Fortunate crash

[Jim in Florida]

Last week I was in Tennessee flying my S2 at the base of a small waterfall. I was using the controller to fly with. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to end my flight. My S2 was about 10 ft away from me and I pressed the 'return to home' button on the controller, expecting the S2 to come right to me. I had not moved from where I had launched it. Instead of coming back to me, it took off, up, up and away. I tried to regain control by pressing the 'return to home' button again, but it kept going. I was watching it go up the mountain, dodging all the bare tree branches like a champ.

I lost sight of it and went up the 45 degree slope of the mountain to try to find it. I could see on my cell phone that the last image was of a tree trunk. Looking around, the tree trunks all looked the same to me. I really had no idea how far it had flown away from me. The S2 would not do anything because it was not sitting level. After about 10 minutes of searching and swearing, I saw the blue body laying in a pile of leaves next to a tree. I worked my way towards it and found it to be all in one piece. I gathered the rest of my stuff and went back down the mountain to the path.

My guess is that it finally hit a branch and took a dive. If it didn't do that, I don't know where it would have gone.

Does anyone have any idea why it would have flown away from me? Surely it was not going to try to fly home to Florida.

I have sent an email to Skydio support and have not received a reply. I have also managed to upload the log but don't know if they will contact me based on that.

Today I had it back in the air in Florida and it all worked fine. Return from home from the cell phone screen worked both returning to phone and returning to launch point. I was to chicken to thy the button on the controller.

I've also learned about the 'find my drone' part of the app.

Jim

 

[deedeebulldog]

When it loses connection it returns to the last place it knew you to be. The last place it had a signal from the controller. It does not sound like this to be the case here unless you were previously standing around the area it went down. It can take a few days for Skydio to respond, but they will. It also helps if you can upload the video to YouTube and link it in the email. Most likely you will get the generic response after they review your flight log that you did not have a good signal.

 

[UAVPilotMRG]

Last week I was in Tennessee flying my S2 at the base of a small waterfall. I was using the controller to fly with. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to end my flight. My S2 was about 10 ft away from me and I pressed the 'return to home' button on the controller, expecting the S2 to come right to me. I had not moved from where I had launched it. Instead of coming back to me, it took off, up, up and away. I tried to regain control by pressing the 'return to home' button again, but it kept going. I was watching it go up the mountain, dodging all the bare tree branches like a champ.

I lost sight of it and went up the 45 degree slope of the mountain to try to find it. I could see on my cell phone that the last image was of a tree trunk. Looking around, the tree trunks all looked the same to me. I really had no idea how far it had flown away from me. The S2 would not do anything because it was not sitting level. After about 10 minutes of searching and swearing, I saw the blue body laying in a pile of leaves next to a tree. I worked my way towards it and found it to be all in one piece. I gathered the rest of my stuff and went back down the mountain to the path.

My guess is that it finally hit a branch and took a dive. If it didn't do that, I don't know where it would have gone.

Does anyone have any idea why it would have flown away from me? Surely it was not going to try to fly home to Florida.

I have sent an email to Skydio support and have not received a reply. I have also managed to upload the log but don't know if they will contact me based on that.

Today I had it back in the air in Florida and it all worked fine. Return from home from the cell phone screen worked both returning to phone and returning to launch point. I was to chicken to thy the button on the controller.

I've also learned about the 'find my drone' part of the app.

Jim

I think I have heard that some drones need to be some distance away from the takeoff point in order for RTH to work properly. Have you tried RTH in the past? Did it work properly? Have you tried it again?

 

[singular.droid]

This story is incomplete without an on-board video.

 

[Jim in Florida]

I think I have heard that some drones need to be some distance away from the takeoff point in order for RTH to work properly. Have you tried RTH in the past? Did it work properly? Have you tried it again?

Tried it this weekend with the button on the app, not the controller. Worked fine from the app button.

 

[Ridefreak]

Did you try the "Find My Drone" function after it went down?

 

[Jim in Florida]

Did you try the "Find My Drone" function after it went down?

didn't know about it then....... Do now.

 

[Jetlag]

I didn't know there was a Find My Drone feature.

 

[Ridefreak]

I didn't know there was a Find My Drone feature.

It's on the app when you open drone details at the bottom of the page. I've only needed it twice, both times (months apart) I started out using the 3 icons on the screen incorrectly, once I figured that out it took me right to the drone.

 

[Jim in Florida]

I finally heard from Skydio and exchanged several emails back and forth. They said it looks like I had marginal gps signal. Could have been. I was also running GeoTracker on my cell phone at the time and that shows that there was a shift 'in my position' that is about the same distance offset and direction of where the drone went. After I recovered the S2, and returned to the parking lot via the same path, the track shows the offset.

So, I guess the gps signal was off midway through my trip.

The S2 did flawless flight until I hit the return to home button. Skydio should have a warning on the screen when you hit the RTH button that GPS signal is marginal or that it is a different location than you launched it. That may have saved me my panic that it was lost forever, and my sore back after slipping on a leaf covered rock and falling on my back.


Jim

 

[deedeebulldog]

I finally heard from Skydio and exchanged several emails back and forth. They said it looks like I had marginal gps signal. Could have been. I was also running GeoTracker on my cell phone at the time and that shows that there was a shift 'in my position' that is about the same distance offset and direction of where the drone went. After I recovered the S2, and returned to the parking lot via the same path, the track shows the offset.

So, I guess the gps signal was off midway through my trip.

The S2 did flawless flight until I hit the return to home button. Skydio should have a warning on the screen when you hit the RTH button that GPS signal is marginal or that it is a different location than you launched it. That may have saved me my panic that it was lost forever, and my sore back after slipping on a leaf covered rock and falling on my back.


Jim

I have asked for an indicator or bar signal to be placed on the app. My guess is they will not, at least any time soon. They probably don't want us to see just how bad the signal is.

 

[JoeydDetroit]

I noticed that when flying it with my phone, and hit RTH, 2 more buttons pop up return to HOME and return to LAUNCH POINT. there is a difference. At some point in it's life you tell it where "Home" is and RTH will go THERE. if you it return to launch point, it will return to the launch point where you launched it from.
So it COULD HAVE been thinking about Florida, if that's where you told it home was.

I've only gotten BOTH buttons on the phone, not o the controller. I hate using the phone because the app draws the controls and messages over the camera scene and you never really get to see very much of what it sees until you get home and look at the recording on a computer. And it puts blue circles with white plus signs over everyone's face so you have no idea WHOTF they are until later - even of you're NOT in TRACKING MODE it always puts them symbols of peoples faces. I wish there was a way to turn them off... outside of actually targeting someone.

 

[pbayani]

After reading the conversations here, I decided to check the "Find Skydio...". The Skydio 2 has never been flown at my work location, only turned it on in my office for testing my iPhone connection and reviewing a few settings. The application indicated my Skydio 2 was across the street in the parking lot behind Chase Bank. The unit has never been left the my office but yet the app says the drone isn't here but at least 60+ yards away. It's a good thing my drone is in the case and not in the parking lot

 

[baksideDisasterFlicks]

After reading the conversations here, I decided to check the "Find Skydio...". The Skydio 2 has never been flown at my work location, only turned it on in my office for testing my iPhone connection and reviewing a few settings. The application indicated my Skydio 2 was across the street in the parking lot behind Chase Bank. The unit has never been left the my office but yet the app says the drone isn't here but at least 60+ yards away. It's a good thing my drone is in the case and not in the parking lot

I had crash last weekend, first time I've used the locate my drone option. It went down in some woods next to trail I was riding on my moto and I saw it come around me right before I got disconnect notice from my beacon. So I had a pretty good idea of the area it was in. Took a bit but I finally found it with the feature in the app after some fumbling around and walking right past it. I was in a location with no cell service, so the map was just blank making it kinda hard since I had no physical markers. One thing I finally realized was to zoom all the way in on the map. It starts at a default view that's zoomed out and not very precise. So could be that you had it in default view which made it look like it was in parking lot behind your work.. else GPS isn't amazingly precise, could be it didn't have a good lock on your location especially if you powered it on inside a building. You might try using app like UAV forecast to see how many satellites you are locked into at your work, try inside and outside to see if it makes a difference. If the Sats locked box isn't green you can't expect a lot of precision on the location. Of course satellites are always moving so different times of day and what not can affect it.

In my case I had a solid lock on 13 satellites as I checked before my flight. Once I zoomed in I found it pretty quickly next to a group of down trees. No damage to the drone, not even a scratch but one side of one propeller was broken off. Now it's throwing a V30 error on calibration so I'm playing the support dance with Skydio. I got request received mail on Monday, been no response since. Pinged them twice and called without a word. Ugh.

 

[Ridefreak]

I had the same thing happen the other day, the location was way outside cell coverage where it went down. The find my drone screen automatically opened up (app was running) That must have been changed during an update, it didn't used to do that before. This wasn't my first time needing that function so I had already learned it's nuances (zoom way in), The screen took me right to the drone which I dusted it off and flew for the remaining half a battery. Not sure why it went down, the video just stopped. I found it laying there upside down at the bottom of a canyon with the battery attached.