Flyaway in "Follow me" mode

ZaqHydN · Apr 30, 2016

gtpark said:
Not a fly away since you were able to regain control. You should change the title.

as opposed to flying towards.. looks alot like it flew away.. just an observation.

BRENTHABBESHAW · Apr 30, 2016

Gpanek said:
I have a rather new P3A and was trying out the follow me mode, when the drone took off flying backwards. I hit the RTH button and it stopped and came back but I don't know what might have caused that. I was having difficulty reading the screen on my droid phone because of glare but I kept getting some kind of warning about altitude must be between 10m-120m, so I kept raising it and hit accept. Then it turned and shot backwards like a bat outta hell. Any ideas of what might have happened? here is the video

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You were flying way to close to a Cell Tower, don't you read you are not supposed too ! DaH, messed up you signal !

Gpanek · Apr 30, 2016

BRENTHABBESHAW said:
You were flying way to close to a Cell Tower, don't you read you are not supposed too ! DaH, messed up you signal !

Actually this is the city drone park where everyone goes to fly. problem was with the mobile device losing gps.

Gpanek · Apr 30, 2016

In looking at the fllight records, specifically the .kml file that shows the mission on google earth with notations, it shows this error right after going into followme mode:
Weak Mobile Device GPS Signal. Cannot Acquire Location Info. However, why it would then take off in an arbitrary direction, backwards, i dont know. Logs show that neither of the sticks were pushed, they remained in the neutral position. But apparently the reason for the flyaway was because the mobile device lost gps, which may have been due to the nearby tower, or not.

Petros5678 · Apr 30, 2016

BRENTHABBESHAW said:
You were flying way to close to a Cell Tower, don't you read you are not supposed too ! DaH, messed up you signal !

Upon closer exam. The tower is a not a cell tower but appears to be microwave, typical round antennas, second time viewing of the vid there is quiet a substantial distance from tower and they don't appear fixed in your takeoff direction. Dunno, microwave is about as close to your operating freq to make me very uncomfortable
These towers employ a fixed parabolic directional point to point antenna, you get into their little beam I'm sure you're UAV will not only confuse but will start to melt and fry

moto_jw · Apr 30, 2016

Gpanek said:
I have a rather new P3A and was trying out the follow me mode, when the drone took off flying backwards. I hit the RTH button and it stopped and came back but I don't know what might have caused that. I was having difficulty reading the screen on my droid phone because of glare but I kept getting some kind of warning about altitude must be between 10m-120m, so I kept raising it and hit accept. Then it turned and shot backwards like a bat outta hell. Any ideas of what might have happened? here is the video

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I wonder if that radio tower near you had something to do with the issue?

Pheonix7 · Apr 30, 2016

I have had times where my cell gps would place my location miles away briefly due to poor signal or aGPS error. Could have been attempting to reach what it thought was your gps fix. I could see the tower "jamming" the signal but not simulating tx to move away like that. I've experienced jamming due to rf interference (extra class ham radio operator), but I've yet to experience radio interference that simulated remote control commands unless frequencies are fairly close. Not saying it's impossible though.

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MrMcfly · Apr 30, 2016

Towers are bad... Problem with towers, and diagnosing the tower as the problem, is, was the tower transmitting at the time
the error occurred? As I said earlier... It MIGHT be the cause, it might not. I would recommend staying away from them.
BTW.... that tower could've interfered with the GPS signal on the phone/tablet... Not knowing what the transmission protocols,
strength, LOS, PLOS, ILOS distance to the matched antennae, all make a difference in how it MIGHT effect your P3, or any
signal needed to keep your quad under control. Just sayin'...

BRENTHABBESHAW · Apr 30, 2016

I agree, I was just making a hypothetical response to his question, why? and that made sense to me.

BRENTHABBESHAW · Apr 30, 2016

Gpanek said:
Actually this is the city drone park where everyone goes to fly. problem was with the mobile device losing gps.

Mobile devices are effected by cell/ microwave and even power lines. I just make it a habit to never fly by either.

m0j0 · Apr 30, 2016

Best explanation based on looking at the video is that the mobile device provided bad location information. IMO this isn't a flyaway at all. Phantom flew to where the device provided information. It took off straight to where the mobile device said it was... Which explains why it responded the way it did when the pilot cancelled the autonomous flight and flew it back. The path away seemed to be absolutely straight and direct.. It knew where it was going even if you didn't.

Holy mother of close calls though. One foot down and you be sending it in for repairs.

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Helijoc · Apr 30, 2016

When you do follow me pay attention to where the green dot is on the map. That is where the app thinks your controller is. I had the same results with follow me as my tablet could not get a good GPS fix and had me 75ft away from actual location. When I enabled follow me it zoomed off in the direction of the green dot. It stopped but scared me still the same. If your device is not showing accurate GPS beware of follow me

Gpanek · Apr 30, 2016

Except it was a follow from the starting position, if I am understanding it correctly. I did see in the flight report that mobile device GPS was lost.

Gpanek · Apr 30, 2016

Helijoc said:
When you do follow me pay attention to where the green dot is on the map. That is where the app thinks your controller is. I had the same results with follow me as my tablet could not get a good GPS fix and had me 75ft away from actual location. When I enabled follow me it zoomed off in the direction of the green dot. It stopped but scared me still the same. If your device is not showing accurate GPS beware of follow me

Excellent point! I will definitely look for that. At the time I could barely read my phone because of the glare, now fixed. However, why would it fly there backwards??

Gpanek · Apr 30, 2016

m0j0 said:
Best explanation based on looking at the video is that the mobile device provided bad location information. IMO this isn't a flyaway at all. Phantom flew to where the device provided information. It took off straight to where the mobile device said it was... Which explains why it responded the way it did when the pilot cancelled the autonomous flight and flew it back. The path away seemed to be absolutely straight and direct.. It knew where it was going even if you didn't.

Holy mother of close calls though. One foot down and you be sending it in for repairs.

Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app

But why would it fly to where it thought I was ... backwards? Seems like it was in Course Lock instead... but that didnt show up in the logs.

Helijoc · Apr 30, 2016

Gpanek said:
Excellent point! I will definitely look for that. At the time I could barely read my phone because of the glare, now fixed. However, why would it fly there backwards??

Might just be the flight logic.

Petros5678 · Apr 30, 2016

Gpanek said:
Except it was a follow from the starting position, if I am understanding it correctly. I did see in the flight report that mobile device GPS was lost.

U can drift at that speed after losing uav gps. One word. "Inertia".

Meta4 · Apr 30, 2016

Helijoc said:
When you do follow me pay attention to where the green dot is on the map. That is where the app thinks your controller is. I had the same results with follow me as my tablet could not get a good GPS fix and had me 75ft away from actual location. When I enabled follow me it zoomed off in the direction of the green dot. It stopped but scared me still the same. If your device is not showing accurate GPS beware of follow me

Gpanek said:
Excellent point! I will definitely look for that. At the time I could barely read my phone because of the glare, now fixed. However, why would it fly there backwards??

Helijoc's post exactly summarises what the flight logs show.
As for why was your Phantom flying backwards, it was in follow-me mode rather than P-GPS.
Replaying the flight in the app should show this clearly.
And for all the suggestions that the communications tower was in some way responsible, in this case there is zero evidence to support that.
The Phantom flew perfectly in both directions and responded to you cancelling follow me and initiating RTH.

Interference might affect your flight, but it won't make the Phantom fly away somewhere else.
The most likely result of interference affecting control would be for the Phantom to simply come home because the contro signal was swamped.

m0j0 · May 1, 2016

Gpanek said:
But why would it fly to where it thought I was ... backwards? Seems like it was in Course Lock instead... but that didnt show up in the logs.

I'm not sure because I don't use that mode. Would be something that you could replicate by putting it in a hover and walking behind it a ways.. Then engage the follow me mode.

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Petros5678 · May 1, 2016

You entered follow me mode 2 minutes into flight, And stayed at slow speed and relatively close, you entered follow me mode at 6 minutes again and it took off at relatively fast speed, i assume that is the video event you posted. So at onset follow me mode didn't cause uav to take off. Seems you had healthy gps fix on mobile device. Yea definitely interference from towers. Bummer, fly it somewhere else next time?