DJI Mini 2 - Complete Guide to Return To Home RTH

[Music] hey everybody marcus crawford here with the idaho quadcopter channel hey i'm out on a sunny but uh pretty cool day in meridian idaho uh i am at uh heroes park a place you guys have seen me fly quite often before i'm in the parking lot this time and the reason we're here today uh i've got the dji mini 2 and what we're going to talk about today is return to home there's a lot of nuance to return to home other than just pushing the button on the controller and watching the drone come back to you uh there's a three kinds of return to home there's smart return to home which is just what we're talking about pushing the button and the drone comes back uh and then but there but there's some details to that that we need to talk about and we'll go into setting your return to home height etc and then there's also low battery return to home just what you would think that means there's an algorithm within the app that figures out how far out the drone is and when it's got enough battery power to return to home and the app gives you plenty of warning but it's something that you don't want to ignore and we'll look at that as well uh and then also there's fail-safe return to home fail-safe return to home is essentially losing connection and we'll even experiment with that a little bit here today with what happens if your drone loses connection with the controller the main thing that i want to get across here is you don't need to be afraid your drone is going to come back to you now because this guy does not have obstacle avoidance there are some things that you need to think about if there's an object between you and where that drone's coming back and if it's not up high enough yeah it'll it it it'll just run right into it so you need to know those things so uh let's uh let's quit messing around let's get this little guy in the air and we will we'll go over some of these scenarios okay we've got the drone hooked up and it's ready to fly uh you know as part of your safety checklist obviously you're going to look over the drone first and check the propellers and check the drone for its overall uh condition and there's no damage to it uh but then uh one of the things that i always do is click first on the safety menu in the app so those three dots in the top right hand corner on the safety menu and this is where you set your auto return to home altitude i've got it set currently as you can see at 60 meters i'm going to move it quite a bit lower than that for this demonstration be just for expediency and i know how tall roughly how tall these trees are and so forth so we won't get in trouble so we're going to run it right down to uh 30 meters and that's more than enough that's over 100 feet so we're right about 100 feet so we should be good there so then as you go down you want to check to make sure that you don't need a compass calibration or an imu calibration it's saying normal in both of those cases you can check your battery i always check the the the uh the battery meter on the main page of the app but you can look here you can see we're at 4.3 volts for each battery so looks like we're in good shape and yeah if you look in the top right there our battery meter shows us at 99 percent uh so we're good to go so we should be able to take off here i always film in 4k but let's go look at that we're set at 4k 30 frames per second so i'm going to start recording now and uh yeah let's just go ahead and take take off we are going to do an auto takeoff and as we do the drone will set its home point uh it's sitting right on the landing pad right now so you'll have an opportunity uh to see that as soon as i get out of the way so here we go so there's the drone on the landing pad i'm going to hit take off on the app and we're going to get this little guy in the air such a smooth little drone look at it just hovers there like it's hanging from a string so we'll turn it around here uh one of the positive things about not having obstacle avoidance is that you can bring this drone right in now i'm seeing a little bit of movement there there it's smoothed out i'm not sure what that was about but we'll bring it in here so there's a good look at the drone and one of the things that i always show in my videos is how that gimbal keeps everything nice and smooth so we're gonna rock it back and forth here and you can see that gimbal keep things smooth uh as i back it up you'll see the gimbal drop a little bit and that's how it keeps that smooth uh stable video that we're used to the other thing that i that i do is i always do a manual dronie when i start out here so we're going to point the drone in the right direction here well let me move it over here just a little bit so that we don't back it into any trees or anything but this will also serve to demonstrate our first return to home so we're going to go up and away right now reverse and up and again i am going to steer the drone a little i don't want to go out onto the street and i don't want to go out over the top of of any people so we're kind of over the pond there a little bit let me drop the gimbal down so you can kind of yaw it back here so you can kind of see where we're at there i'm standing right there and we're out about uh 55 meters and we're about 17 meters high now as you'll recall we set our return to home height at 30 meters so when i hit return to home either here on the controller or on the app the drone will rise to its return to home height of 30 meters and then it'll come back to its takeoff point and land so so we're going to do that on the app right now and you'll see the app gives us an option there to either return to home or simply land in place uh you know i you may want to use that land in place from time to time but we're going to do return to home and we're just holding it down and as soon as that circle is complete and look at the drone it's rising to its 30 meters and it's not messing around and it's coming back to us and it'll reach a top speed of 10 and a half meters per second and i don't know we're not going to hit that because it wasn't far enough away but let me drop the gimbal down so you can see where we're at and it's pretty close to our home point we're just going to let it land and it's going to be a you know a little ways off from where we took off but uh this drone does not have precision landing like some other dji drones where it'll look for the landing pad and it'll automatically raise that camera you'll see here i think about a couple meters off the ground yeah well a little higher than that three meters it looks like and it raises the camera up automatically so it doesn't punch it into the ground and there you go that is just a a standard return to home so let's show you some other variables that you'll need to know about with return to home okay there's another aspect of smart return to home that you need to know about and that is when you take off and the drone is less than 20 meters away from its takeoff point let's take off right now it's updated the home point so let's move up so we're 19 meters away 18 meters away let's hit return to home and see what happens you'll see return to home is not available uh under 20 meters and it used to be that if you hit return to home within 20 meters the drone would land but it looks to me like dji corrected that because what they don't want you to do is say you're flying over a body of water or something hit return to home and the drone goes into landing mode and yeah that wouldn't be a happy time so so let's uh let's bring the drone forward and we'll do a manual landing here see how close i am to the uh not too bad here let's uh back it up just a little and then to do a manual landing we're just gonna pull the stick straight down the left stick straight down puts it in the landing mode and boom there we are shuts off the motors so if you're within 20 meters the drone uh will simply hover in place and if you want to bring it in for a landing you're going to you're going to do it manually or if you really just want to return to home you could back it up past 20 meters and it then will ascend to its return to home height and land okay there's some other things that we can do with return to home we can actually change our return to home point in a couple of different ways and let me show you how that's done so the drone is recording its home point where we're at right now but let's go up and out in fact let's go out over the field here let's get this baby out a little ways drop that gimbal down and we're a good hundred meters away from us and let's let the drone hover there for a second and say i move to a different spot and i want the drone to land where i am with the controller i can do that so i'm going to move out here a ways and in a different place in the parking lot with the controller and let's look at how i could have the drone land where i'm at so again we're going to hit the three dots in the top right hand corner of the app and we're still in battery info let's go into safety again we're going to go in here where it says update home point and it brings us to a map and you can see me here in heroes park and if i click on the you'll see the two icons on the left side of the map there a picture of a controller and a little diamond we're going to click on controller and that is going to bring the drone reset the home point back to me where i'm at with the controller so uh updated the returned home point you can see it set on the screen there let's hit return to home on the controller and let's monitor this drone coming back let me drop the gimbal down so you can see you can see me standing there and here comes the drone let's drop that gimbal down gimbal move just a little bit and look at how close it is uh it it's coming pretty darn close to where i'm standing so let me back off here so it doesn't land on my head and you can see the drone coming down there and it picks up the camera blows the leaf away and look at that there we are back on the ground now why would you want to reset your home point to your controller let's say that you're on a hike and you're flying your drone and you're hiking and you've got your drone flying around and you're a ways away from where you originally took off at well you don't want to have to go back there if you set return to home to go get your drone you could then to tell it to land where you are with the controller and the drone will come right to you so just a feature you need to know about so there's another thing that you can do you can actually on the map manually set a return to home point let's take a look at that okay we're going to take off again and we're going straight up and you saw it set our return to home point there and again let's uh let's push this guy out into the middle of the field here and you can see i've got to return to home excuse me not to return to home i have the drone up at 50 meters in height and we'll talk about what that means here in a second uh so what we're going to do now is we're going to change the return to home point or the home point excuse me of the drone so again we go into update home point and you can see that the little diamond is highlighted on the map there so what i can do is i can move the map around and i can reset the home point so you can see i've got the home point set kind of uh directly in front of me in this line here so you know it's kind of hard to tell on the map how accurate is that gonna be i don't know i hope i hope we're i hope we're fairly accurate but we will uh we'll find out uh and uh so as soon as i click ok it will reset the home point to that location so it updated the home point let's do a return to home and let me grab the camera here and we'll go out there and and see if it lands in that spot and of course it will but but how accurate that map is we'll find out so we're going to hit return to home on the controller and you can see the drone turning around coming back to us kind of facing the sun so i dropped the camera there so i'm going to walk to the approximate location that i think i believe that i set for return to home and as you can see it's going to be kind of close here so i don't want it yeah no i think we're going to be fine i was a little concerned about it landing in the center of uh of those rocks but i think we're going to be fine so there's the drone coming down so you can see you can reset the home point uh but you know the the accuracy is going to be it's a little difficult to tell on the map uh but it and it's not liking uh that that spot so uh we'll uh in fact what we'll do is we'll just fly the drone back with us i could carry the drone back but why do that when i can fly it heck it'll beat us back let's talk about low battery return to home so when the algorithm within the drone figures out that the drone only has enough battery life to return to home and land it'll give you a warning on the screen and tell you hey i need to come home and it'll do a countdown and if you let that countdown complete the drone will come home now you can cancel it do so at your own risk now sometimes you know the drone is close enough that it's not going to be a problem and i've done it myself you cancel it do do whatever you need to do then hit return to home there are most of the time though you should heed what that algorithm says and just click ok or let the countdown complete and let the drone return to home so uh we're down to 30 percent battery right now let's take off let's do a little fly about and see if we can get it out uh far enough that it will go into low battery return to home for us so i'm going to hit take off on the screen and let's go straight up and out sorry for that quick yah uh rather than flying the drone fpv i was doing it by line of sight so anyway let's uh let's go ahead and fly out to the corner of the park here in flack let's throw the drone into sport mode and look at it tip that gimbal and it's moving we're up to we made it to 14 meters per second there and we're going to burn up some battery fast here this way down to 25 percent and you can see that line i guess i should show you i can tap on that and it'll tell me uh how long i have until return to home it says a minute and 30 seconds or roughly uh well since i stopped that that's going up and then it'll also tell you how long until forced landing so uh and how long until battery depleted so those are handy things to know that that battery gauge will tell you but just looking at it you can see that it is still in the green zone when we get into that yellow zone it'll want to come home so i'm going to pick up the gimbal just a little bit here again we're in sport mode let's go full stick forward and we'll burn up some battery here real quick and come to a stop there we go so it's at twenty percent so at twenty percent it'll give you a low battery prompt now it's still we can still fly because it's still we still have enough battery power it is not in the yellow yet so we're gonna go full stick forward again here to the other corner of the park and you see you can see it dropping down and when it gets into that yellow it'll give us that warning that it wants to come home i'm going to go into normal mode here and let's turn around again just fly around till we get that thing into that yellow mode and we get that return to home warning so here we are yeah so there we go you saw it very quickly drop down and uh we'll just let the count down we could either hit confirm or we'll let the countdown here and then it's automatically went into low battery return to home there and here it comes and uh it it'll come right back to its takeoff point now you can see me standing there dropping the gimbal down as we go and here it comes we were already at 61 meters high so the drone was high enough that it didn't have to go to its uh return to home height got a pickup going by here but it'll be by before we land we're going to be pretty close to that landing pad here and again you can look at that battery meter and you can see that it says hey uh we're in the green again because it knows it's close enough to home that it's gonna make it home just fine okay i'm gonna cancel return to home you saw me cancel there let's pick that camera back up and boy it's really squawking at us it wants to land so let me move it out here a ways so eventually the drone will simply go into auto landing mode and no matter what i well it will start to land no matter what i do let's bring the drone over here and let's just let it go into that landing mode i believe it's five percent now i i understand i think if you get that at 10 you're still able to push up on the stick and control the drone but there is a point that you the drone is going to come down whether you push up on that left stick or not so we're at five percent now yeah low battery landing so at five percent it says hey i'm gonna land so let's uh let's let it confirm and then there it's landing let me see yeah see i can still i pushed up on the stick and so at five percent you can still push up on the stick and it'll still go up so you know if you get in that situation you can still control the drone good to know i've never experimented with that before i've heard about it but i wonder i know at some point it's just going to say i'm landing no matter what you do marcus so we'll see what happens here we're at three percent battery and i can still push up i'm gonna get it pretty low to the ground here and i can also push forward i can still push up two percent battery i can still push up good to know one percent battery i can still push up i know at some point here though it's not gonna let me at some point it's just gonna say i'm landing it'll still push up so it's zero percent and i'm still able to push up on the stick i'm going to let the drone land i don't i don't want to risk it so the drone is landing so there you go and let me also add i don't recommend running your batteries that low lipo batteries don't like to be ran empty and as soon as i get home i'm going to put a charge on this battery so it doesn't remain at that level and i see that recording turned off now i didn't see exactly when that happened it may have done it well i'm not sure so uh in any case it's interesting to know that you can still push up on the stick and keep the drone off the ground kind of a safety factor there i was always told that there's a point that it's going to land no matter what and i assume now that that's probably when it's just completely out of battery because we were at zero percent there you saw and i was still able to push up on the stick and have the drone ascend so uh let me put another battery in and i've got some more things to show you with regard to return to home all right now we're going to show you fail-safe return to home so this gets into what would happen if you lost connection to the drone with the controller now that could be for a number of reasons you flew the drone out of range and lost connection at which the drone will try and regain connection if you flew it out of range and it loses connection the drone will back up it won't go into to return to home it'll back up 50 meters and try and regain connection uh and then if it doesn't it'll turn around it'll ascend to its return to home altitude and and come home now we can't demonstrate that because i'm not going to fly this drone out to the limits of its range but what we can do is show you what would happen if your controller failed if you didn't have enough charge on the battery and say the battery died or of course i'm sure it would give you some warning but just for the sake of argument here if the controller quit etc what happens on fail-safe return to home so let's take off here let's take a look at that and our home point is updated you always want to make sure that you do have an updated uh home point and uh we're up about 26 meters high which is below that 30 meters that as you'll call recall we set for our return to home point in fact i'm going to lower it here a little bit because i want you to be able to visibly see the drone uh rise when it enters return to home so we've got it out there aways gosh quite a ways we've got it out about 180 meters over the over the park and it's about 17 meters high 16 meters high what i'm going to do now is i'm going to turn off the controller so we've lost connection and the drone will wait 11 seconds before it does anything and then after 11 seconds it'll go into return to home what the drone is doing now rather than return to its return to home height is moving back the manual says 50 meters trying to regain connection when it doesn't regain connection you will see it rise here to its return to home height and then come on in for a return to home and boy it doesn't waste any time coming back does it it will accelerate up to 10 and a half meters per second on its return trip and it rose to its 30 meter return to home height and it's coming down as you can see i've got nothing on the controller here it's the controller is off and we are just going to let the drone land yeah it's gonna be in a place uh i just wanted to pay attention and make sure that it wasn't gonna land at any rocks or anything and there we have it [Music] so as you saw there it landed oh gosh within three feet or so of the takeoff point which i think is pretty good and that is with the controller completely off so i guess the point that i'm trying to make here is uh you're not going to lose your drone a number of things can happen and dji has built a number of fail-safes into this thing that your drone is going to come back to you so you don't need to get too nervous about that okay we did a lot of stuff with the uh dji benny two today and uh showed you a lot of different versions of return to home uh we showed you the the various things that you can do with smart return to home how if you're closer than 20 meters and hit return to home the drone is just going to hover in place now if you're more than 20 meters out the drone will indeed ascend to its return to home at altitude and land and that's the other thing we showed you is how to set that return to home altitude i keep the drone keeps moving around here a little bit so that's the other thing we showed you is how to set that return to home altitude uh and then uh within the smart return to home you can also tell the drone to return to your controller and we demonstrated that in other words not its home point that it took off from where you might be standing with the controller handy feature and then we also showed you how uh you can reset that home point to wherever you want on the map you can move around the map now you have to pay attention to accuracy on that but you can get pretty darn close and you can reset the the home point someplace completely different uh then we also talked about the low battery return to home point and i learned some things there too i thought that when the drone was below 5 it would land no matter what you could push it forward or back but it would continue to descend we took it all the way down to zero and i was still able to push the left stick up and uh and ascend with the drone so that's just something that's good to know but in low battery return to home when the algorithm within the app it monitors how much battery you have left and we'll show you when that drone needs to come back and my advice is to pay attention to that and when it wants to come home let it come home that'll keep you from losing your drone and then we also then looked at fail-safe return to home what happens when you lose connection with the controller now that could be because of either flying the drone out of range or you're blocked by a building or something in and you lose connection to the drone the drone after 11 seconds is going to return it's going to go to its return to home altitude and come back to you uh and then the way we did it was just simply turning off the controller to let the drone go into fail-safe return to home now you do need to remember the reason that you want to pay attention to return to home height is for instance if you were blocked by terrain and the drone goes into return to home unless it rises high enough to get above that terrain it's in direct line of sight of the home point it'll fly right into it so just keep those things in mind when you're flying be careful if you're flying around say a hill or a mountain or a really tall tree or something and you don't have your return to home point set higher than that uh that's the other piece of advice is that i'm going to give you i typically set my return to home height way higher than it needs to be i set mine at 60 or 70 meters i know by default now uh dji sets it at 100 meters they want it uh they want it way up there they want you to be able to get home without hitting something and again the dji mini 2 does not have obstacle avoidance or a pass like the mavic air 2 or the mavic 2 has where it could potentially go around an obstacle and not fly into an obstacle this guy doesn't know that that there's anything in front of it and it'll fly right into it uh so i guess that's about it uh i i hope you got something out of this video i had a lot of fun putting it together this is marcus crawford with the idaho quadcopter channel out and if you like this kind of content please consider subscribing to my channel most of all i really appreciate you taking the time to look at this video and of course we'll see you on the next one all right bye now just a little bonus footage here folks we'll uh we'll go over in the corner of the park here we've got some battery let's take a look at the uh at the boise foothills here because they got plenty of snow and it's a nice crystal clear blue sky day there they are i'm going to pick the gimbal up just a little bit move it over we'll look at those mountains and let's do a zoom here so i'm gonna hold the function button in scroll wheel up and we're going to get two times zoom shooting in 4k boy lots of snow up there looks good doesn't it lots of folks enjoying some great skiing up at bogus basin or snowboarding okay let's back it back out here and i love being able to do that smooth zoom in and zoom out all right let's hit uh return to home on the app now return to home the winter sun is sure low in the sky and it doesn't mess around it's coming back at that ten and a half meters per second and there we are right there yeah it's going to be a little bit further off this time a little further off the pad well not as far as i thought looking pretty good picks up the camera [Music] and there we go thanks everybody

Channel: Idaho Quadcopter

Views: 180,983

Keywords: DJI Mini 2 - Complete Guide to Return To Home RTH, DJI Mini 2, DJI Mini 2 RTH, Mini 2 return to home, Mini 2 video, Mini 2 at Heroes Park, Mini 2 flight test, DJI Mini 2 RTH test, DJI Mini 2 return to home flight test, Idaho Quadcopter flight test, Drone, Quadcopter, UAV, UAS, Best drone under $500

Id: N3YrsmEdo3E

Length: 37min 17sec (2237 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021