perryherndon
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United States
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I received no such warning. It said return to home initiated or something to that effect and went full boogie straight from one foot off of the ground (I watched the video) straight up into a tree that it hit as I was hitting the cancel button. There might have been a popup/countdown on the screen? (but I have read some threads that indicate that is not the case).
I guess all you guys stare at the screen when the aircraft is hovering mere feet in front of you? I was flying by sight... because it was low and right in front of me... which is common sense. Actually, I have never flown mine out of sight. I use line of sight for flight nearly exclusively ... like an RC plane, and only use the video to line up my camera shots, check my altitude, and see the view. I don't use the video to fly - especially not under those circumstances, so I would not have seen any silent popup warning that it was about to seppuku. All I heard was the same beep warning that I heard which led to me bringing it down low from the primary flight so a safe location for me to piddle... right up until the female voice said something about return to home and it fired straight up into a tree.
So, is it my fault? Yeah, I guess so... for not testing every possible way the thing might decide it knows better than me, take control, and wreck itself. I spent my time getting proficient with the aircraft, not becoming an expert in overriding bad failsafe implementations. I have never tested/used RTH, auto takeoff/auto land because I have never needed any of them. My fault was trusting the logic of the programmers too much - that an aircraft system that advertises features for flying low (and indoors) would not unexpectedly do this.
As far as control philosophy... I have no problem with the "feature" being included, but let me disable it in the app at my own discretion instead of making me play chicken with disaster if I want to use the end of my battery flying low to the ground right in front of me.
If you can turn it off, let me know how. I don't see where that is an option. I will turn it off for every flight where I don't intend to (irresponsibly?) send the thing a mile away out of sight (which would be every flight). I would be far more accepting of an event that I caused through my own irresponsibility compared to the easter egg gotcha, here let us help you with that problem you don't actually have, that I got yesterday.
Not a bad design? That's arguable. Someone went to a lot of trouble to include this so as to save the aircraft when there is a failure of the control system, operator error, or irresponsible flight and the battery is about to die. There are two examples in this thread (and many others if you search) of people without any of those issues having their aircraft commit hari kari in a vain attempt to save itself when it didn't need saving. I don't know how many a non-commanded, involuntary, low battery based RTH has saved one of these, but I bet the statistics aren't too glowing if you factor in the number of times that has led to a software knows better than you crash.
Examples:
This thread (2 cases).
http://forum.dji.com/thread-23055-1-1.html
http://www.phantompilots.com/thr ... rash-landing.47670/
http://www.phantompilots.com/thr ... first-flight.41427/
http://www.inspirepilots.com/thr ... rmware-v1-3-0.4737/
http://forum.dji.com/thread-35837-1-1.html
http://forum.dji.com/thread-32813-1-1.html
That was just with one quick search.
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