Labroides Posted at 2017-8-4 14:17
Your video is using Litchi ..... have you tried RTH in DJI Go to see what that does?

RTH is a factory programmed action and is not altered by Litchi or Go other than deciding altitude of RTH and when it triggers such as low battery.

As it happens if you care to go back through my Youtube channel AND numerous posts / videos loaded to various Forums - you will see that I use BOTH Go and Litchi ...

You really are now clinging onto that cliff-edge aren't you !!

Nigel

Michgolden Posted at 2017-8-4 16:44
If you are driving along a hilly road and you have your cruise control on in your car it will simply let off the gas on your way down a hill and accelerate hard going back up the next hill to maintain a constant speed, not as efficient as if you were manually accelerating on your way down a hill and using that energy to help you up the next hill. So not always is auto better than manual. Just another way to look at it IMHO.

Cruise control is managing your speed to maintain a constant. It is far more efficient at that than you are with your right foot.

The amount of gasoline you would use by accelerating downhill offsets any advantage you have in climbing the Up section.

Nigel

blackcrusader Posted at 2017-8-4 16:57
I have looked at my flights where I used RTH to bring my drone back to home point. I do that pretty much on most flights.  If you use the DJI Go app and go to the cloud server for each flight you can follow the flight. Click on the RC icon to show your stick positions.   All my RTH speeds when no stick input has been used for speed have been around 10m/s horizontal speed.  This is true even when I am using left stick to reduce my height at over 2m/s vertical speed.  I am in mainland China atm and posting screenshots from my smartphone is rather difficult.  But they will show for flights where RTH is initiated that drone maintains around 10m/s horizontal speed with no throttle stick input.

No wind or air movement compensations ... no offsets due to conditions ...

C'mon BC .... if any data shows 10m/s - then conditions would have been suitable for that. I have many videos WITH full screen data you can read of without need of logs or cloud ... that show all sorts of speeds in RTH.
I do not say that in STILL AIR conditions with no influences at all - that factory setting is not 10m/s ... what I say is that the AC sets a RTH speed depending on the information from its connected items ... GPS .. Barometer ... Compass .... Battery levels ..... Unfortunately as I and others show - its not always successful - there's something called Pilot Error and weather conditions DJI cannot program for. The statement by another was 10m/s regardless ... which is plain rubbish for anyone to see by watching their own Go or Litchi or whatever APP they use ... also that full speed is better than DJI RTH ... ANY decent battery tech will also tell him that's fools path. EVERY energy provider has an efficiency range and maximum efficiency is NOT at 100% ... it is always a balance of power demand vs work done.

I said I wouldn't rise to this argument again ... but seeing an attempt to say Litchi is different for RTH than Go (not you BC) ... that data proves 10m/s .... they cannot go unchallenged.

Nigel

solentlife Posted at 2017-8-4 23:04
No wind or air movement compensations ... no offsets due to conditions ...

C'mon BC .... if any data shows 10m/s - then conditions would have been suitable for that. I have many videos WITH full screen data you can read of without need of logs or cloud ... that show all sorts of speeds in RTH.

what I say is that the AC sets a RTH speed depending on the information from its connected items

Nigel (or is it Kellyanne?)... that's a load of bunk and just happens in your imagination.

Anyone can see for themselves by testing that a Phantom in RTH travels at a flat 10 m/s.
It's created a common myth that 10 m/s must be the most economical speed but there's been plenty of testing to show that 10 m/s is not the most economical speed.

I've seen a number of incidents where the pilot left his Phantom battling a headwind trying to do 10m/s and never came home even though the wind speed was was something the Phantom could have managed if driven manually.

Labroides Posted at 2017-8-4 23:47
what I say is that the AC sets a RTH speed depending on the information from its connected items

Nigel (or is it Kellyanne?)... that's a load of bunk and just happens in your imagination.

L - you are now twisting the argument ....

We are all aware that sufficient headwind will prevent the AC making headway ... regardless of your ridiculous 10m/s or my facts of Flight Controller controlled RTH.

You should try to do better than this ...

Nigel

solentlife Posted at 2017-8-5 01:23
L - you are now twisting the argument ....

We are all aware that sufficient headwind will prevent the AC making headway ... regardless of your ridiculous 10m/s or my facts of Flight Controller controlled RTH.

No Nigel ... I'm not twisting my explanation ... it's the same one I started with
Your bizarre misunderstanding (again) is the issue.
There is no better to try.
I'm just giving it to you exactly like it is

You should drop your fantasy and start dealing with facts.
Perhaps you could listen to others occasionally.

Solent life a lot of the return RTH flights with no throttle stick input have been with tail winds. I often fly knowing the wind direction and will always fly into a headwind where possible.  In fact when I fly in my home valley the wind travels west to east every day.  When I do my early morning sunrises the wind is west to east but my critical low battery home speed was over 22m/s in full throttle in GPS mode.

I have found by reviewing many of my RTH flights with no throttle stick inputs my drone comes home around 9.8 - 10.2ms most around 10m/s even with a not too strong tail wind of 5 - 8mph.
I was at the DJI office today in Shenzen China showing them some of my flight logs.  22m/s speed on a P3S in GPS mode,  flights above 3000m altitude,  22 minute flights, 4.55km distance flights with near 10km milage flights...  all on a P3S.  Not a word spoken in English lol

I like China and spend a lot of time there also ... Tianjin, Guanzhou, Laizhou, ... Shenzen Province .... just a few of the places we have business in ...

Hope you got a freebie at DJI !!

One Gift I try to avoid is Guanzhou Wine !! I don't know how they can drink the stuff !!  I've tried mixing it with Lemonade ... Soda Water ... anything .. but its just impossible ...

Cheers
Nigel

solentlife Posted at 2017-8-5 04:13
I like China and spend a lot of time there also ... Tianjin, Guanzhou, Laizhou, ... Shenzen Province .... just a few of the places we have business in ...

Hope you got a freebie at DJI !!

I don't like China at all really. Shenzen is just another over populated concrete jungle. Pollution is terrible in the cities in China.  At least the Metro in Shenzen is good now.  There is something nice about living in a remote place in the mountains in clean fresh air with a small population.   

Oh - I agree about quiet ... I grew South of London ... lucky that we had a large house / grounds in a semi rural setting but close enough we could shop in London .. my place in Latvia is similar ... out quiet but close enough to go into town if I want.

I must admit that my travels mean I am treated as a VIP and have cars / escorts etc. - so it tends to improve things a bit !!

But there are two occasions where I was not amused :

Tianjin - Chinese New Year .... I was walking the street to the Sim Card shop from the Royal Hotel ... car slowed as it passed me and a long firecracker streamer was tossed across the path in front of me .. I had to dive into the shop doorway to avoid the dangerous things ... you know those big red ones ... like military Thunderflashes .... take your hand off !

Second was attending an Oil Terminal - there was a delay and they looked for a 'Hotel' ... Laizhou is not exactly a Tourist spot ... and it was Lantern Festival time - so still perishing cold !!  Was shown a room ... outside was -7C .. inside was -7C ... heater when switched on couldn't warm a thing ... so I called relevant Minister Assistant and politely advised to return me to Longhkou where I was much better accommodated ! Delay turned out to be two days ... so good job I did !!

But the main problem I find is if you travel to China outside of Tourist season ... as then its hard to find English Speakers in hotels etc. They literally half shut down ... Often what I have to do is telephone my Liaison guy ... tell him what I want - he then phones the Hotel and I get it !! Of course all trays have my usual Zingtau order on as well !!

Cheers
Nigel

Hans Sanchez Posted at 2017-8-3 04:29
Just watched your video Nigel, looks not too dissimilar from what happened to me. Same style of area too. I think mine's crashed in the water, or been blown into it. The last recorded GPS was not too far from the water in the woods, and it has been raining a lot and quite windy since,  and after many days of searching; by process of elminiation I must assume it has gone in there.

Shame that this happens, seems totally unexpected. Lucky you found yours. Did you manage to get it repaired or are you no longer interested in flying it after that? Tell you the truth even if I did find mine I don't think I have much desire to fly it after that...

Sorry to interrupt your Romantic vibrations... back to topic and try to help....  @hans we Had The Same Problem with our p4 pro. We are Not Pros in flying Drones, but we call ourselves experienced. As always, we checked everything before flight.  Set Home Point etc. After flying 15 Minuten  the Battery has reached 20%. Time to Go Home. About 1,5 km from Home Point away. We pushed the RTH Button. After a Few Seconds the Home Point has reseted itself to the One before about 12 km away... what the... big ? How something like this Can Happen.   It was the one home Point we Used 30 Minuten before. Maybe You have the Same Problem?

cruise control on a vehicle is absolutely efficient and it saves a ton of fuel. I drive a lot over the same roads and when I can use cruise control I have more fuel when I get to where I'm going. my vehicle has a monitor on fuel used and fuel range so I know without a doubt cruise control is the better way to go then manual throttle. Its my understanding that DJI also uses this applied to battery voltage sees what volts are available and decides  the best course of action to RTH. I have no issue with manually taking over once my drone is overhead, I can certainly bring it down faster then RTH function does. That said RTH comes down slow to avoid turbulence that could create a situation where lift is affected causing the drone to fall out of the sky. IMO its to slow, but it is safe. Like I said further back I don't ever let my drone get to a problem with low voltage, but if something happened where it was unavoidable Id prefer to let the drone do its thing. One last thing as Nigel said LIPO batteries bounce back this is a fact I've worked with these cells for as long as they have been for sale, they sag under load as do all batteries. the nice thing about them is they recover better then other cells recover as in bounce back.

Really Hans, please find somewhere further away from Heathrow to fly.  You may not be flying high enough to interfere with an aircraft but you know the Daily Mail and you should also be well aware of how the U.K. media loves to blow drone/aircraft stories out of all proportion.  The recent incident at Gatwick will also make the authorities more wary.  I don't know if you are aware of the NATS Drone Assist app.  It's worth downloading and you are able to alert the air traffic control system to any flight you are making.  For your area it points out the high risk due to high volumes of aircraft .

fansf3b23272 Posted at 2017-8-5 08:13
Sorry to interrupt your Romantic vibrations... back to topic and try to help....  @hans we Had The Same Problem with our p4 pro. We are Not Pros in flying Drones, but we call ourselves experienced. As always, we checked everything before flight.  Set Home Point etc. After flying 15 Minuten  the Battery has reached 20%. Time to Go Home. About 1,5 km from Home Point away. We pushed the RTH Button. After a Few Seconds the Home Point has reseted itself to the One before about 12 km away... what the... big ? How something like this Can Happen.   It was the one home Point we Used 30 Minuten before. Maybe You have the Same Problem?

We pushed the RTH Button. After a Few Seconds the Home Point has reseted itself to the One before about 12 km away... what the... big ? How something like this Can Happen.   It was the one home Point we Used 30 Minuten before.

That's very interesting.  It would be very unusual if your Phantom was re-using an old homepoint.
I've not heard of that ever happening.
The Phantom doesn't store a homepoint after it is switched off and when you power it up again it has no home point until it gets GPS reception again.
Perhaps the flight data would help explain what happened?

Hans Sanchez Posted at 2017-8-3 04:29
Just watched your video Nigel, looks not too dissimilar from what happened to me. Same style of area too. I think mine's crashed in the water, or been blown into it. The last recorded GPS was not too far from the water in the woods, and it has been raining a lot and quite windy since,  and after many days of searching; by process of elminiation I must assume it has gone in there.

Shame that this happens, seems totally unexpected. Lucky you found yours. Did you manage to get it repaired or are you no longer interested in flying it after that? Tell you the truth even if I did find mine I don't think I have much desire to fly it after that...

Hans .... here's the location of the reset Home point.
It's 750 metres north of where you were.
Can you confirm that this is a place you have/have not flown from before?

Just to let you know you are not alone, exactly six hours ago my Phantom 3 S flew away and I can't find it. I left my controller at my son's house so I can't get the last coordinates. I am sure it landed in a low income apartment complex.  If that is what happened, there is probably some little kid throwing it off his third floor balcony as I type.

solentlife Posted at 2017-8-4 22:53
Cruise control is managing your speed to maintain a constant. It is far more efficient at that than you are with your right foot.

The amount of gasoline you would use by accelerating downhill offsets any advantage you have in climbing the Up section.

You have your opinions and I have mine. Looks like we'll have to agree to disagree.

Frederickdav Posted at 2017-8-5 17:31
Just to let you know you are not alone, exactly six hours ago my Phantom 3 S flew away and I can't find it. I left my controller at my son's house so I can't get the last coordinates. I am sure it landed in a low income apartment complex.  If that is what happened, there is probably some little kid throwing it off his third floor balcony as I type.

You should start your own separate thread and upload your flight logs there.  Too often a thread is started by one person and several other people come in with an issue.

Yeah this has gone way off topic. Drone still not found, I'm now moving on. How can I close this thread; my notifications are going crazy

Labroides Posted at 2017-8-2 00:50
there are settings for "GPS only" and also the supposedly more accurate "WiFi/Towers/GPS" tracking setting for the phone

Using wifi/cell towers may be faster but it's NOT more accurate.

Yea, hence using supposedly...  all I was trying to wonder about aloud, so to speak, was if the phone itself wasn't seeing enough GPS, if it would've went to cell tower, which the drone would've thought was the phone, and headed that way.  

I was both trying to maybe help stumble across where his may have went, and just generally know what can happen with these.  I've come up to the big league from a ton of toy quads, just don't have any experience with these highly optioned models  

Hey all, Just to give you a small update, today my replacement DJI Phantom 3 Standard arrived, sent by DJI.

So, for all those who gave me incredible advice such as :
- "you can't just expect DJI to send you a new drone..."
- "chalk it up to pilot error and forget about it"
- "where was your common sense because if you had any you would not have panicked and flown your drone away."

...yeah

However, on a more serious note, a massive thank you to Ladbroides et al who offered me genuine realistic insights into what may have gone wrong and how to help me find it.

For anyone who has had a similar experience, please don't hesitate to contact support. Forums can only help you so much. Don't let anybody convince you that it was your fault until DJI confirm it themselves. I'm off to charge and hopefully enjoy & never lose my P3S. Good day to you all.

Hans Sanchez Posted at 2017-8-10 02:56
Hey all, Just to give you a small update, today my replacement DJI Phantom 3 Standard arrived, sent by DJI.

So, for all those who gave me incredible advice such as :

A great result and you'll have learned a few things to make you a better flyer from it.