Pause Hover Altitude Setting

First time posting since starting the DroneDeploy Beta. My flights have all worked very well and I’m loving the experience so far. All my missions have been less than 80 acre maps but in the future I would like to try some 160 - 320 acre maps when my additional batteries arrive.

One scenario that I can see occurring in my area is the need to pause a mission to lower the aircraft if an aerial applicator is flying near or over your field. While returning home the applicators here often fly at low altitudes. While I always fly with line of sight if this happened while the P3 was 1/2 mile away it could make taking manual control and lowering aircraft to safe altitude challenging since we don’t have FPV within the app.

My request would be to have a pause hover setting that could be set to take the aircraft to set altitude when the pause button is pushed. When it is safe to fly again the resume would continue mission and raise aircraft to mission defined altitude. This setting could also be the default altitude for when RTH is initiated in the app.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this and whether it is feasible.

-Jon

That’s an interesting request. We thought that crop dusters might be flying even lower than the phantom often flies. If the phantom is 1/2 mile away how would you be sure that the crop duster is not lower than the phantom? We wouldn’t want to provide some sort of ‘hit the deck’ option that could potentially crash the drone.

We added this to the list to talk about with the team to see if we can figure out a good way for this to work.

Glad you’re having success with your maps!

I agree and it probably isn’t a feature that would need to be used often but is something to think about as a possible safety feature. Came to mind as during a couple of flights I had applicators flying close enough for me to hear them but never became an issue of them being within visual distance.

In regards to your questions, yes the crop dusters do fly below typical height of our mapping altitudes while doing applications, but I personally wouldn’t fly my fields if I had an application scheduled or if an applicator were flying adjacent fields for that matter. My scenario was mainly addressing when they are returning home if they happen to be flying towards/over my field. Ultimately if the scenario arises, I’m taking manual control and dropping my drone down if this feature is never implemented but wanted to throw it out there as “food for thought”.

Thanks,
Jon

Just a word from the search and rescue world. A pause feature would make this software ideal for search and rescue missions where we see something during the flight and want to pause, zoom in, take a photo, or just check it out and then resume. Adding a way to mark a waypoint on the POI would then be perfect.