Hi, Me and my friend live in 2 miles proximity from each other and we both have Phantom 4. I was interested if we could send our bird to each others backyard by setting gps coordinates )) Any solution for this?

Not simply.
You could do it by visually navigating or with a waypoint mission in Litchi but if you are in an urban area, 2 miles is going to be out of range.

labroides@yahoo Posted at 2016-4-11 22:03
Not simply.
You could do it by visually navigating or with a waypoint mission in Litchi but if you a ...

No I am not in an urban area, but I will definitely lose him when it starts to land. Thats why setting gps coordinates would be handy.

Using waypoints,  it is possible to fly beyond range.  But you would have  to go to his house to get the drone.  You just program his house as the last waypoint and select land as the final action
  But if there is anything in the way,  like a tree,  you will have a mess to pick up.

With the DJI GO app you have to fly the mission first and record waypoints along the route. And since you are in a city, you are not going to get 2 miles so I don't see a way you can do it.

any recommended ground station apps? Like DJI's Ground Station app for Phantom 2 or AutoPilot by Logic?

I had a 3DR hexacopter.  The 3DR software allowed me to set waypoints on my computer by clicking on a map.  After the route was set I could load it into the bird while it was on the ground.  

During the flight, I hit a switch on the controller and the hex would go into autonomous flight mode and follow the waypoints on its own.    Each waypoint had a set of parameters you could program.  One of them was to land.   So, I could set a waypoint and have the hex land at that spot.

There is a third party app called Litchi.  It seems to be able to do this, but I've never tried it.  I can't comment on how good it is:  https://flylitchi.com/

Thank you very much. Have you heard smth about autopilot by auto flight logic?

Flytrex  can do  this, you can have 2 I- pads as  the transmitter and plug in Nav points The Problem with Flytrex is they  out of Israel and have poor customer service if you had any problems.  Their tech uses mix of wi fi and GPS signals.  

Donnie  

Litchi will let you do what you want.  You will need to set up 1 or 2 intermediate waypoints because the max distance between waypoints is 1 mile I think.  Select "land" as the action when the mission is complete.

Yep, you can do it with either Litchi or Autopilot

Way to go teaching someone who is already indicating they want to do something stupid that will eventually cause regulations around drones to tighten even further with more regulations.

quaddron3 Posted at 2016-4-12 23:49
Way to go teaching someone who is already indicating they want to do something stupid that will even ...

I think I already wrote that I wanna fly it in non urban area.

ISA AYDIN Posted at 2016-4-14 23:31
I think I already wrote that I wanna fly it in non urban area.

I'm going to say that the issue here is flying beyond line of sight as the FAA warns against.

The problem is that the rules, as they are now, lump all hobby RC craft together.  For traditional non-FPV equipped fixed wing or single rotor hobby aircraft flying LOS is pretty much mandatory.  If you lose sight of it you will probably crash it.  Modern 'smart' multi rotor aircraft with GPS, hands-off hover, RTH, and FPV are a completely different beast.

Unless the aircraft is very close, determining what's directly under you without FPV is difficult.  With FPV, click gimbal down, and you immediately know exactly where you are.  Also, when you have a non-FPV craft, you are always looking at it so maintaining constant LOS is fairly easy.  When you add FPV, every time you look at the screen, and what's the point of having FPV if you don't?, then it's going to take you some period of time to visually re-acquire the aircraft.  Is that considered "maintaining LOS"?

I personally feel that flying FPV is much safer.  Not only do you have a map and camera view for location determination, you can determine the height of objects around you by running the gimbal to horizontal.

If you fly a FPV multi-rotor with RTH capability at a sufficient altitude to clear objects and terrain, it's going to take a mechanical failure or a bird strike to cause a crash.

Ask yourself this:  what do you do if you lose visual of your aircraft?  Most pilots will look at the screen to determine relative bearing, altitude,  and range to know where to look in the sky.

jstjohnz Posted at 2016-4-14 14:51
The problem is that the rules, as they are now, lump all hobby RC craft together.  For traditional n ...

Nah. I'm pro drones. But you are making one huge assumption leaning heavily on the reliability of the smart controls and sensors.

I also agree having GPS, live feed, on board sensors etc - is much safer and definitely the way to do it no matter what RC thing you're doing.

However the wisdom here in the case of drones like the phantom is that when shyt hits the fan, you must guide it back down manually. In order to do that, you still need LOS.

quaddron3 Posted at 2016-4-14 19:50
Nah. I'm pro drones. But you are making one huge assumption leaning heavily on the reliability of  ...

When a shyt hits a fan you will not be able to control it either

ISA AYDIN Posted at 2016-4-15 03:00
When a shyt hits a fan you will not be able to control it either

Depends how deep shyt you're talking about and clearly there are many levels here.

I've personally experienced the P3 lose FPV video feed in mid air. This happened a few times. Just gone. Won't come back. Now what? I guided it back down manually. Turned everything off. Turned everything back on. Then it worked again. I've also had compass error multiple times in mid air.

This stuff happens. You can lose video feed. GPS can go crazy. Compass can stop working. VPS can screw up. And THEN after many other shyt hitting the fan, will you reach the level of all out power cut and the P3 falling like a brick where "you can't do anything".

So clearly being able to control it manually and that it is in line of sight, is fairly important for quite frankly a consumer 'toy' drone that is constantly being upgraded with bug fixes/new bug introduced, etc.

These drones are not the drones manufactured by defense contractors. They do not have the same kind of reliability you'd like to expect of them.