When i was confronted with a fly away Spark, and i had to use the «find my drone» but there it became a problem. So that is where this proposal was born.

  

The «find my drone» in the Go4 app is usefull, as long there is Connection between the phone/RC With phone. When Connection is lost, only the latest position known before lost Connection is used to find the drone.

  

In my case, i found out that this position was about 125 meters over the ground! And 50 meters over launch point about 600 meters away. The ground moves Down  with 75 meters together With trees from my launching point.

  

So when Connection was lost, and i went to find my drone, nothing there. When Reading the logfile (Airdata export into google earth), i found out about the height. But i also found out there was a direction, speed and vertical speed. Since in the fly away incident the autolanding was engaged i knew my Spark had landed somewhere

  

I had to calculate by hand the extended size of the search area, and the possible direction the Spark eventually landed.

  

My proposal is that this could be a Nice feature in the «find my drone» Application. By calculating in the app and showing not only the last location, but also a circle around, being the extended search area, and a maybe in another color than the circle, a triangle showing in which part of the area the drone was flying when the Connection broke Down.

  

After i made my own calculations using location, height, direction and vertical speed, i found my drone back in.. about 200 meters from the givven location (up in the air) in the «find my drone»..

  

Support handled my case very well as always! And i hope this idea can be a thank you and a help for DJI to improve the Go4 aps (find my drone) functionality and make it an important improvement to help reduce lost drones.

  

PLease admins, foreward this to development. And fellow forummers please give your input as well!

  

Hello wimherman. Good day and thank you for the suggestion you have given us today. Rest assured that I will forward this thread to our DJI R&D team for further development of the product. Thank you so much for your support.

Sounds like a good idea.   I have always thought that with the available chipsets made for mobile phones, it should be relatively simple for them to implement a feature whereby the drone can send it's position back to you via SMS.  A very low rate data plan on the cellular network would not cost very much and DJI could make it a subscription service.. Say something like $10 a year for the capability to find your drone.  Sure, there are some places people fly that might not have cellular reception, but in most cases the drone could easily send back it's position after a crash or flyaway  before it's battery ran down.

I think it will be much simpler if DJI makes the gps in the drone that’s responsible for locating you, to just be on all the time. Connection lost or not.
I lost my first spark and find my drone was useless as the drone disconnected very high and very far with very strong winds.
So now I have installed a gsm gps tracker tk102 that works all the time. You just give the SIM card a call and you receive an sms with the exact coordinates, like max 2 meters away.
So if DJI comes up with a tracker with some kind of back up battery that’s on all the time, then that would be just amazing out of this world!

Flysafely all
Alex

LouisP Posted at 11-13 13:02
Sounds like a good idea.   I have always thought that with the available chipsets made for mobile phones, it should be relatively simple for them to implement a feature whereby the drone can send it's position back to you via SMS.  A very low rate data plan on the cellular network would not cost very much and DJI could make it a subscription service.. Say something like $10 a year for the capability to find your drone.  Sure, there are some places people fly that might not have cellular reception, but in most cases the drone could easily send back it's position after a crash or flyaway  before it's battery ran down.

I am actually  thinking of building such a small device and carry it on my Spark. But we have a lot of blind spots here.

Alex B. Posted at 11-13 13:41
I think it will be much simpler if DJI makes the gps in the drone that’s responsible for locating you, to just be on all the time. Connection lost or not.
I lost my first spark and find my drone was useless as the drone disconnected very high and very far with very strong winds.
So now I have installed a gsm gps tracker tk102 that works all the time. You just give the SIM card a call and you receive an sms with the exact coordinates, like max 2 meters away.

Nice idea! But in fact the drones have this RTH function already. It is more like when autolanding kicks in unexpected that we need some more information in the app. Or yeah some kind of homing beacon. I

I think we get alot of good idea's here. And i am sure DJI admins follow this with interest.

wimherman Posted at 11-13 14:13
Nice idea! But in fact the drones have this RTH function already. It is more like when autolanding kicks in unexpected that we need some more information in the app. Or yeah some kind of homing beacon. I

I think we get alot of good idea's here. And i am sure DJI admins follow this with interest.

Hopefully they do and do something good about it, like find my drone working 100% of the time, connected to remote or not. I think it is very possible to do it.

Flysafely
Alex

Wont installing a GPS Tracker become useful
i may consider it

I think it would be better if the thing didn't fly off in the first place...

Hi All,

All those are very good suggestions. A relatively low tech one is to have the AC beep and flash LEDs once crashed. The battery should have enough power left for several hours as long as the frequency of the beacon is once every few seconds. At least this would help to find the AC in tall grass or in a tree. All the hardware is already in the Spark.

Great suggestion,,

DeuceDriv3r Posted at 11-13 15:03
I think it would be better if the thing didn't fly off in the first place...

Cheer up mate! don't be too bitter. Things like fly aways can always happen like a brand new B737Max crashed in Indonesia. Don't forget that we read about it here on the forum, while we together are maybe not even 1% of the global Spark owners.

ssylca44 Posted at 11-13 15:11
Hi All,

All those are very good suggestions. A relatively low tech one is to have the AC beep and flash LEDs once crashed. The battery should have enough power left for several hours as long as the frequency of the beacon is once every few seconds. At least this would help to find the AC in tall grass or in a tree. All the hardware is already in the Spark.

Yeah, exactly! I was thinking building something like that on a Arduino nano board, with a high pitch tone. Thinking that my Sordin Advanced pro hear protection can get in handy in locating over bigger distances.

wimherman Posted at 11-14 01:50
Yeah, exactly! I was thinking building something like that on a Arduino nano board, with a high pitch tone. Thinking that my Sordin Advanced pro hear protection can get in handy in locating over bigger distances.

I'm afraid of attaching anything containing a powersource to the body..

Used to have a strobe on top, but got anxious because of gps chip sensitivity etc..

But hey, thats just me..

Haggi Posted at 11-14 02:17
I'm afraid of attaching anything containing a powersource to the body..

Used to have a strobe on top, but got anxious because of gps chip sensitivity etc..

I would place the chirper under the battery and use extended landing gear. I think thats the only place not affecting any avionics or flight chars

Hi wimherman,

Great idea with the Arduino Have you thought about the ESP8266? It has a range of several 100 feet and could transmit to a phone or tablet.
Cheers

Hi again,

What's about something like that?

https://www.thetileapp.com/store ... ICsEExoC1FQQAvD_BwE

ssylca44 Posted at 11-14 08:48
Hi again,

What's about something like that?

Nice! The dark winterdays are commig and work during the night with little to do.. great time for developing things.. I have a ESP8266 in my Arduino hobbybox.. Så nice.. But his BT chirper is nice also..
Thanks for the links!

You are welcome, Dark winter days here too in Canada.
Cheers