Failsafe RTH issue?

Tahoe Ed · Mar 11, 2015

He is with his wife. How could he not. ;-)

Kilrah · Mar 12, 2015

Tahoe Ed said:
I guess they moved the A stick while aircraft is trying to climbing up. In the released firmware .16 and .17, it will interrupt the climbing up and continue to return to home.

Excellent, thanks! Explains the strange reports, and we now know what to do for it to work as expected - Perfect

That should still have been documented though, but the manuals are another parallel story

Richard-Inspire · Mar 12, 2015

i can imagine it is tireless and pretty thankless being the go-between between us and DJI. we appreciate your work, even if it doesn't get said much. It's what separates this forum from just another rambling forum of rants and arguments. We should all remember not to shoot the middle men, although clearly everyone jumping in on this thread has resulted in a message getting back to DJI.

it's great to get the update from DJI, and that they are aware this may be an issue. I have to say part of the problem is that most of this stuff is just not written down anywhere. It's like that guy said in his other post somewhere, one doesn't want to have to read this forum constantly just to be aware of all the bugs. but there you go.

Mazz · Mar 12, 2015

These forums are going to be invaluable to us.

Kilrah · Mar 12, 2015

Richard-Inspire said:
I have to say part of the problem is that most of this stuff is just not written down anywhere.

YES. Documentation is of utmost importance, the manual should be EXTREMELY detailed and explain ANYTHING that a user needs to know including all combinations of conditions he may encounter and the reactions they lead to. And any change should be thorougly described in an addendum notice included in the upgrade, not just release notes like now but detailed explanations of behavioral and functional changes and what it means to the pilot. And a new version of the full manual released along and tagged with the firmware version it applies to.

It is very frustrating that on one side DJI spends time and effort to implement things like no fly zones as a bad way to mitigate unsafe pilot behavior, but on the other hand don't seem to care much about giving pilots what they actually need to know in order to operate safely.

Tahoe Ed · Mar 12, 2015

Thank you all for your comments. Even Blade and I were not aware of this "feature" of v.16 and v.17. The good news is that it has been removed in the next version of the firmware.

damoncooper · Mar 12, 2015

Tahoe Ed said:
Thank you all for your comments. Even Blade and I were not aware of this "feature" of v.16 and v.17. The good news is that it has been removed in the next version of the firmware.

Thanks for the update guys.

blade strike · Mar 12, 2015

I'm just glade we got to the bottom of it. I thought I was going nuts.

Sorry I couldn't deliver the news myself. As Ed said I took the night off and spent it with the wife..

catware · Mar 15, 2015

My Inspire1, which I've had for 6 days, was destroyed today when it flew at full speed into 500' cliffs during a failsafe RTH procedure, at an elevation 150' below takeoff point, without rising to the failsafe altitude of 50m I set. I have over 200 flights on my Phantom 2 in challenging mountainous terrain and never had a problem with that aircraft.

In reading through this thread, it would seem that I inadvertently cancelled the failsafe altitude by wiggling the sticks around during the control signal interruption that triggered the RTH. It is idiotic for the Inspire 1 to continue with the horizontal portion of a RTH and cancel only the vertical portion in these conditions. Were it to have simply risen up, it would have regained communication!

damoncooper · Mar 16, 2015

catware said:
My Inspire1, which I've had for 6 days, was destroyed today when it flew at full speed into 500' cliffs during a failsafe RTH procedure, at an elevation 150' below takeoff point, without rising to the failsafe altitude of 50m I set. I have over 200 flights on my Phantom 2 in challenging mountainous terrain and never had a problem with that aircraft.

In reading through this thread, it would seem that I inadvertently cancelled the failsafe altitude by wiggling the sticks around during the control signal interruption that triggered the RTH. It is idiotic for the Inspire 1 to continue with the horizontal portion of a RTH and cancel only the vertical portion in these conditions. Were it to have simply risen up, it would have regained communication!

Ouch. Very sorry to hear that.

PGT · Mar 24, 2015

blade strike said:
Roger that.. if people have a video or if they can make one that shows the craft going straight to home within 20m or not raising to 20m, this would help.

Thank you.

I know I am coming in a bit late on this thread but thought I would post a short video showing my recent experience with RTH anyway.
I was lining up to land as battery level was very low. You can see I had 13% descent on the A stick when RTH kicked in - I think that is why it didn't rise to the set RTH level which was 30m. The nose was pointed at home position - guess I got lucky there. What alarmed me the most was the speed it took off at. It reached 9 m/s or 33km/h over the 82m journey to home point.
I think I would prefer a gentle direct ascent to the set RTH altitude no matter what you are doing with the sticks or how far away you are from home point.

Atom · Mar 27, 2015

Hi guys, would like to share what i observed today when my I1 lost the Video and Control link at around 2000+ft in range and 800ft in height. It went straight into failsafe mode. My transmitter was beeping in home mode activated with the No signal sign on the App. However, the bird simply beeline at the last known altitude. So should it have decended to the pre-determined altitude in the fail safe mode?

DCGOO · Mar 28, 2015

Atom said:
Hi guys, would like to share what i observed today when my I1 lost the Video and Control link at around 2000+ft in range and 800ft in height. It went straight into failsafe mode. My transmitter was beeping in home mode activated with the No signal sign on the App. However, the bird simply beeline at the last known altitude. So should it have decended to the pre-determined altitude in the fail safe mode?

I don't believe so. It should ascend to the RTH altitude if it is low. If it is high, it will stay at that altitude, head for home and land. At least that is how I read the documentation, but I have not tried it.

Atom · Mar 28, 2015

DCGOO said:
I don't believe so. It should ascend to the RTH altitude if it is low. If it is high, it will stay at that altitude, head for home and land. At least that is how I read the documentation, but I have not tried it.

Thanks. The first edition of my I1 manual didn't state that. Already downloaded the latest. Thanks again! So it did as per advertised.

White Airwolf · Mar 28, 2015

Why are you flying 2000 feet away? Totally not needed.

Airwolf13 · Mar 28, 2015

Where exactly did you get the 'new' version of the manual' The DJI site shows '1.0'

Atom said:
Thanks. The first edition of my I1 manual didn't state that. Already downloaded the latest. Thanks again! So it did as per advertised.

Atom · Mar 29, 2015

White Airwolf said:
Why are you flying 2000 feet away? Totally not needed.

What do you mean when you said totally not needed?

Atom · Mar 29, 2015

Airwolf13 said:
Where exactly did you get the 'new' version of the manual' The DJI site shows '1.0'

I previously had a copy downloaded within the app. Only recently re-download it after it says "New" under the Academy section of the app.

340Cams · May 13, 2015

rimb05 said:
I had an unusual thing happen the other day and I'm wondering if it's a bug or intended behavior. I took off from the top of a building which was 80 feet tall. I then flew to another location and decended to an altitude of -50 feet (50 feet lower than the takeoff altitude). I lost signal at this point, and the inspire went into failsafe RTH. However, instead of climbing up to the RTH altitude (I have this set to 60 meters), it flew straight home (and almost crashed into a tree . Since I have my RTH set to 60 meters, I assume it should have ascended to 60 meters above my takeoff point first before coming home, but it didn't do that for some reason.

Could it be that the higher takeoff altitude confused it?

It appears that the default RTH altitude is 60' and non-adjustable. I believe the setting we are seeing in the app is a misunderstanding. One would think that the operator should be able to adjust this parameter based on geographical location. Mountainous states vers Florida. Trees in both these locations differ substantially.
Perhaps it might be a bit naive of me to think that DJI pays attention to they're customers and may actually make this important safety feature available in the next firmware upgrade....perhaps even add the waypoints which this drone was advertised with.

Quadpilot · May 13, 2015

340Cams said:
It appears that the default RTH altitude is 60' and non-adjustable. I believe the setting we are seeing in the app is a misunderstanding. One would think that the operator should be able to adjust this parameter based on geographical location. Mountainous states vers Florida. Trees in both these locations differ substantially.
Perhaps it might be a bit naive of me to think that DJI pays attention to they're customers and may actually make this important safety feature available in the next firmware upgrade....perhaps even add the waypoints which this drone was advertised with.

RTH height is adjustable in the app.