I am planning my first large area flight with my L2.  it will be about 3 sets of batteries. I have not seen on other missions that it prompts to change batteries.  What is the proper procedure to get the drone to return home so i can change the batteries while also recording the LIDAR data properly with calibration

Thanks

When you "pause" the mission, it 'll re-calibrate prior to resume. In short : start mission, pause when you need/want to, come back, swap batteries, take off, resume, ... repeat.

In theory AR's description is correct, that's how it happens.

In practice, sometimes, often, Terra only produces the second part of the flight plan. Everything that is done before the battery swap is on the SD card, all the files are there, but nothing comes out of Terra. No error message. You just have to curl up in a ball, cry, and go back to do another flight.

I did the test this afternoon after seeing your post, and bingo the problem occurred. Below the black part is the first flight before battery swap, blank point cloud.

To overcome this problem, I cut the surface with the "search grid" QGIS function. I make squares that stick to the flight time of a battery according to the overlap/altitude ratio. Which only generates complete flights without pause. Between each flight I do a battery swap, I do not restart the drone. So far I have never had a problem with this method.


This is quite convenient because it has another advantage, the point clouds are smaller, their processing and display is much faster.
Another advantage for me is that I can physically move the takeoff point and therefore ensure VLOS throughout the project.

I manage to recover the missing point cloud... with the OBS file of a base station located 56km away. The only thing that bothers it is that the station is more than 15km away, and that can have an impact on the accuracy. This software is a joke !



*| Preparation of instructions
Preparation. The basic line of the station is 15 km away. It's about what you're saying about your recollection.

interesting thanks for the input. to be sure i may end up splitting my flight plan into 3 seperate battery missions. I would feel more comfortable with that. Just get some useless overlap is all but i will take that over going back