Of all the error messages that could appear on screen when one's quad copter drone is country miles away at 150 AGL while cruising along on a fully autonomous Litchi mission, the pop-up message I saw today would surely rank among the top three in terms of shock value. It read "Warning, M/C disconnected from Main Board. DJI solution : Restart the drone." The last thing one would wish to read as advice while the drone is in flight far from home, would be to "restart the drone" immediately.
I was confronted with that cryptic error message while the Mavic Pro Platinum traversed calm skies shortly after an early seasonal thunder storm, soaring 150 feet above a tropical swamp forest at twilight. Moments later a familiar Litchi message indicated that the drone had lost its connection with the RC controller.
Since virtually all Litchi waypoint missions on which I launch my Mavic Pro or Mavic Pro Platinum range well beyond the reach of the RC, Litchi's disconnect alert messages had never been a cause for alarm in the past. The drone always returned to base right on schedule thanks to Litchi's consistently reliable trajectory control, even if my RC controller had been turned off shortly after each autonomous waypoint mission departed, as is usually the case due to its being legal here.
The coincidence of an unprecedented and startling error message that suggested a catastrophic failure had occurred while the drone was in flight, at the very moment Litchi announced signal loss with the RC, unnerved me enough to hit the Return To Home button even though I was at that point convinced that the engines had failed whereupon my beloved drone plummeted into a murky swamp just as it was getting dark.
The reassuring blue "Return to Home" banner on the Litchi screen did not appear as it usually would after RTH was actuated on many occasions in the past, and that further reinforced the notion that my Mavic Pro Platinum was missing in action. All the same I remained outdoors as my hopes faded of ever seeing the drone until suddenly the screen came alive again and the drone was inbound at 25 mph, with more than enough battery power to complete the return to base.
After this bizarre incident whose cause is still a mystery, I am going to carry out a full calibration of the compass, IMU, sensors, and camera even though it hasn't been a month since I performed all those preventative measures. If any Mavic Pro pilots out there have every encountered an error message mid-flight that refers to a disconnect between the "M/C" and the "Main Board", I would be grateful for any insights that could be offered as to what exactly might have triggered such a strange error message.
My only hunch thus far is that because the drone had just returned from a 7-mile round trip Litchi mission on a cool evening before I launched it again on a second mission that nearly went awry, overheating might have been the culprit. Still and all I would be curious to hear any thoughts on what may have triggered such an unexpected error message that initially appeared to confirm an abrupt departure from controlled flight by a Mavic Pro Platinum that has served me well till now.
I was confronted with that cryptic error message while the Mavic Pro Platinum traversed calm skies shortly after an early seasonal thunder storm, soaring 150 feet above a tropical swamp forest at twilight. Moments later a familiar Litchi message indicated that the drone had lost its connection with the RC controller.
Since virtually all Litchi waypoint missions on which I launch my Mavic Pro or Mavic Pro Platinum range well beyond the reach of the RC, Litchi's disconnect alert messages had never been a cause for alarm in the past. The drone always returned to base right on schedule thanks to Litchi's consistently reliable trajectory control, even if my RC controller had been turned off shortly after each autonomous waypoint mission departed, as is usually the case due to its being legal here.
The coincidence of an unprecedented and startling error message that suggested a catastrophic failure had occurred while the drone was in flight, at the very moment Litchi announced signal loss with the RC, unnerved me enough to hit the Return To Home button even though I was at that point convinced that the engines had failed whereupon my beloved drone plummeted into a murky swamp just as it was getting dark.
The reassuring blue "Return to Home" banner on the Litchi screen did not appear as it usually would after RTH was actuated on many occasions in the past, and that further reinforced the notion that my Mavic Pro Platinum was missing in action. All the same I remained outdoors as my hopes faded of ever seeing the drone until suddenly the screen came alive again and the drone was inbound at 25 mph, with more than enough battery power to complete the return to base.
After this bizarre incident whose cause is still a mystery, I am going to carry out a full calibration of the compass, IMU, sensors, and camera even though it hasn't been a month since I performed all those preventative measures. If any Mavic Pro pilots out there have every encountered an error message mid-flight that refers to a disconnect between the "M/C" and the "Main Board", I would be grateful for any insights that could be offered as to what exactly might have triggered such a strange error message.
My only hunch thus far is that because the drone had just returned from a 7-mile round trip Litchi mission on a cool evening before I launched it again on a second mission that nearly went awry, overheating might have been the culprit. Still and all I would be curious to hear any thoughts on what may have triggered such an unexpected error message that initially appeared to confirm an abrupt departure from controlled flight by a Mavic Pro Platinum that has served me well till now.