I just received the Inspire 1 this past week and have to say, I am quite impressed.  Despite my first few flights being ultra smooth, I still feel a bit nervous at times, having read the horror stories on these forums.  I wanted to get a feel from the community on their experiences with the return to home function.  How many times have you used it and has it been reliable each time (landing at the precise spot you expected)?  I'm asking because I can foresee many instances where precision would matter (small landing area, forests, beaches, cliffs, etc).

I lost signal on one of my flights and hit RTH. Worked perfectly and landed only 2 feet away
from where it took off.

Today I used the RTH and it worked like a caharm as I was 1.2 miles away. What I usualy do before taking of I set  RTH to remote return so if I move or drive away it will come the remote.

I just had a nightmare experience yesterday. I was flying the bird as usual, then it lost connection completely. On the flight log you can see where it says "Return to Home Timeout". Then the Inpire dropped from 210ft to 110ft, then tried to come back to the home point. Problem was that the Inspire dropped way to low altitude wise and flew right into trees, broke two carbon fiber arms on the front and the camera and gimbal ripped off as well. I'm going to contact DJI tomorrow to figure out what I should do. I'm just really bummed out because I didn't lower the drone when it dropped altitude. I was flying at 200ft on purpose to avoid the wooded area. Also I can't seem to figure out why it lost connection, it has happened almost every flight.

benjaminsink@ho Posted at 2015-2-22 23:17
I just had a nightmare experience yesterday. I was flying the bird as usual, then it lost connection ...

I can only speak about my Phantom RTH as I have not flown my Inspire yet. I think on the Inspire there is a  place to set the RTH height? On the Phantom it will RTH at the highest point that it hit. What I do with that is as soon as I take off I bring it to 200 feet in my area where the tree line is around 100 feet. Also the Phantom will climb to it's highest height that it has been in that flight when it enters RTH. Check the manual on the Inspire or google the RTH and also check Youtube. Someone on the Forum may have a definite answer for you.

Indifferent, it has been very accurate 1-2 feet and then it has been 2-3m away, just override with sticks and it adjusts as required.

Not sure why it was so inaccurate though.

Just got this new inspire 1, updated firmware, and on all flights so far, the RTH button (pushed for 2 seconds) puts the drone down directly below where we push RTH, NOT where we set as home point

is this a glitch or pilot error..

help!!!

worked perfectly as shown here

I have just flown my Inspire 6 flights as I got it just 2 days ago. I never relay on RTH function to get my drone home, but I have tested it and it landed almost spot on homepoint. I also have a Phantom Vision 2 + which I have been flying a lot - and it seems that they are working similar. The 6 flights I have had so far has been very solid and no problems at all.

Arleneburns Posted at 2015-3-13 02:41
Just got this new inspire 1, updated firmware, and on all flights so far, the RTH button (pushed for ...

I'm not positive but I think that if you hit the RTH with the inspire within 20m of the remote than it will just land directly below where it is hovering!

Used it once worked fine but came down a little hard

Arleneburns Posted at 2015-3-13 02:41
Just got this new inspire 1, updated firmware, and on all flights so far, the RTH button (pushed for ...

Arlene did you hit RTH when your craft was within 20m of you? If you did it will just land where it is, outside of the 20m zone it will rise to the height you set and then return to the home point.

Aha! This solves a mystery for me
Where in the manual do they talk about the 20 m rule?

benjaminsink@ho Posted at 2015-2-22 23:17
I just had a nightmare experience yesterday. I was flying the bird as usual, then it lost connection ...

That's terrible, so sorry to hear!   Did you have the RTH height set and if so, to what?

benjaminsink@ho Posted at 2015-2-22 23:17
I just had a nightmare experience yesterday. I was flying the bird as usual, then it lost connection ...

Sorry about your luck.  I thought that the bird didn't lower the current flight attitude when RTH was triggered.  That's weird.  I flew out of range and lost signal and RTH was triggered.  Fortunately it maintained it's altitude and flew back sideways within about 3feet.  I was on pins and needles the entire time but it performed just as designed.  Needless to say I won't be testing it out again intentionally any time soon.  

I tried it half a dozen times and nothing happened. How long do you have to press the button for?

Yes everyone you can see the horror here:

http://youtu.be/GiuqSlK_EL4

I am one of those people that needs to try out things in a safe environment before I rely on them in a real world scenario.  I was out in the desert and tried the RTH twice, both times it worked like a charm.  It was so good in fact in was a little scary...lol

It's a good idea to test the rth feature before an emergency.

To activate rth just keep the button on your controller pressed until you get an acoustical and visible confirmation that it's in rth mode.
Actually very well realized by dji.

The question about the rth altitude on the I1 is very interesting.
I need to check by my self how this behave.
On a phantom I am sure that you setup an additional hight to your actual flight level.
Let's say 30ft. So if you fly at 60ft it would first raise to 90ft and then start rth.

Just checked the pilot app.
It states: the aircraft will go to the altitude listed here and go to the home point !!
That's completely differnt then on the naza v2.
In my opion not the right way it should work. The nazav2 logic is better.

As a result. I will set rth alt to 300ft !!! Instead of today 90 !!!

I'm a Lucky Newbie!  

My first couple of Inspire1 flights I tested the RTH function at the top of my driveway (a 50 foot wide tree-free area). It was really pretty accurate. Within about 3-10 feet I'd say. I then tested setting a new home point about 10-20 feet away where the bird was hovering, and that seemed to work well too. So I figured I could pretty safely walk down to the bottom of my long curved descending driveway (about 400 ft away), and take-off from there, and walk back up the driveway during the flight, piloting my Inspire out in front of me, and set a new RTH point back at the top (just below the hovering bird), and land there.

So as I walked back up my driveway I did just that... hovered the Inspire just out in front of me, at about 8 ft off the ground, practicing my novice control of this awesome craft. A few minutes later I was back up at the top of the hill. I centered the bird over the landing area at about 10 feet up, pressed the "set RTH" in the Pilot App (to set a new RTH where the bird was), and then pressed RTH...

Well surprise!..    It shot straight up in the air and took off in the direction of the bottom of my driveway... and directly towards the trees between me and the bottom!!    Just missing the first tree by about 3 feet.

So I'm running down the driveway chasing it, but then it disappears behind another tree and I can no longer see it!  I'm thinking all the worst now.  I hurry towards the original take-off point, and just as my view becomes unobstructed, what do I see?... My new Inspire 1 calmly landing in nearly the exact spot that it took off from! Wow, lucky me!

OK, so you more experienced pilots are saying... why didn't I just cancel the RTH by pressing the button again & take control? Well, I am able do that better now (now that I have a few dozen flights under my belt to get used to it)... but at that time, being a newbie, and being that it all happened so fast, I thought I better not try anything else and risk steering it into the trees, or worse. I was pretty sure it was heading back to the take-off point, and the Inspire seemed a better pilot than me... so I let it do it's stuff and hoped for the best.

I have since increased the RTH altitude to 80ft (instead of 60ft), to insure it clears any trees on my property by a wider margin. And I am going to do further tests in a wide open field to try to determine why it did not set the new RTH location just below the hovering bird as it seems it should have.

On further testing I find that my RTH is not as accurate as my first tests seemed. I'd give it (+-) 20 feet or so. And thanks to steve2909 for the helpful information... that if the "craft is within 20m of you... it will just land where it is". And that... "outside of the 20m zone it will rise to the height you set and then return to the home point". I can't recall reading this in the manuals anywhere, but it's great to know! And that would explain that a lot of my initial tests were in error, because I was not allowing enough travel distance for the bird to RTH properly.

Additional testing - it seems possible that originally I may not have noticed an error message that now sometimes appears... "unable to set RTH". Perhaps it did flash this message and I missed it. So even tho it did not do as I expected at that time, the bottom line is that DJI and the Inspire's RTH helped save my aircraft from this newbie!  So that's one point for DJI, and -0- for me! Maybe DJI can add a loud tone to the alert to help make it more noticeable.

- It's not the destination... it's the journey.

Never tried it, i have joysticks and don't depend on that kind of thing

steve2909 Posted at 2015-3-12 18:19
Arlene did you hit RTH when your craft was within 20m of you? If you did it will just land where i ...

I am not sure about the Inspire but I don't think that affirmation is good for the Phantom Series.
Bat

benjaminsink@ho Posted at 2015-3-13 16:41
Yes everyone you can see the horror here:

http://youtu.be/GiuqSlK_EL4

That video is gone.
Bat

bubo_bubo Posted at 2015-2-22 10:58
Indifferent, it has been very accurate 1-2 feet and then it has been 2-3m away, just override with s ...

gps in general is not really that accurate, many factors affect signal.   I farm and we use gps guidance in our machinery and at best about 6 inches to a foot is all youre going to get with much better more expensive hardware than what the inspire has, $7000-15000 gps systems.  For sub inch accuracy you need to also utilize signal from a ground based tower location.   My inspire is usually around 5+ feet from the take off point when using RTH in tests.  I never use it cause its not accurate enough and it flys too slow in auto mode anyway, nice to have in case of signal loss or something but in practicality not a very useful feature if you have signal, much more accurate, faster and safer to fly and land yourself.