- Joined
- Apr 30, 2016
- Messages
- 24
- Reaction score
- 8
- Age
- 55
Fourth time out with my DJI Phantom 4 and I had a fly away. I've been very careful about getting used to the drone and building up my skills. This time I was starting to use the intelligent flight modes. I successfully used several of them, and was circling a point of interest when I decided to use "follow me"
I had been circling at 36 feet but over the course of the point of interest mode it had decayed to 28 feet. I didn't want to be too high if I had a problem. I was in a very wide open space - a golf course with no trees within several hundred feet.
I tried to enable follow me mode but the drone controller warned me I was below 10 meters. I increased my altitude just above 30 meters and tried to enable it again. When i hit it, the drone took off sideways rapidly running away. I tried to raise my altitude- no response. I tried to cancel follow me. No response. It left the golf course. Tried to frantically press return to home. No response and then I heard the impact in a tree. I was running with an IPhone 6s+ as the controller. I had a great gps fix and a very clear line of sight.
Video of the event here:
Flyaway starts just after 1:17 in the video. Note the video glitch when it goes into follow me mode. I was close to the drone, had good signal all day and had no other glitches. Did the cpu in the drone just barf? If you check the flight logs you can see it flies sideways in the flyaway. No hope for the collision avoidance to save it from the tree
Log uploaded to healthydrones here:
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters
Crash has creased the case. Broke a prop. Battery popped out. Some other scuffs and strains. Powers up and I was able to fly it briefly up to about 8 feet with a new prop. Didn't want to fly any significant amount until it is checked /repaired but had to know how bad this was.
Can anyone tell me what happened? What path do I take with DJI? This looked like a complete failure of the follow me capability in my shiny new drone.
Appreciate any insights.
Rob
I had been circling at 36 feet but over the course of the point of interest mode it had decayed to 28 feet. I didn't want to be too high if I had a problem. I was in a very wide open space - a golf course with no trees within several hundred feet.
I tried to enable follow me mode but the drone controller warned me I was below 10 meters. I increased my altitude just above 30 meters and tried to enable it again. When i hit it, the drone took off sideways rapidly running away. I tried to raise my altitude- no response. I tried to cancel follow me. No response. It left the golf course. Tried to frantically press return to home. No response and then I heard the impact in a tree. I was running with an IPhone 6s+ as the controller. I had a great gps fix and a very clear line of sight.
Video of the event here:
Flyaway starts just after 1:17 in the video. Note the video glitch when it goes into follow me mode. I was close to the drone, had good signal all day and had no other glitches. Did the cpu in the drone just barf? If you check the flight logs you can see it flies sideways in the flyaway. No hope for the collision avoidance to save it from the tree
Log uploaded to healthydrones here:
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters
Crash has creased the case. Broke a prop. Battery popped out. Some other scuffs and strains. Powers up and I was able to fly it briefly up to about 8 feet with a new prop. Didn't want to fly any significant amount until it is checked /repaired but had to know how bad this was.
Can anyone tell me what happened? What path do I take with DJI? This looked like a complete failure of the follow me capability in my shiny new drone.
Appreciate any insights.
Rob
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