Hello, I’m new to DD and these forums. I had a bad experience my first flight. I went to a local park to test a 2 acre flight. The drone went to altitude (250 feet) went to the starting waypoint, then the second waypoint. There was one more waypoint in the flight path. After waypoint number 2, my drone started a controlled descent. I started to panic, luckily the drone responded to my frantic controls to get it back to proper elevation and eventually to me. Any ideas what might have happened? Also, will selecting Orbit upon completion address this? Thanks for any insight.
Hi Ken, there are a few known reliability issues with the app that the team is working through. Apologies on that end. Which drone were you using (Phantom 3, 4?) and tablet? I can then ask the team what might have happened here.
Inspire 1V2 with a Zenmuse 3 camera. Samsung S4 Galaxy tablet. I just updated the firmware on the controller and drone last week. Thanks for looking into this.
As I’m looking at the imagery, the drone did not cover the entire polygon of coverage in my plan. So I don’t think it thought it was done.
Ok, passing this on to an engineer so they’re aware of it. Will get back to you soon.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
After the drone takes off, the DJI autopilot is in control. If any safety features of DJI get triggered DD will not stop it from doing any sort of emergency landing, etc. You should be able to cancel anything except the most critical battery landings though. I’m not sure which things could cause this. I’d suggest investigating with the flight logs on the drone similar to any other weird behavior when flying with DJI Go 4.
I have found that you can not cancel the auto-landing. You can pause the descent for a couple of seconds by pressing the Return To Home button, but a few seconds later DD will request another Return To Home and take control away from you again. The best you can do is control the descent a few seconds at a time.
The only way I’ve gotten out of it is to switch to ATTI mode at a safe altitude, kill the DD app, switch to P mode to get control and land with my P3.
Agreed, you have to kill the App to get out of it.
I’ve been able to take control of descent on my Inspire 1 Pro by flipping from F to P twice.
Thanks, I’ll give that a try.
Does this happen often? It was scary, to say the least. I’m hoping it was an outlyer case or user error on my part.
The drone should not descend in the middle of a mission. Like I said, DD does not control this aspect and if it was coming down it was due to the DJI autopilot deciding it needed to for some reason.
I get that, I’m just wondering if it happens often.
Make sure your return to home altitude is set properly, like high. The descent may have been a Return To Home at the programmed altitude. A forced descent should only happen with a dead battery, but a Return To Home happens with loss of communication
MBlacklin is correct, flipping the switch from F to P TWICE cures the problem. Woo Hoo, nothing like being able to control your aircraft!
Thanks all! I appreciate it!
Nope, just flew again. I flipped the switch twice and had control, but after a minute or so DD took over again. I flipped a third time and had control, but within a few feet of the ground DD took over yet again. This time DD descended into my travel case and the aircraft strut struck my travel case. The gyro righted the craft before a prop strike with the ground, and I wrangled control away from DD yet again so I could land safely.
THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM!
I shouldn’t have to fight back and forth for control of the aircraft. Thankfully we all take precautions and don’t overfly people, but that travel case could have been a person.
Thanks, for the additional info. I’ll keep that in mind when I do my test tomorrow. I’m planning my takeoff point to be in a very large grassy area for safety sake.