only afterwards in the logs did I see the RTH point change.

Similar threads are appearing since this, and seems changing to ATTI mode maybe doesn't get honored in these circumstances - I'm not willing to put that to the test unless I really needed to. I very much doubt I'll be using return to home until we're sure these things are debugged or that I have an 'override'.

I've now enabled the other flight modes (although gonna wait for zero wind before I practice), I've also removed the max distance.

DJI have the logs and are progressing them through their 'system', part of me wanted to know if I could have done things better, and I urge all of you guys fluent in DJI logs to tell me. If pilot error it's something we can learn from, it currently seems however that this is something we can only wait on DJI learning something from.
That's a great point that I never thought of Stevie.

Never really thought much about the fact that the multiple modes are turned off during a maiden flight unless you remember to turn it off which, even if you are an experienced pilot, you would still need to go to the instrument menu and activiate multiple modes.

It's sort of a strange point. You should at least be an intermediate or knowledgable novice to fly in ATTI mode, however in the case where your GPS signal either was or goes bad during a flight, you need to have that option. I wouldn't know the statistics of problems caused by a novice not switching multiple modes on and accidently flying in the wrong one vs. a decent pilot forgetting to turn on multiple modes and making a recovery in a situation such as the OP.

I think DJI Is probably right in playing to the lowest common denominator as a more experienced pilot would know how and where to switch it on even if they forgot and with all due respect, a novice should be practicing in a very shallow area where everything is in sight.

As for what is pilot error or not, especially when dealing with DJI, the term "pilot error" is certainly a subjective term.

For example (probably a bad example), if I'm driving and someone cuts me off and they slam their breaks and I hit them, you are at fault (the person that got cut off) because the rules (varying by state) is when traveling in normal traffic, you must maintain X amount of car lengths behind any car and as soon as that car got in your lane, it's your responsibility to protect yourself from any stoppage of the moving traffic in front of you.

That was a very long and not very good example but always negotiate and don't take what DJI determines as "pilot error" neccaserily as such because it might be or maybe not. I could give you more bad examples but I think the point I'm trying to make has been.

The battery not snapping into place since it switched from part 7 to part 54 is going to cause some crashes. I'm sure of it. Yes, part of your pre-flight check should be to make sure proper seating of the battery but on the other hand, DJI just changed the battery and for some reason, not for the better and now it takes (albeit just a minor amount of attention) the need to make sure it's seated. It's completely possible to get power to the bird with the new battery and not have it properly seated as now you need to seat it with both hands and check it when before you didn't.

So when the inevitable birds flying out of the sky starts happening and I predict it will, is that pilot error? I will say no. DJI might say otherwise.

I hope their was a point of two in there.

Happy flying!
 
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Seem a discrepancy in the manual on RTH, page 33 states press and hold to initiate return to home, page 45 says just to tap it? What are the differences, and which should we be using? I've used the RTH in the GO app and that seems to work right, but you'll understand my hesitation. At some point (I think during the flight I mention in first post) I saw the option return to controller point, so I'm guessing there are RTH options other than those detailed in the manual? I thought I understood all 3 of them, but the controller point would add at least a 4th?

RTH button on the controller - tap once, or tap and hold to initiate a return to take off point?

Obviously there are the other RTH on out of controller range or battery at low level.

I was told of an option in the app to set a new RTH point, in one of the menus, I can't see this on mine, am I looking in the wrong place? (I honestly don't want to hit it by accident!)
First, you NEED to know where the spot is to set a new homepoint.

Actually, and in my belief unbelievably. they set it to a more difficult to get to spot. It's actually only one extra click away than before but setting a new homepoint should be very obvious and fast. In fact, I am of the opinion it should have its own burton on the controller. However, DJI, possibly for the better decided to keep their controlled simple and put all the functionality only available in the app. Personally and some here would strongly disagree with me, I'll take a switch over a screen button every day, even if that does mean a more DIY looking remote that you have to learn. You should learn anyway for example, where to change homelands and that:

In the same exact place where you turned on multiple modes, the mc (main controller?) settings.. Visually:

12513725_10209159681133221_3117276074266835489_o-jpg.48807


You can see rifght above the toggle switch for multiple flight modes are an arrow and a little guy. The arrow will set a dynamic homepoint (meaning one that is on the fly, literally. Wherever the bird is). Hitting that button will change the homepoint to wherever the bird is. To be honest with you, my original theory was this button was either accidently pressed or glitches (it's software and software glitches) and set a homepoint at the bird.

The one where the little guy is, will set a homepoint where the RC is and uses the GPS/Glonass reciever and set a new homepoint. The signal of satellites is what the bird is recieving, not the RC/tab so always be sure that the homepoint is set well. It's nice to have a loud tab (like my new iPad Pro) because all the aduible warning like "a new homepoint has been set" is much easier to head.

I really do ramble.

So yeah, your homepoint reset buttons, while they used to be on the main screen, now you have to go to MC settings. I wish it was an RC button but you can't even program one of the C1 or C2 buttons to do it. Which may be a good thing I suppose. Working knowledge on that is this is a prosumer system and they don't want accidents happening from people purposefully or by accident hitting buttons that could be catastrophic.

Also, the manual is just a pretty good Enrish but it wasn't made by an Oxford English professor so yeah, you can learn the basics but yes, you can't just tap the button. You have to press and hold it for just a second. If will make an obvious audible beep.

Equally as important to creating a homepoint is ending on as you found out, an RTH can also be fatal. It is my opinion that wifi triangulation does a poor job of one of the most important things you can do with your controller and that's setting the homepoint so if you have one that 10 meters off, that could be it landing in a lake instead of right next to you and if you see that happening, you would override the RTH by ascending or moving over or whatever but that doesn't kill the RTH which is something I personally believe you should be able to.

There is always a red X on the screen or when landing to cancel but the lesser known and much better way is by pressing the RTH button until you get that beep again. Hardware over software always IMHO.

Finally, just FYI, if it's a power issue and the bird has done an RTH because of power yet at some point determines it can't get home, it's going to land where it is and there is nothing you can do to stop it and I believe that includes turning to ATTI mode but that is only if you do something like run it down to 4% or something.
 
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Seem a discrepancy in the manual on RTH, page 33 states press and hold to initiate return to home, page 45 says just to tap it? What are the differences, and which should we be using?

RTH button on the controller - tap once, or tap and hold to initiate a return to take off point?
DJI manuals are full of poor writing and contradictions - but nothing so bad that a little checking on the forum won't sort out.
This is why I suggested experimenting in a large, open area so you have a feel for what works and how it works.
It's press and hold to initiate RTH and press to cancel.
You can tell when it's working because the controller beeps to confirm while RTH is operating.

At some point (I think during the flight I mention in first post) I saw the option return to controller point, so I'm guessing there are RTH options other than those detailed in the manual? I thought I understood all 3 of them, but the controller point would add at least a 4th?
I was told of an option in the app to set a new RTH point, in one of the menus, I can't see this on mine, am I looking in the wrong place? (I honestly don't want to hit it by accident!)
There is only one option for RTH - and that is return to the last recorded home point.
You are probably confusing RTH with the options to reset your home point to either wherever your Phantom is ... or wherever you and the controller are.
Reset home point options are now in the MC settings so it's not something you'll do by accident in flight.
Investigate them though because that is where you would need to go if ever you had to deal with a wandering home point again.
 
DJI manuals are full of poor writing and contradictions - but nothing so bad that a little checking on the forum won't sort out.
This is why I suggested experimenting in a large, open area so you have a feel for what works and how it works.
It's press and hold to initiate RTH and press to cancel.
You can tell when it's working because the controller beeps to confirm while RTH is operating.


There is only one option for RTH - and that is return to the last recorded home point.
You are probably confusing RTH with the options to reset your home point to either wherever your Phantom is ... or wherever you and the controller are.
Reset home point options are now in the MC settings so it's not something you'll do by accident in flight.
Investigate them though because that is where you would need to go if ever you had to deal with a wandering home point again.
Kind of a useless point to make (the one I'm making) but I don't think he was confused with setting the homepoints. Someone rightfully told him that there was a spot to reset the homepoint and he didn't know where it was. Simple as that.

The homepoint is absolutely part of the RTH functionality because that's where the RTH goes assuming normal use. The only reason I am posting this is because you wrote "I think you are confusing RTH with homepoint" and while he has plenty he was confused about, I don't think he was in that paragraph and I didn't want him to be more confused. In fact, to me the question said "okay, he's starting to get it".
 
Kind of a useless point to make (the one I'm making) but I don't think he was confused with setting the homepoints. Someone rightfully told him that there was a spot to reset the homepoint and he didn't know where it was. Simple as that.

The homepoint is absolutely part of the RTH functionality because that's where the RTH goes assuming normal use. The only reason I am posting this is because you wrote "I think you are confusing RTH with homepoint" and while he has plenty he was confused about, I don't think he was in that paragraph and I didn't want him to be more confused. In fact, to me the question said "okay, he's starting to get it".

No confusion at all regarding the RTH features, but I do find myself re-reading the manual as some of it is contradictory, It's well translated, but I think as features are added it makes the manual outdated. I've used the app previously for RTH, but I've always let the aircraft decide what the home point is on take off (and checked it on the map!). It is possible that I used the RTH button on the controller this occasion. Whether a tap or a long press I can't be sure, a long press is obviously so it cannot be pressed by accident - though I'd rather accidentally hit it than it just decide to go off on vacation after reading the flight tickets wrong!

I have *never* clicked the reset home point to anything in the MC settings, however I HAVE seen a popup asking me whether I want to return to home point or controller point - whether that is a standard feature, or something I got due to some conditional bug I'm encountered I'm not sure.

One thing this has cleared up is that if the RTH point was changed during my flight in the OP, it wasn't by any conventional means, and the RTH signal wasn't initiated by me!

Now that I've had a little test in ATTI mode I can see how the poster above could find it fun when there's a little wind about, there was an 8MPH for me when testing. For now I'll be taking my time and enjoying a nice smooth learning curve!

Something related that I came across yesterday evening, the Sun was going down and when the bird was facing roughly in that direction it showed as if the Sun was an obstacle! I've read something about this somewhere online, but hadn't seen it previously. It *looked* to me like the bird jumped a little in the air, subsequent video footage shows it smooth so either it was my imagination, or the gimbal compensated. An interesting question arose from this:

Q: If the bird is on it's way home (flat battery, out of controller range, or RTH initiated) and is heading towards the Sun, it seems it would can (could/would?) pick up the Sun as an obstacle, as such it will raise altitude to get *around* the obstacle. Of course it would never get around the Sun and would raise altitude to either your max height, or to 500m (or maybe above?). What would happen??

I'm not blaming the obstacle avoidance, nor the current programming, I'm just curious if this event has been figured into the coding. Obviously in this case I was in control, it didn't hinder control, just emitted beeps and told me there was an obstacle! But if the bird was out of LOS, battery below the low threshhold (30%) or out of radio range.... Would it fly around the Sun :p Anyone care to test?
 
No confusion at all regarding the RTH features ...
I have *never* clicked the reset home point to anything in the MC settings, however I HAVE seen a popup asking me whether I want to return to home point or controller point - whether that is a standard feature, or something I got due to some conditional bug I'm encountered I'm not sure.
There's the point of confusion.
RTH doesn't give you options to go here or there because there is only one home point to return to.
The only time you are given options to select between the controller and somewhere else is when resetting home point.
 
I've *definitely* not used the reset home point menu in MC at any time. Until reading on here I didn't even know it was possible! However I HAVE seen a popup asking me where I want to return to. This was mid flight, while watching the video feed and OSD, without any menus open. This could only have been triggered by the RTH button on the controller - either that or it was triggered for some other weird software reason. The confusion in this case maybe a software issue!

Knowing about it now, and from what happened in my case I'm steering clear of that reset point bit! My max distance is now 'open' and I definitely feel confident about flying the drone back using the map as I've kinda done this automatically from my first flight onwards.

Believe me if I was confused in the slightest I'd be asking you guys - Some of what I ask may seem obvious, but since there are so many variables, (and manuals that contradict their pages) I feel it's safer to seek confirmation beforehand :)

On that note, *IF* you are to reset the home point in the MC, it pops up a two choices? RTH or Return to controller? (that's what I saw). *IF* you then select 'controller' will it first show you where it thinks the controller is at that very second? (and voice 'home point set, please check it on the map')?
 

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