Hi all - this is a question about what does the drone / software decide to do upon low battery, and where is that point?
I was flying a DD mission in fairly windy conditions (maybe 15mph speed at least). The drone got low on battery - it dipped under 20% and was still flying the mission (which was just over half done) and was still a long distance away from me. I reckon it still had about 10-15 mins worth of capturing to do.
I got nervous, aborted the flight and flew the drone back to me because frankly I didn’t trust the software to appreciate how far it had to come back against the wind and so safely fly back.
Has anyone else been in this position? If I’d have let the drone just carry on its’ flight, what exactly would it have done?
It should kick into a RTH mode so long as the RTH point was set prior to take off. But if you notice that it isnt and you are worried there is nothing wrong with bringing it back yourself to do a battery swap.
Personally, I wouldn’t trust any software to do the math to get me back home in a low battery situation, especially with a headwind. I monitor the % of battery used per down and back pass to pick a safe time to bring the bird home with about 20% battery left when I land. Don’t want to overstress batteries.
@Kevinw73 Its always good to be conservative with battery when mapping missions. We will soon add visibility to what % battery is set for drone to RTH in checklist and ability to change in inside DD settings.
I’d also add, don’t let the mission continue on a leg away from you if you can’t complete that leg and the leg that returns to you. When a return to home happens the incomplete leg of the mission is going to be reflown from the start. So lets say you are on the west side of the field flying east/west and the drone gets almost to the east side of the field and does a return to home you will waste the incomplete leg that it left off on. After it does the return to home it will start that leg over and you just flew most of a leg for nothing, but the risk of having a battery dump on you and not make it back.