olpad Posted at 2017-2-25 14:40
Hi, I observed this issue with my Mavic Pro. I noticed that in ATTI mode the drone is extremely difficult to pilot. Decided to make an indoor experiment (no GPS) in weak light (no visual positioning). The sensors do not pick up any interference, but notice how the drone speeds up backwards with no manual input. After a second or two I tried to counter the movement using the move forward control, which is shown on the video if you look closely, but the drone hardly reacts. The video could be recorded with something better than an iPhone 6 camera, but that was too terryfing for me to risk repeating this experiment (perhaps after my bumpers arrive).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdFvsNgN12Y

"After a second or two I tried to counter the movement using the move forward control, which is shown on the video if you look closely, but the drone hardly reacts."

This is exactly the thing that worries me the most about the Mavic's ATTI behavior. Many users (including myself) have reported that when the Mavic enters ATTI mode, it just seems to not respond to RC commands. So many of us are simply told we didn't know how to fly it properly in ATTI mode, or that maybe we panicked on the controls, or that we under-estimated the winds at altitude. Well, your video seems to show quite clearly that it didn't respond very much to your command to move forward. It hardly pitched forward at all. How much forward stick were you giving it? It's a little hard to tell from the video, but your flight record playback can tell you exactly how much right stick you gave it.

olpad Posted at 2017-2-25 14:40
Hi, I observed this issue with my Mavic Pro. I noticed that in ATTI mode the drone is extremely difficult to pilot. Decided to make an indoor experiment (no GPS) in weak light (no visual positioning). The sensors do not pick up any interference, but notice how the drone speeds up backwards with no manual input. After a second or two I tried to counter the movement using the move forward control, which is shown on the video if you look closely, but the drone hardly reacts. The video could be recorded with something better than an iPhone 6 camera, but that was too terryfing for me to risk repeating this experiment (perhaps after my bumpers arrive).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdFvsNgN12Y

Maybe when trying to fly Atti indoors like that you have to take into account the whole draft the AC is generating , a better test might be to cover top of aircraft with some tinfoil blocking gps and turn of vision sensors outdoors to see if you can create a similar situation.

You also must see that when you pushed forward left stick the AC responded exactly as it should, so I don't buy what some are saying about Mavic not being responsive in Atti , it did exactly what you commanded and the IMU kept your aircraft horizontal until you put your hand under it.

Having said all that it's an awful mistake by dji not to have Atti on this AC this is a drone with substantial parts and really should have the ability to switch to Atti mode, but I'm thinking it a hardware fix so sadly I don't see it coming with this Mavic.

Has no one else noticed that if you are on this Forum and you talk about a Memory card fault or something else minor a DJI admin will comment usually.
If you talk about the ATTI Mode problem there is silence as they are well aware of the problem.
Its has happened to me twice with strong signal 19 Satellites then GPS Mode then out the blue ATTI and out of control.
This has happened since the latest firmware on the first day but not had any problems since but I don't trust it as its unpredictable
When it happens it seems to maintain altitude so I always ascend to a height above all surrounding objects first so when it happens you have a chance to try and limp it back or regain GPS Mode.
Also I never let the Battery go below 40% so I have a bit reserve to Wrestle it home

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-2-26 03:15
Maybe when trying to fly Atti indoors like that you have to take into account the whole draft the AC is generating , a better test might be to cover top of aircraft with some tinfoil blocking gps and turn of vision sensors outdoors to see if you can create a similar situation.

You also must see that when you pushed forward left stick the AC responded exactly as it should, so I don't buy what some are saying about Mavic not being responsive in Atti , it did exactly what you commanded and the IMU kept your aircraft horizontal until you put your hand under it.

I don't think it did react correctly. When the stick is pressed full forward (I was pressing it for about 0.5s), the drone is supposed to go forward, especially when there is very little wind involved. Here, it resulted in a minor hick-up while the drone was still going backwards (or at least it wasn't going visibly forward as it should). I do admit that in the video the action looks fast, but I had to react in time for the drone not to hit the wall. The experiment you are asking to perform is very risky, both indoors, where you can destroy something/hurt someone and outdoors where the drone may just fly away/crash into something. I would be grateful if someone felt comfortable enough to perform it in a more professional manner. Propeller cages would be ideal I suppose (but out of stock).

I found another video showing the issue. It's almost identical experience to mine, where I barely landed the aircraft after going into ATTI mode - it was just flying around outside while hardly responding to my input. Only slight breeze was present.



I am not asking DJI to replace my Mavic as it's still good as new - I want to have full control over my drone because I am scared as hell to pilot it right now (and I need a compact drone for travelling). This forum doesn't have the search feature, but I just noticed how many other posts and videos are available here with this precise issue described, majority of those involve fatal Mavic crashes, where people claim they had literally no control of the drone in ATTI mode. And there seem not be be anything about that on the Phantom forum. I don't want to jump into conclusions, but are the Phantom pilots that much more skilled? Anyway, I may record another video when the bumpers arrive.

olpad Posted at 2017-2-26 08:24
I don't think it did react correctly. When the stick is pressed full forward (I was pressing it for about 0.5s), the drone is supposed to go forward, especially when there is very little wind involved. Here, it resulted in a minor hick-up while the drone was still going backwards (or at least it wasn't going visibly forward as it should). I do admit that in the video the action looks fast, but I had to react in time for the drone not to hit the wall. The experiment you are asking to perform is very risky, both indoors, where you can destroy something/hurt someone and outdoors where the drone may just fly away/crash into something. I would be grateful if someone felt comfortable enough to perform it in a more professional manner. Propeller cages would be ideal I suppose (but out of stock).

I found another video showing the issue. It's almost identical experience to mine, where I barely landed the aircraft after going into ATTI mode - it was just flying around outside while hardly responding to my input. Only slight breeze was present.

First your video you pushed forward it didn't look like that it looked a flick forward you won't get much reaction from your AC if it's in Atti you should have pushed forward and held it until AC moved forward, I can understand why you didn't

Secondly I wasn't advising you do the test indoors if you read post again I said outdoors.

Thirdly the video you just posted shows how hard Atti mode is to operate properly and answers the question for me that there is no problem with Atti mode on Mavic except you can't use it to practice , it behaved like it should, remember he also had VPS turned off which in the normal set of circumstances it won't be.

Are phantom flyers better than Mavic, if you compare both forums then you can't come to any other conclusion than yes they are, but I think this is about experience and the fact that there are so many new users of Mavic .
Do I think if Mavic had Atti would it make any difference , very little because P4 has Atti this has saved very few crashes , and if Mavic gets Atti this will be the same.

Hello I'm new here. First of all sorry for bumping an old few months thread, seems there's no closure for this. I just got the MP, upgraded the RC/MP firmware to the latest, latest DJI Go 4 and all the calibration status are fine except it's in Atti mode. I had similar experience as the video posted by @olpad in Atti mode where the manual forward input does not make the MP stop drifting backwards or at least slow it down. From that same video @hallmark007 mentioned that it looked like a flick forward, instead it should be held forward. But by holding the mode2 right stick forward in order for the MP to respond seems very clear that the inputs are unresponsive in Atti mode.

Why I said it's unresponsive because coming from a rc 3d heli background (also flew some cheap drones) or anybody who knows how to hover a heli on one spot, this will make it very difficult to counter if at any time the MP switches to Atti mode. I can imagine how newbies would react. I've flown several sizes of helis elec/nitro 450-600, doing inverted-f8s/tic-tocs/piro-flips etc and head-ins in confined spaces or hover inverted in strong winds with only a single gyro but with the multi sensors MP on the other hand, without precision input, I'm stumped.

Don't get me wrong the non-user selectable Atti mode is as what it's designed for but please give highest priority control to the pilots maybe an option to activate these priority inputs even for just awhile to correct the situation. E.g. when the MP changes to Atti mode and the pilot gets the warning and he chose to give some stick correction inputs, these inputs must precisely override whatever the MP is trying or intending to do.

To DJI R&D, I urge please kindly look into this. It's very concerning hence I have not maiden my $$$ MP out in the field yet. We don't have big fields here in the busy city where interference could be anywhere anytime, damaging another's property or soul is the least I would do.

Nazar78 Posted at 2017-7-26 09:08
Hello I'm new here. First of all sorry for bumping an old few months thread, seems there's no closure for this. I just got the MP, upgraded the RC/MP firmware to the latest, latest DJI Go 4 and all the calibration status are fine except it's in Atti mode. I had similar experience as the video posted by @olpad in Atti mode where the manual forward input does not make the MP stop drifting backwards or at least slow it down. From that same video @hallmark007 mentioned that it looked like a flick forward, instead it should be held forward. But by holding the mode2 right stick forward in order for the MP to respond seems very clear that the inputs are unresponsive in Atti mode.

Why I said it's unresponsive because coming from a rc 3d heli background (also flew some cheap drones) or anybody who knows how to hover a heli on one spot, this will make it very difficult to counter if at any time the MP switches to Atti mode. I can imagine how newbies would react. I've flown several sizes of helis elec/nitro 450-600, doing inverted-f8s/tic-tocs/piro-flips etc and head-ins in confined spaces or hover inverted in strong winds with only a single gyro but with the multi sensors MP on the other hand, without precision input, I'm stumped.

Out of curiosity, how did you wind up in ATTI mode since it isn't selectable? Were you flying indoors? If you extract the DAT file from the flight where this happened, upload it to DropBox, and post a link to it in this thread I'll take a look and may be able to figure out why the controls didn't seem responsive. The DAT file is stored on your Mavic and the instructions for retrieving it are here. The correct file will have a timestamp that corresponds to when the flight occurred and will be at least tens of megabytes in size.

The video that you mentioned is incorrect: the Mavic flies just fine in ATTI mode, and there's no reduction in sensitivity to the controls. If you listen to the audio, you'll find that the guy who posted that had attached a GoPro to his Mavic while he was flying it, and I strongly suspect that the significant amount of extra weight is what made it more difficult for him to maneuver.

DroneFlying Posted at 2017-7-26 13:08
Out of curiosity, how did you wind up in ATTI mode since it isn't selectable? Were you flying indoors? If you extract the DAT file from the flight where this happened, upload it to DropBox, and post a link to it in this thread I'll take a look and may be able to figure out why the controls didn't seem responsive. The DAT file is stored on your Mavic and the instructions for retrieving it are here. The correct file will have a timestamp that corresponds to when the flight occurred and will be at least tens of megabytes in size.

The video that you mentioned is incorrect: the Mavic flies just fine in ATTI mode, and there's no reduction in sensitivity to the controls. If you listen to the audio, you'll find that the guy who posted that had attached a GoPro to his Mavic while he was flying it, and I strongly suspect that the significant amount of extra weight is what made it more difficult for him to maneuver.

Hi DroneFlying, thanks for replying, appreciate it.

Yes I was testing indoors for the first time and the only time lift it off with manual CSC. Other than that one time, I'm just exploring it with the props off. I need to make sure everything is safe before bringing it outside, small busy city, there's bound to be unexpected onlookers even if I creep at the end of the field.

Sorry for not pointing to which video correctly, my experience is very similar to the indoor video with no GoPro attached posted on page two of this thread . Every status is normal except no GPS and no forward sensing (probably not enough light), RC calibration seems good. It took off into a hover around lower waist level then immediately starts drifting backwards 5m towards the wall. Gave it a few slight forward flicks there's no response. Ok what? Trying to bring it down with a few slight throttle down, nothing, 100% throttle down twice, too late that I had to pull one of my stunts. Luckily there's no damage.

If I recalled correctly viewing the sticks short replay from the app, it only shows the CSC, "no throttle up" then slight throttle down few times followed by two 100% throttle down obviously trying to bring it down when the Mavic drift backwards uncontrollably. It also "does not show any forward sticks" I was flicking few times.

In another Mavic thread I saw someone mentioned about giving the stick full 100% few times for the Mavic to respond which I didn't apply because from my 15 years experience in rc heli, trying to counter any ground or pendulum effect with 100% inputs in an almost no wind condition (indoors) is a very bad thing to do. I can't imagine if I were to fly it outside and for whatever reason it goes into Atti mode.

It was a very short few secs hover but I'll retrieve the DAT file when I have time.

same problem here...