Crashed my mini the other day while surveying our land. (Before I joined this forum). It was almost dark and I didn't know about the Find My Drone feature. So after searching fruitlessly for about 45 minutes I went home, (30 minute trip). Got home and discovered this feature, turned around and went right back. Now it's dark and I'm wandering around the woods and climbing up and down ravines that I wouldn't do in the daylight, but here I am doing it at night. I wandered around for about 2 hours struggling to make heads or tails of the feature, (I thought that the drone location was me and I kept getting farther away). I finally got it right but it's last known location apeared to either be across a deep creek which I wasn't going to attempt to cross at night, or else in the creek, in which case it was gone. Next morning I was out there early and found the location, but no drone. Looked for about an hour and headed home for some help. I came back with one of my sons and "together", he found the drone!!! I had given up, convinced it landed in the fast moving water and was long gone. He had it in his head that it tried to "return home" after losing the signal and kept as best he could on that path.  In the end it seems that I switched phones so that I was not using my main phone as a moniter, the 2nd phone, an older model, I didn't update the "return home" altitude. I assumed all that stuff was in the controller, not in the phone app. So while I had set altitude at 1000' in main phone, it defaulted to 65' in the new phone and few right into a tree. Thankfully no real damage, but hit the tree or the ground hard enough to knock the battery out so it wouldnt respond to any attempts to reconnect.

Thankfully you got the drone back with no major damages, lesson learnt there I'm sure about your settings in the app.

Keep in mind that the Find My Drone feature really only works for up to 3 hours (full drone battery). Prorate that according to the charge left in the battery, so maybe only 30 minutes or less. That is why I now always use a cheap strobe light that lasts 72 hours by itself, even in the daytime. It must be a cheap low power one though, because the best brighter ones last much shorter times.

glad you found your drone but it sounds like you still haven't figured out how to use find my drone.  ah, but what does it matter, you have your drone  back now.  no need to learn a feature you don't need right now, huh?  so you set rth altitude to 1000' do you live in such an area with high mountains?  that's a long way for mini to fly up into the high winds and struggle to come home if it doesn't have to, are you aware of the risks?  prob not.  as suggested put a strobe light on your drone. guaranteed you won't walk around in the woods all night looking for it, you can see it flashing a mile away.  and think about vifly beacon, you can hear those in the woods at night, too.  people so underestimate how difficult it is to find a crashed drone in the woods.

Lucky you got it back,  

The Saint Posted at 4-23 19:29
glad you found your drone but it sounds like you still haven't figured out how to use find my drone.  ah, but what does it matter, you have your drone  back now.  no need to learn a feature you don't need right now, huh?  so you set rth altitude to 1000' do you live in such an area with high mountains?  that's a long way for mini to fly up into the high winds and struggle to come home if it doesn't have to, are you aware of the risks?  prob not.  as suggested put a strobe light on your drone. guaranteed you won't walk around in the woods all night looking for it, you can see it flashing a mile away.  and think about vifly beacon, you can hear those in the woods at night, too.  people so underestimate how difficult it is to find a crashed drone in the woods.

Actually, by the time that night was over, I think I have figured out how to use this feature. Regarding the elevation, yes, it's excessive and I've lowered it to 400'. I do live in a "mountainous" area, so depending on where the home point is, and given the terrain and trees, I should still be above them, but not WAY above them.

Here's a photo I took of the monitor. Wasn't sure what would happen when I turned it all off. So I took that as a way to remember the last view.

Really glad you got the drone back.  Since day 1 I have always used a strobe light.  Sure makes it easier to find when needed.  

Hi,

Do notice that the find my drone feature uses the last recorded lat lon data, so very usefull if you have to land your drone yourself far out and thus know the place where it has landed.

Loosing connection normally means that a drone will enter RTH mode, depending on the type it will fly back 50 meters then return direct home, or it will fly direct home.

If a drone cannot fight the wind in RTH it will drift backwards....for great distance if the batt is full of juice...

cheers
JJB

GaryDoug Posted at 4-23 19:09
Keep in mind that the Find My Drone feature really only works for up to 3 hours (full drone battery). Prorate that according to the charge left in the battery, so maybe only 30 minutes or less. That is why I now always use a cheap strobe light that lasts 72 hours by itself, even in the daytime. It must be a cheap low power one though, because the best brighter ones last much shorter times.

Hey Gary, I am pretty sure you have linked the "cheap" strobe that you use that lasts for days, but might want to link it here again.  I should add one of those myself.  When I fly at night, I put strobes on, but they are only good for a few hours - but damn they're bright.

K6CCC Posted at 4-24 08:40
Hey Gary, I am pretty sure you have linked the "cheap" strobe that you use that lasts for days, but might want to link it here again.  I should add one of those myself.  When I fly at night, I put strobes on, but they are only good for a few hours - but damn they're bright.

I tried finding them on eBay again, but no luck. It seems that they have been replaced by others that are unknown to me. I did order a few to test them but I also found the old ones that I referenced above on AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/ ... .0.0.68835cfdPUMTmN

Interesting - they are only showing 2 hours of battery life on that one.

K6CCC Posted at 4-24 11:58
Interesting - they are only showing 2 hours of battery life on that one.

I know. That is why I tested it....72 hours until it quit. The light output will decrease with time but I could still see it at 100 feet in the dark after about 65 hours. At least 300 feet after 48 hours, Initial distance was over 1/2 mile in flight, I did not go farther that night.

I flew again today, not long into the flight, and out of site, but only trees between us, maybe 1/2 mile away, it began to experience signal loss. I brought it home, recalibrated the gimbal and flew again. (there was a prompt running across the screen saying that if the gimbal was out it would use a lot more battery). Anyways, same thing. Why can't I get farther than that?

Trees eat microwave energy for lunch.  Once the signal has to pass through trees to get back to you, you will VERY QUICKLY lose signal.
Basic physics.

Ok, I didn't know that. I suppose that's what happened initially when I lost the drone the other day. Today I was more attentive to the screen.  There's a lot going on when you're trying to play AND learn all at the same time!

Sorry you had a crash, but glad you got your machine back . . . phewwww!!

Amazon cheap strobes: https://www.amazon.com/RCGEEK-Co ... 59011_t1_B08P7GTHDY

Hi Dark Horse, glad to hear that you managed to get the drone back in one piece, most people in this thread have given some good advice, especially with the strobe lights, what I would say is that if you can’ create a small text document that you can add some details to, in this document you can add an email address as well as a mobile phone number along with info on possibly being a reward if returned, also, if you format the sd card, then you will have to add the text document back into the sd card.

Agree with Mark.  I have a P-Touch label on the top of my Mini with my E-Mail and phone number.  On each uSD card there are five files in the root directory.  Four of them have have some piece of information as the filename, and the same information as the text of the file.  For example, one of the files is named:  Cellphone 626-xxx-yyyy.txt - obviously with the actual phone number.  That way someone does not even have to open the file to find my phone number.  Only look at the listing of files.  If they do open the file, the text is:
My cellphone number is:  626-xxx-yyyy

If you are reading this file, you must have found my drone.  Please call me.

Thanks

Jim


There are similar files for my home address, E-Mail address, and office phone number.
The fifth file is named:  You Found Me.txt, and had all the information.

In other words, I want to give anyone who finds my Mini plenty of opportunity to be able to reach me.
Obviously that does not help if the drone is stuck 100 feet up a tree

Mark117h and K6CCC, that's a great idea! I will do that, that's not something that I ever thought of, thanks.

GaryDoug Posted at 4-25 06:18
Amazon cheap strobes: https://www.amazon.com/RCGEEK-Compatible-Phantom-Aircraft-YuneecTyphoon/dp/B07CNL2TJ7/ref=psdc_6925959011_t1_B08P7GTHDY

I bought a pair of these.  Charged them up and turned them on while sitting on my desk with a video camera pointed at them so if they went off while I was not around, I could look at the video to see when they quit.  When I went to bed last night, there were still almost as bright as they had been been when I started them about 30 hours earlier.  This morning, both were obviously much dimmer, but still flashing.  I finally turned one of them off after 42 hours 10 minutes because it was dim enough that at night, you would almost have to be standing on top of it to see it - and totally useless in daylight.  The other one is still going, but I am assuming that it will be done within the hour.  I point out that this was in the double flash mode.  I will repeat the test in single flash mode after i change them both back up.  I assume they will last longer in single flash mode.

K6CCC Posted at 4-29 09:07
I bought a pair of these.  Charged them up and turned them on while sitting on my desk with a video camera pointed at them so if they went off while I was not around, I could look at the video to see when they quit.  When I went to bed last night, there were still almost as bright as they had been been when I started them about 30 hours earlier.  This morning, both were obviously much dimmer, but still flashing.  I finally turned one of them off after 42 hours 10 minutes because it was dim enough that at night, you would almost have to be standing on top of it to see it - and totally useless in daylight.  The other one is still going, but I am assuming that it will be done within the hour.  I point out that this was in the double flash mode.  I will repeat the test in single flash mode after i change them both back up.  I assume they will last longer in single flash mode.

I think I had mine set to single flash, but not sure. I have some of the newer ones so will be testing them soon, but they have a much smaller (coin) battery so not likely as long.