What if you lose ground control ?

PeteM · Sep 3, 2019

If during a flight the smartphone/tablet would crash what is the correct emergency procedure ?

What to do during an automated flight with waypoints? What to during a manual flight ?

MapMaker53 · Sep 3, 2019

Losing ground control is different that an app crashing. Losing ground control would mean you have lost radio signal. If that is the case, the P4 will automatically return to the home point upon rc signal loss. If just the app crashes, try reloading the app and connecting again. A waypoints mission will continue to complete the mission. If you are flying manually and cannot reconnect, you can press the RTH button to return to home. But you should be flying it within view, so you can always just visually fly it back to you.

PeteM · Sep 3, 2019

And if I simply avoided the attempt to restart the device and I switch to the ATTI mode (interrupting the mission) and then GPS and take it back manually ?

MapMaker53 · Sep 3, 2019

Sure. You can do that.

Shoot4fun · Sep 3, 2019

Yup. Been there. Done that. After the initial butt-pucker eases up, ya get your breath back, and your pulse comes back down under 3700 beats a minute, just fly in atti back to you. Another reason NOT to lose sight of your drone... 3rd flight with my "new to me" P4p, my tablet crashed mid-flight about 1000 ft away. I panicked. Then I remembered that fancy schmancy RTH button. That's a great feeling, watching your $1000 drone come running back like a puppy wanting his treat!

Brad

Andy9 · Sep 5, 2019

Really true! But one must not forget to set that in the setup at the beginning when he gets the drone.

tribar · Sep 7, 2019

Most people do not know that you can fly a DJI drone with just the controller, NO smart-device needed.
As long as the light on the controller is green you are in full control (connected to the drone).

My suggestion if your app crashes in manual mode: DO NOT switch to Atti-mode.

xmtrdr · Sep 9, 2019

This happened to me once. After panicing for 5 minute and no Phantom 4, I thruned off the controller to reboot everything. with in 10 seconds here comes the drone and it landed all by itsself! Then I was able to take a breathe and try again. I ended up replacing the Tablet with a Cyrstalsky monitor and NEver had another problem.

Meta4 · Sep 9, 2019

Andy9 said:
Really true! But one must not forget to set that in the setup at the beginning when he gets the drone.

Returning the home on loss of signal is a default setting that is in your drone when you buy it.
It's not something you have to set up at all.

jungle33 · Sep 10, 2019

If you lose ground control call Major Tom.

Andy9 · Sep 12, 2019

Meta4 said:
Returning the home on loss of signal is a default setting that is in your drone when you buy it.
It's not something you have to set up at all.

Yes it's true. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. I thought about setup of what the drone should do if looses signal - come home or land where it is.
This second option seems ridiculous to me. Who wants the drone to land not knowing where exactly?

Meta4 · Sep 12, 2019

Andy9 said:
Yes it's true. Maybe I didn't express myself clearly. I thought about setup of what the drone should do if looses signal - come home or land where it is.
This second option seems ridiculous to me. Who wants the drone to land not knowing where exactly?

It's not very practical in most flying situations but there are some specialised circumstances where you don't want the drone going back to where it was launched and landing (imagine flying from a moving boat), or where you don't want the drone climbing to RTH height (like indoors or under tree cover etc).
Of course you have to be able to get back to the drone if it's some distance away to recover it from where it's hovering.