Almost fly away saved (pretty much my fault...)

jplayer · Mar 9, 2015

So today was the first real gig I had with the Inspire.
Getting some shots of a large rig hauling a huge piece of equipment.
It's a very tricky shoot as it is high paced and non stop.... Go as fast as you can (in your car) to a intersection.. stop, wait for a minute.. Fly to get 30 seconds of footage as the truck is passing.. repeat....
Towards the end of the route the truck traveled down an old country road around 20 - 30MPH and a friend of mine was with me so he took over driver duties and I flew the inspire chasing the truck.. FROM THE MOVING CAR.

I made sure to set dynamic home point (first time I used it) and while I was piloting I SWORE that I could see the homepoint being set (that bar up top) but in all honesty I was more concerned with my shot and not losing the controller as I had it half hanging out the window of the car, so perhaps it was not being updated.

When we got to the end of the road we pulled over and as I was bringing the Inspire down some notice came on the screen about --battery, distance from home, and RTH is activated-- and it started flying completely away from me.. I gave it some HARD input and it halfway responded but as soon as I let off it started traveling away from me again. I gave it enough input to get it above obstructions it was getting close to and then started trying to cancel the RTH.. I hit the RTH button... Nothing.. Hit a few other buttons (panicking at this point)... Nothing.... Finally I calmed myself for a second and decided to try to hit the Dynamic Home Point on the screen and as soon as I did the Inspire stopped dead in its tracks and I was back in control!!

I am enamored with this machine and I honestly believe that I was a huge part (or maybe even all) of this problem and I am not blaming DJI at all!!

That being said... I am familiar with cancelling RTH if it goes out of range and then comes back into range but that did not seem to respond in this instance... I also have my RTH height set at 50M and it absolutely did not adhere to this "rule".. As soon as RTH "because of the battery and distance" initiated it start traveling to home, with NO elevation. In fact if I would not have given it some throttle to raise it more it would have run into a pretty low metal building.

Does anyone else have experience with Dynamic RTH?

Also.. I think a great firmware upgrade would be that if the I1 is communicating with the controller and in RTH mode that a large notice could be displayed on the screen with a "slide to cancel RTH no matter what" button!

I got lucky that I finally hit the right thing and that I was still in range but I can guarantee that if probably 20 - 30 more seconds would have gone by it would have been gone!!!!!

jplayer · Mar 9, 2015

Ok... Just watched the replay on the ipad... Amazing what you can glean from that BTW!!
RTH was never updated dynamically UNTIL I hit the button after I calmed myself for a second....
I know I hit the button button on the right after I took off??? Weird.......

flyingclint · Mar 9, 2015

Thanks for your story! Anytime someone shares a story like this of a situation that could happen to all of us, it helps to prevent or at least aid in someone having a successful outcome to a situation like this in the Future. Cheers and great job staying calm and in the end saving your bird...!
-Clint

Quadpilot · Mar 9, 2015

jplayer said:
Ok... Just watched the replay on the ipad... Amazing what you can glean from that BTW!!
RTH was never updated dynamically UNTIL I hit the button after I calmed myself for a second....
I know I hit the button button on the right after I took off??? Weird.......

I believe the RTH button must be held 3 secs to engage or disengage. I don't know how the craft engaged RTH (signal strength, inadvertently holding the RTH button too long while holding the controller out of the window, etc), but once it enters RTH mode, the only way to cancel the maneuver is to hold RTH button 3 or more seconds, which is hard to remember to do when panicked.

Kilrah · Mar 10, 2015

The "dynamic home point" is badly named, at least currently it DOES NOT auto-update. You need to keep setting home point manually regularly if you're moving.

Richard-Inspire · Mar 10, 2015

it is misleading. I will have to play with the app to make sure I know which buttons to press!

About the 3 second hold - i thought that it was 3 seconds to engage RTH and 1 press to disengage - or is that only with a manual RTH?

Also - more reports of RTH not elevating to the correct height. Very worrying and utterly dangerous. I'd like to know more about this.

Simon Torkington · Mar 10, 2015

Mine did a very short RTH on a golf course recently. It was only about 15 metres from the home point when it hit critical battery level. I was in the process of landing it when it stopped, turned for the home point and flew at quite high speed towards it. What it didn't do is gain any altitude which was a worry as there was a low shed nearby which it would have hit had it been between the aircraft and the home point.

Kilrah · Mar 10, 2015

Richard-Inspire said:
About the 3 second hold - i thought that it was 3 seconds to engage RTH and 1 press to disengage - or is that only with a manual RTH?

I remember that on a critical battery level I had a popup on the app that allowed me to cancel the auto RTH before it kicked in. I did so and landed manually. I didn't try to see if you can cancel it after it has been initiated.

Mazz · Mar 10, 2015

Thanks for sharing. I used to do shots from my car with my phantom all of the time but have been very conservative about trying with the Inspire EXACTLY because of this. I actually posted the question a while back but no one really knew yet. So manually reseting the home point seems to be the trick here? Thanks again!

Kilrah · Mar 10, 2015

Well from your feedback it seems so.

We lost a Phantom in a lake about a year ago after the fimrware upgrade that introduced (and turned on by default) the maximum distance from home point. We were flying from a moving boat, and sure enough after a few minutes of flight we got to the 2km from start point default setting. It just waited there while the boat was going on until it had a low battery and landed itself in the water.
Since then we've been VERY careful to check EVERY setting after any firmware change and to disable any stupid thing that may have been introduced and enabled without us knowing...

jplayer · Mar 10, 2015

Kilrah,
This seems correct. As I watched the replay there were three times home point was set. Automatically on bootup/takeoff.... When I set Dynamic Home point before getting into the car.... And when I saved it from flyaway when I hit dynamic home point the second time at the end of the "course".

That being said.. one of two things needs to happen... Make dynamic home point DYNAMIC or rename it to "Set home point to pilots current location".

I'm very familiar with the set home point to current location of the phantom (toggle left switch 5 times) and have used it from multiple moving objects so it was a little frustrating to not have this work how I thought it should.

Kilrah said:
The "dynamic home point" is badly named, at least currently it DOES NOT auto-update. You need to keep setting home point manually regularly if you're moving.

sdjackaerial · Mar 11, 2015

The scariest part of all this is that many people are having such different experiences. I have never had to reset my dynamic home point location, so it's definitely updating for me. RTH is something I routinely test because of all the issues people have reported.
And I gotta say, it's been rock solid for me *every time*. Just today I had moved a fair distance from my original setting of dynamic home point, and I was more than 3000ft away with 250 altitude, and activated RTH on the app (not the button) and it came back to exactly where I had moved to-- after correctly going to the RTH altitude I had set. I actually think some people might have buggy birds, and some of us don't.

Richard-Inspire · Mar 11, 2015

whenever i've tested RTH it has risen to the correct altitude, but i've not tested all imaginable scenarios (and that is after all how bugs get discovered, because everyone uses their Inspire differently). i've never tested when it's been within 20m for instance. I've also never let the battery go down to critical, and always stop around the 30% mark (probably a bit conservative)