Last weekend, I took my drone (mini 2) for a flight, recorded some footage ETC. Something happened to me for the first time.....I had a rather hard landing (or light crash) in long grass and a shrubs.
It landed about 800 metres away from me, and in a mountainous area. I am no stranger to using the "find my drone" and tried this immediately, but as luck would have it, there was "no connection" between the drone and remote. Weird I thought....The battery would not have been below 80%. So all I could use to track was cached video footage to the phone.
Geez, what a huge difference the drone flying angle makes!!!
It took me a good hour, and a lot of visually lining up similar looking rocks and shrubs to pinpoint where it could be.
When I got there, and found my drone... surprisingly - the drone was on it's head and still turned on, the battery well above 80%.
If I didn't have the cached footage to track it down, I would probably still be up there looking for my drone (believe me, I wouldn't stop until I found it)

This makes me wonder.... What if there was an Independent module system or something, not relying on the drone's battery. Wouldn't it be great if it had it's own seperate internal battery which could charge (just spitballing here) via a small solar panel, or draw current (somehow) from the main battery..It would still just need to beep and flash.
Or maybe it could insist on a certain percentage charge before it would take off.

There are stick on trackers but you would need to google them.

There are a lot of general GPS trackers out there.

Some people have been using Apple AirTags for this.

DAFlys Posted at 12-3 00:27
Some people have been using Apple AirTags for this.

I second this, I stick one on mine. It won't work off of GPS but if you know the general location, the newer iPhones will take you right to it

Hawkeye Dronography Posted at 12-17 02:53
I second this, I stick one on mine. It won't work off of GPS but if you know the general location, the newer iPhones will take you right to it

Ive been hiding some around the town as a test and they get found by other people really quickly.  I gave one to my dad and I found out the other day he'd put it in my mums bag so it could track her around the shops.    He didn't realise that it didnt have  gps but he's been tracking her through town no bother at all.  (She's recovering from a brain infection and occasionally she gets lost so this was for peace of mind)

There exist very small devices just for this. They detect the crash and start beeping. This is one example, but I have never tried this exact one: https://www.amazon.ca/VIFLY-Wire ... lanes/dp/B07VJMTFVH

I am aware of one such device made by Firehouse Technology, check out their "(L.A.N.D) "Lost Aircraft Notification Device.  Module

Galaxy tags are supposed to be quite good with a 120m range, thats better than the Airtags but they are 13 grams, so that might be a killer for the Minis