My first ever drone flight I didn't realize I needed to charge the controller lmao. I lost connection while my Atom was 3 miles away. My heart sank as I can't pay $400 for one flight....a few minutes later my drone landed 2 feet from where it had taken off, by itself....so very thankful for that feature! I'm now two weeks in and flying every day...love this Atom as no geofencing....will be grabbing a couple of DJI's next tho as folks love em. I'm way out in the country and have plenty of land so geofencing shouldn't be a problem either way. Happy flying!
The "Find My Drone" features you outlined are a huge improvement over earlier OS versions. I lost my Phantom 3 standard while flying over some farm areas one day. But I didn't lose communication immediately. It was flying normally then suddenly it was spinning out of control. The video was unwatchable because everything was just spinning. Then when the device crashed, the app showed the last frame of video - which was a horse paddock on a nearby farm. So I went there and got permission to look for it from the land owner and found it in pretty bad shape. Based on what I found, it appears that one propeller had become detached causing it to lose control. Thankfully, DJI repair services got things sorted pretty quickly.
This exact thing happened to me. That's why i researched this. Why the hell would they program the drone to fly right when there isn't gps connection. It should brake and hover in place. I think this is done on purpose.
The thing is, control signal and video signal are different things. When you lose video feed, unless you're flying VLOS, you're flying blind - BUT you're still flying. So your stick input works, but your video feed is gone. So, no conspiracy here, it's just that when video is gone, most people assume control is also gone. Evrntually you might lose control, but there is usually some time elapsed between the two.
@@olabergvall3154 I got the footage. I lost video feed and GPS at the same time. I always let go when this happens. Footage from the drone shows that it stopped for a few seconds and continued to fly right for almost a minutes full speed until it crashed on a side of a mall. All within line of sight less than 500ft from me. How i go from 21 full GPS bars to none in an instant. Sent it out for warranty repair and DJI told me quoting from the email: "Weak/No GPS Signal: If the drone is flying in an area with no/low GPS signal coverage, such as indoors or in urban canyons, it may struggle to maintain a GPS signal which can cause the drone to lose its position or drift right and may not respond as normally in strong GPS signal. According to your flight data, the incident was caused by non-manufacturing factors." Now i'm forced to use one of my DJI care refresh on my Air 3. I usually just repair if the quote is under $150. This phenomenon can be different for others because a friend of mine his Mavic 3 Pro just fell out the sky when he lost GPS and video. They honored free repair in his case though.
Thats strange. I have a Mavic 2, had 2 cases of exactly this halpening: drone losing connection to RC. DJI has that option if the drone loses connection to RTH or elevate to a set height and then RTH in order not to crash. In both cases this feature worked and the drone landed from where it took off.
I used Litchi to fly my older DJI drones on fully autonomous waypoint missions, and on numerous occasions, smart RTH has brought the drone back due to low battery, most often with the turnaround occurring far beyond RC signal range.
Flying a Mavic 3 pro but not having the expected control, Sports mode, into tree tops.. This is the recovery of the drone. One pair of props changed, nothing more. More videos published in the beginning of September 2023. Still flying all good. There was no change to "Find my drone". Manual action was used, but it worked. Time for remaining battery, only needed for the drone to blink and beep, at command. Good You found Your drone! Looked like unharmed. Never rely on obstacle avoidance! It cuts out when light goes low! Be the pilot!
Hi bro I've been encountering this issues with My mini 3 sometimes but it returns back to home by itself. It's can't connect again until about some days before it reconnect again. What do you think? Is hardware or software issue since my firmware is up to current update. Anyway it's a nice information Big up ❤ Welbeck here from Accra Ghana west Africa
Oh man, no idea but sounds like you should send an email to DJI support. If that happened to me I would guess some kind of hardware failure OR wireless interference. Can you switch your drone to dual band and then single band to see if one is better than the other. Sorry, I can’t give better suggestions. Cheers.
During a crash, the battery may become disconnected. Looks like you were very lucky to have found it. A very small Apple Airtag may have helped find it.
An AirTag is a brilliant idea! That would help if someone found it and picked it up long after the drone battery went dead! I’m going to buy one and tape it on from now on. Thanks!
Good comment about the battery becoming disconnected in a crash. 3 out of the 3 crashes - slow learner I know! - I’ve had with my Mini 2 resulted in the battery disconnecting from the drone meaning I couldn’t use the “Find my drone” flash & beep feature nor could the drone reconnect when I got closer to it. Thankfully after a very worrying 1/2 hr or so I was able to locate the Mini2 visually on both occasions. I was extremely lucky to be able to do so, especially as one crash resulted in the drone being caught up in the branches of a tall tree requiring quite a climb to retrieve it.
@@ChanceSummeryou can even 3d print your own AirTag mount. I debated doing that but since my mini 4 is so small I think I’m just gonna double side tape the AirTag to the drone top. So long as it doesn’t interfere with GPS or vision cameras. They see pretty small and thin those air tags and ultra light. 3m is gorilla double sided tape has like a 15lb pull rating so it won’t go nowhere
Glad you recovered your drone. My bigest fear when flying my Mini 3, Mini 3 Pro or my Mavice 3 is that it'll go down somewhere and that I can't find it. Thanks for the post. Probably, the troll that lives in the cabin at the end of that river, used an EMP to knock it outta the air. 'Cause, remember: ua-cam.com/video/fwPP0wL6k7c/v-deo.htmlsi=zVVCB_imQcUe1msx (but not drones). And remember what Ken Heron says: "Trees are dicks." LOL... . Cheers, Chuck (NE Florida) My bigest fear when flying my Mini 3, Mini 3 Pro and my Mavice 3 is that it'll go down somewhere and that I can't find it.
lol. Thanks for the note! 😁. The way the drone video feed suddenly disappeared off the RC I actually was worried a goose or eagle (big angry bird) knocked it out of the sky). The whole reason I was in that area was because I was filming the goose (as seen in the video). Bird karma.
Thanks for the question. My drone is set for RTH at 100m height. But, what I’ve learned from this experience and help from the community is that you’ll lose visual communication first, it will then warn of a bad connection but still take input, so be careful not to fly around, other than up, at that point. The drone won’t return for 5 seconds after losing complete connection so, within that time it will likely be executing your last received command - mine was bank right (lateral movement), and with no sensors on the sides of Mini 3 Pro it hit a tree before returning home. So, be very careful if it starts to lose connection or the video lags, it won’t instantly RTH it will just keep doing what you told it before it lost connection. Cheers.
This is a beneficial procedure that I wish I'd known to do when my Mavic 1 Pro went AWOL during a 10-mile round-trip Litchi waypoint mission. I rushed to the last known location with the smart device but WITHOUT taking along the drone's remote controller. I never did find that drone. It sleeps with the fishes now, thanks to my own ignorance.
Oh no 😟. You are the second person to mention Litchi, I’ll have to check it out. And the best tip I’ve gotten in the replies is to tape an Apple Air Tag on the drone. Cheers.
@@ChanceSummer The Litchi Mission Hub is free to download and use, so you can start planning flights without even spending the $25 for the phone app that you will need to fly those saved missions. I routinely send my drone on 7-mile round-trip missions of 23 minutes duration while I relax indoors with the controller switched off until 5 minutes before the drone is due back when I step outside to land it manually. The best $25 I ever spent was on the Litchi app. Flown over 3,000 miles under Litchi control thus far with all my older DJI drones.
A couple of things - In the settings, safety tab, near the bottom is your RTH options, Hover, Return or Land. Most of the time this should be set to Return. But remember, when you first lose video feed, you still have control of your drone, so any stick inputs will move your drone accordingly! Best thing is to leave the sticks, unless you know going higher is safe, generally gaining altitude might reconnect your video feed. Or bring the drone backwards towards you, again if you know it is safe to do so. When you loae connection a few seconds later it will say RC signal lost then it should auto return, if not press the RTH button.
Excellent information! I love the DJI community. I turned on my remote, and the drone, went to the 3 dots on the video feed screen, clicked on Safety and then Advanced Safety Settings, and confirmed I’m on RTH. So, I guess I was just unlucky that before the drone realized it had lost connection and before it went to auto RTH it executed my last command - bank right - and crashed. It was just a quick movement of the right stick though - can see it on flight recorder - it was not continuous. So I know the drone lost connection AND still continued to execute the command instead of immediately stopping. With all of this awesome information and help I’m going to run some tests (I’ll video them) to see how long the drone has to be out of contact before it auto-RTH. This will give us an idea of how long it will execute the last command received before stopping. All that said, I’m really happy with all the additional Find My Drone features this thing has. Saved mine. Cheers.
@@ChanceSummer Also it's worth checking RTH altitude is set correctly for your location. Ideally you want it set to clear the tallest object between you and your drone. Don't set it too high because if it's windy and you're on low battery, it will climb to the height you set using precious juice and fight stronger winds probably leading to not making it back home! I added your channel, it's always good to connect with other drone pilots.
@@pdtech4524 Nice! I never thought about changing the RTH altitude every time I fly. I had it set at 100m from my first flight. I’ll pay more attention now. It’s interesting to note because I was flying in a river valley (below where I took off) I was at -19m when crashed.
@@ChanceSummer Yes the telemetry is always relative to your position. So where you launch from is your 0m altitude, if you fly down into a valley you'll get a negative altitude reading. So just be careful how you set your RTH altitude, I usually set mine to clear the highest tree 🌳 like 35m and remember it will fly back in a straight line to you. Your drone has obstacle avoidance, it's a good idea to use that around trees etc.
Not if it crashes first. Haha. 🤣 but yes, it things go well and it is set to RTH on the settings it should. There is also the option to set it to hover or land.
@@ChanceSummer I know, but you should have it set up to rth unless ur on a bot or something, but it shouldnt crash and then hover??? Or maybe I just mis understood something in the video.
Great question. In my case, retune to home (RTH) was not an option on the screen when the aircraft lost connectivity. No way to tell the aircraft to do that with no connection I guess. You are right though, it would be good programming to have the drone do that by default if it loses connection. But maybe it’s because mine crashed when it lost connection so it had no chance to do this. I’m too scared to test that theory but maybe i could try in an open field hovering a foot off the ground and then walk very far away from it to see? Ya, I think I’ll give that a try! Thanks for the idea.
@@ChanceSummer The drone was supposed to return home after losing connection with the remote control. Was the setting correct in the application? If the setting was correct, you need to see why it did not return home. Were the sensors activated?
@ChanceSummer what about the RTH altitude. It was supposed to fly up to your RTH altitude and start move towards to home point. The last footage looks like it moved straight to somewhere not flying up.
@@HaminLee-hr1hu this is a good call out as well. My RTH is set at 100m (metres). But I was flying in a valley (below where I took off) so the remote shows it at -19m when it lost contact. It is possible I suppose the drone was trying to RTH but was confused by altitude. I would have to test this to see what it does. I suspect it would just go up until +100m though.
My first ever drone flight I didn't realize I needed to charge the controller lmao. I lost connection while my Atom was 3 miles away. My heart sank as I can't pay $400 for one flight....a few minutes later my drone landed 2 feet from where it had taken off, by itself....so very thankful for that feature! I'm now two weeks in and flying every day...love this Atom as no geofencing....will be grabbing a couple of DJI's next tho as folks love em. I'm way out in the country and have plenty of land so geofencing shouldn't be a problem either way. Happy flying!
what was your RTH altitude set at? looks like it attempted to return but the altitude was set too low
Was thinking the same thing :)
The "Find My Drone" features you outlined are a huge improvement over earlier OS versions. I lost my Phantom 3 standard while flying over some farm areas one day. But I didn't lose communication immediately. It was flying normally then suddenly it was spinning out of control. The video was unwatchable because everything was just spinning. Then when the device crashed, the app showed the last frame of video - which was a horse paddock on a nearby farm. So I went there and got permission to look for it from the land owner and found it in pretty bad shape. Based on what I found, it appears that one propeller had become detached causing it to lose control.
Thankfully, DJI repair services got things sorted pretty quickly.
Could you have put a tracking chip on the drone other than the drone itself? Like they put on E-Bikes and cars.
The controller has a RTH button?
Yes but it's no good if you lose connection to the controller like he did. 🤔
I thought if you lose connection the drone will fly back to its last home point 🤔
Great info thanks for sharing and glad you got your drone back. People think drones are a toy but that is far from the truth.
the trees filled with water and snow that blocks signal, very good info, thanks !
This exact thing happened to me. That's why i researched this. Why the hell would they program the drone to fly right when there isn't gps connection. It should brake and hover in place. I think this is done on purpose.
The thing is, control signal and video signal are different things. When you lose video feed, unless you're flying VLOS, you're flying blind - BUT you're still flying. So your stick input works, but your video feed is gone.
So, no conspiracy here, it's just that when video is gone, most people assume control is also gone. Evrntually you might lose control, but there is usually some time elapsed between the two.
@@olabergvall3154 I got the footage. I lost video feed and GPS at the same time. I always let go when this happens. Footage from the drone shows that it stopped for a few seconds and continued to fly right for almost a minutes full speed until it crashed on a side of a mall. All within line of sight less than 500ft from me. How i go from 21 full GPS bars to none in an instant. Sent it out for warranty repair and DJI told me quoting from the email:
"Weak/No GPS Signal: If the drone is flying in an area with no/low GPS signal coverage, such as indoors or in urban canyons, it may struggle to maintain a GPS signal which can cause the drone to lose its position or drift right and may not respond as normally in strong GPS signal. According to your flight data, the incident was caused by non-manufacturing factors."
Now i'm forced to use one of my DJI care refresh on my Air 3. I usually just repair if the quote is under $150.
This phenomenon can be different for others because a friend of mine his Mavic 3 Pro just fell out the sky when he lost GPS and video. They honored free repair in his case though.
@@olabergvall3154 Thanks for this information! Lots of great info and tips came out of this experience. Cheers
Nice demonstration of the find my drone feature
Thats strange. I have a Mavic 2, had 2 cases of exactly this halpening: drone losing connection to RC. DJI has that option if the drone loses connection to RTH or elevate to a set height and then RTH in order not to crash. In both cases this feature worked and the drone landed from where it took off.
I used Litchi to fly my older DJI drones on fully autonomous waypoint missions, and on numerous occasions, smart RTH has brought the drone back due to low battery, most often with the turnaround occurring far beyond RC signal range.
Shouldn't it have entered RTH when signal was lost?
I am watching this while trying to build FPV Drone.
Flying a Mavic 3 pro but not having the expected control, Sports mode, into tree tops..
This is the recovery of the drone. One pair of props changed, nothing more.
More videos published in the beginning of September 2023.
Still flying all good.
There was no change to "Find my drone". Manual action was used, but it worked. Time for remaining battery, only needed for the drone to blink and beep, at command.
Good You found Your drone! Looked like unharmed.
Never rely on obstacle avoidance! It cuts out when light goes low! Be the pilot!
you mean its possible to buy 'real' drones without a bit of software to do 'return to launch point'.... wow brilliant lol.
Hi bro I've been encountering this issues with My mini 3 sometimes but it returns back to home by itself.
It's can't connect again until about some days before it reconnect again. What do you think? Is hardware or software issue since my firmware is up to current update.
Anyway it's a nice information Big up ❤
Welbeck here from Accra Ghana west Africa
Oh man, no idea but sounds like you should send an email to DJI support. If that happened to me I would guess some kind of hardware failure OR wireless interference. Can you switch your drone to dual band and then single band to see if one is better than the other. Sorry, I can’t give better suggestions. Cheers.
During a crash, the battery may become disconnected.
Looks like you were very lucky to have found it.
A very small Apple Airtag may have helped find it.
An AirTag is a brilliant idea! That would help if someone found it and picked it up long after the drone battery went dead! I’m going to buy one and tape it on from now on. Thanks!
Good comment about the battery becoming disconnected in a crash. 3 out of the 3 crashes - slow learner I know! - I’ve had with my Mini 2 resulted in the battery disconnecting from the drone meaning I couldn’t use the “Find my drone” flash & beep feature nor could the drone reconnect when I got closer to it. Thankfully after a very worrying 1/2 hr or so I was able to locate the Mini2 visually on both occasions. I was extremely lucky to be able to do so, especially as one crash resulted in the drone being caught up in the branches of a tall tree requiring quite a climb to retrieve it.
@@ChanceSummeryou can even 3d print your own AirTag mount. I debated doing that but since my mini 4 is so small I think I’m just gonna double side tape the AirTag to the drone top. So long as it doesn’t interfere with GPS or vision cameras. They see pretty small and thin those air tags and ultra light. 3m is gorilla double sided tape has like a 15lb pull rating so it won’t go nowhere
Glad you recovered your drone. My bigest fear when flying my Mini 3, Mini 3 Pro or my Mavice 3 is that it'll go down somewhere and that I can't find it. Thanks for the post.
Probably, the troll that lives in the cabin at the end of that river, used an EMP to knock it outta the air. 'Cause, remember: ua-cam.com/video/fwPP0wL6k7c/v-deo.htmlsi=zVVCB_imQcUe1msx (but not drones). And remember what Ken Heron says: "Trees are dicks." LOL... . Cheers, Chuck (NE Florida)
My bigest fear when flying my Mini 3, Mini 3 Pro and my Mavice 3 is that it'll go down somewhere and that I can't find it.
lol. Thanks for the note! 😁. The way the drone video feed suddenly disappeared off the RC I actually was worried a goose or eagle (big angry bird) knocked it out of the sky). The whole reason I was in that area was because I was filming the goose (as seen in the video). Bird karma.
I always fly at least 20 feet above trees never near tree level at all!!!
... or just set it to RTH on lost signal and stay put.
Why didnt you have it to return to home. It should just auto come back to you if it loses connection with your remote or phone.
Thanks for the question. My drone is set for RTH at 100m height. But, what I’ve learned from this experience and help from the community is that you’ll lose visual communication first, it will then warn of a bad connection but still take input, so be careful not to fly around, other than up, at that point. The drone won’t return for 5 seconds after losing complete connection so, within that time it will likely be executing your last received command - mine was bank right (lateral movement), and with no sensors on the sides of Mini 3 Pro it hit a tree before returning home. So, be very careful if it starts to lose connection or the video lags, it won’t instantly RTH it will just keep doing what you told it before it lost connection. Cheers.
This is a beneficial procedure that I wish I'd known to do when my Mavic 1 Pro went AWOL during a 10-mile round-trip Litchi waypoint mission. I rushed to the last known location with the smart device but WITHOUT taking along the drone's remote controller. I never did find that drone. It sleeps with the fishes now, thanks to my own ignorance.
Oh no 😟. You are the second person to mention Litchi, I’ll have to check it out. And the best tip I’ve gotten in the replies is to tape an Apple Air Tag on the drone. Cheers.
@@ChanceSummer The Litchi Mission Hub is free to download and use, so you can start planning flights without even spending the $25 for the phone app that you will need to fly those saved missions.
I routinely send my drone on 7-mile round-trip missions of 23 minutes duration while I relax indoors with the controller switched off until 5 minutes before the drone is due back when I step outside to land it manually. The best $25 I ever spent was on the Litchi app. Flown over 3,000 miles under Litchi control thus far with all my older DJI drones.
Lands on a Bear's Head...lol 🐻?
Listen or he will Oscar slap you😂
👋😐
A couple of things -
In the settings, safety tab, near the bottom is your RTH options, Hover, Return or Land.
Most of the time this should be set to Return.
But remember, when you first lose video feed, you still have control of your drone, so any stick inputs will move your drone accordingly!
Best thing is to leave the sticks, unless you know going higher is safe, generally gaining altitude might reconnect your video feed.
Or bring the drone backwards towards you, again if you know it is safe to do so.
When you loae connection a few seconds later it will say RC signal lost then it should auto return, if not press the RTH button.
Excellent information! I love the DJI community. I turned on my remote, and the drone, went to the 3 dots on the video feed screen, clicked on Safety and then Advanced Safety Settings, and confirmed I’m on RTH. So, I guess I was just unlucky that before the drone realized it had lost connection and before it went to auto RTH it executed my last command - bank right - and crashed. It was just a quick movement of the right stick though - can see it on flight recorder - it was not continuous. So I know the drone lost connection AND still continued to execute the command instead of immediately stopping.
With all of this awesome information and help I’m going to run some tests (I’ll video them) to see how long the drone has to be out of contact before it auto-RTH. This will give us an idea of how long it will execute the last command received before stopping. All that said, I’m really happy with all the additional Find My Drone features this thing has. Saved mine. Cheers.
@@ChanceSummer Also it's worth checking RTH altitude is set correctly for your location.
Ideally you want it set to clear the tallest object between you and your drone.
Don't set it too high because if it's windy and you're on low battery, it will climb to the height you set using precious juice and fight stronger winds probably leading to not making it back home!
I added your channel, it's always good to connect with other drone pilots.
@@pdtech4524 Nice! I never thought about changing the RTH altitude every time I fly. I had it set at 100m from my first flight. I’ll pay more attention now. It’s interesting to note because I was flying in a river valley (below where I took off) I was at -19m when crashed.
@@ChanceSummer Yes the telemetry is always relative to your position.
So where you launch from is your 0m altitude, if you fly down into a valley you'll get a negative altitude reading.
So just be careful how you set your RTH altitude, I usually set mine to clear the highest tree 🌳 like 35m and remember it will fly back in a straight line to you.
Your drone has obstacle avoidance, it's a good idea to use that around trees etc.
The drone auto returns to home -_-
Not if it crashes first. Haha. 🤣 but yes, it things go well and it is set to RTH on the settings it should. There is also the option to set it to hover or land.
@@ChanceSummer I know, but you should have it set up to rth unless ur on a bot or something, but it shouldnt crash and then hover??? Or maybe I just mis understood something in the video.
What about RTH ?
Great question. In my case, retune to home (RTH) was not an option on the screen when the aircraft lost connectivity. No way to tell the aircraft to do that with no connection I guess. You are right though, it would be good programming to have the drone do that by default if it loses connection. But maybe it’s because mine crashed when it lost connection so it had no chance to do this. I’m too scared to test that theory but maybe i could try in an open field hovering a foot off the ground and then walk very far away from it to see? Ya, I think I’ll give that a try! Thanks for the idea.
@@ChanceSummer The drone was supposed to return home after losing connection with the remote control. Was the setting correct in the application? If the setting was correct, you need to see why it did not return home. Were the sensors activated?
@@mihaildorian thanks for the reply! I’ve confirmed it was set to RTH on Signal Lost. How do I check if sensors were active?
@ChanceSummer what about the RTH altitude. It was supposed to fly up to your RTH altitude and start move towards to home point. The last footage looks like it moved straight to somewhere not flying up.
@@HaminLee-hr1hu this is a good call out as well. My RTH is set at 100m (metres). But I was flying in a valley (below where I took off) so the remote shows it at -19m when it lost contact. It is possible I suppose the drone was trying to RTH but was confused by altitude. I would have to test this to see what it does. I suspect it would just go up until +100m though.