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

[Jussaguy]

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the manual as some of it is contradictory, It's well translated, but I think as features are added it makes the manual outdated.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 Anyone care to test?

I usually have the OA turned off anyway, however your hypothetical question seems sort of off. If it did indeed see the sun as an obstacle and you had it set to go up, at some point I would imagine it would not see it as this and continue.

On the other hand, the operator should still be watching the the video and telemetry and see and stop it if it happened, either by trying to move it or turning off the OA.

 

[Stevie_UK]

Was hypothetical question. Yes the operator should see this, but if there was controller interference they'd not, nor could they avoid or turn off the OS. Also as it rose it would continue to see the Sun, even if it moved slightly over the horizon from the pilots view. By the time the Sun was out of drone sight it would be dark and flying high I'm guessing.

 

[Jussaguy]

Was hypothetical question. Yes the operator should see this, but if there was controller interference they'd not, nor could they avoid or turn off the OS. Also as it rose it would continue to see the Sun, even if it moved slightly over the horizon from the pilots view. By the time the Sun was out of drone sight it would be dark and flying high I'm guessing.

Get your point. As someone that flies often, including sunset and bright sunlight. I live in SoCal so we rarely have clouds blocking the sun, I can say not only have I had this happen at all, let alone continuously.

I suppose since it apparently does happen, your hypothetical is, I suppose, possible but I don't think it would. I was wrong once though.

 

[Stevie_UK]

Was weird seeing the 'obstacle' radar light up when it was 40 metres up, in a completely open area - then I remembered I'd read a thread about this past few days which kinda made me ready for this situation!

 

[Stevie_UK]

Update:

Heard back from DJI who say it is a 'quality problem'.

Since reports such as mine are extremely minimal it sounds more like it's my drone rather than anything bigger. Personally I still think it's a software issue, and I was just unfortunate enough for it to happen to me!

Anyway, they agree it's no fault of my own and have asked me to RMA it.

Since I bought it locally I'm just going to return it here in the UK. Sad thing is that even though they're an official DJI supplier - they have NONE in stock until some time next week :/

Apparently they also want their techs to go over it first - which I found odd since DJI already accept liability.

Lets hope I'm back in the air very soon - I was SO looking forward to some nice flights over the weekend, I rarely take any time away from work.