I had a rather worrying flight this morning and will post a video later. In the meantime I have a question about CINE Mode on the AIR 2S.
Does switching to CINE Mode turn off object avoidance sensors - specifically at the front?
It doesn’t on the Mavic Air 2. So I’d guess it would be the same for the Air2S as well.
The only flight mode to disable obstacle avoidance is Sport mode.
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OK, thanks for the confirmation. I very nearly ran it in to the ground this morning and got no warnings - I need to look for anything in the Airdata logs.
But also one thing to note with obstacle avoidance is the APAS setting, with this turned on the drone will try and avoid the obstacle in its path it will increase height or lower its height as well as move to either side in an attempt to fly around the obstacle.
Also another thing to note if you keep pushing forward on the stick after it’s stopped due to the detection of an obstacle it will wait a couple of seconds and if you’re still giving forward stick input it will carry on and just crash into the object.
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OK, so the long and the short of it was that this morning I was within seconds of plowing into the ground in a field with an upward angle. I watched the drone and wondered why it was flying in a straight horizontal and not applying altitude to follow the ground. I had no warnings on the FLY app, and yet when I take off it goes mad warning about everything around it.
I had a number of issues with the Fly app this morning, some were user error, others were user inexperience with a new drone. But some were nothing to do with me - and that bothers me greatly.
I’m also seeing no warnings in the Airdata logs, but am not sure if I should expect to see anything there in any case.
I’m not sure if obstacle avoidance works like that, I’ve never tried to follow an uneven ground before so I’m not sure.
I don’t think the forward facing sensors would have enough of a downward view to be able to avoid an increasing ground elevation without manually increasing the height of the drone by the pilot.
OK, here it is then. I would have expected either the forward facing, or the forward upward facing or the downward facing sensors to have spoken up. This is real-time and not speeded up - it was really that close.
I was watching the drone, admiring what a straight horizontal line it was flying in. I was aware that the ground was rising and expected the drone to complain if it wasn’t happy and expected it to gain altitude accordingly. Would be very happy to be put right on that so I can avoid this next time.
I have stated elsewhere (Here) that I am struggling with the “CPU Overload” error on my iPad Mini 4 using the FLY app. This morning it was just abysmal. The screen kept freezing up and I thought I was in real danger of loosing the drone at one point (only RTH saved me). I clearly have ALOT of learning to do with this new drone. Have never experienced anything like this with the GO4 app on the same tablet with my M2Z.
One other thing I am considering is whether the temperature was adding to this. It was about 3 Degrees and the iPad Mini 4 has previously had a history with not liking the cold much. It doesn’t account for the CPU error, but may account for the screen freezing.
Maybe upload your flight log here for people to view and give comment on.
Also the altitude is from point of take off and isn’t from the ground to the drone. So if you fly it off the side of a cliff and lower the drone below into say a canyon so that the drone is now below where you took off from it will display a negative value for the altitude.
The drone has no way of knowing how high it is relative to the ground only relative to the point at where it took off from.
So I probably misunderstand the point of the downward facing sensors. Are they only active during a landing process. Do they not also act as part of the overall object avoidance system?
It is my understanding that the downward facing sensors are for as you said take off and landing as well as the precision return to home (always hover for a 30+ seconds after to take off to allow the precision return to home to map the ground below to allow for precise landing on return to home.)
Also the downward sensors allow for hovering in doors without a GPS lock to minimise drift.
I found my iPad Mini 4 frequently gave similar problems to those you describe when flying my Air 2 - upgraded to a Mini 5 and no further issues
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I think that the writing is on the wall, in neon at this stage. I found it intensely unnerving to have the video stream cut out the way it did when the drone was within eyesight. It becomes critical that I can see from the drone perspective if I have misunderstood the abilities of the object avoidance system
As I mentioned, it could have been that the Mini4 was struggling with the temperature, but in any case I bit the bullet this afternoon and have found a reasonably priced Mini5 that I have now bought.
I just need to sell one of the two iPad MINI4s that chart my path to getting the right kit to fly both the M2Z and the AIR2S. Need to recoup some of this expenditure somehow 
I would worry about that too much the drone itself doesn’t actually need a phone or tablet to be connected to fly it so as long as you have visual line of sight of the drone you’ll still be able to control it and the RTH button will still function 
Yup agreed. I was chatting with a buddy this morning and we were saying that the RTH is like system backups and the old saying “You’re only as good as your last restore”. Testing the RTH is going to be a much more regular test for me than it once might have been.
It was VLOS that had me throw on the brakes this morning just seconds from impacting with the ground.
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Only time I really use RTH is if one it’s an emergency like the video going black (not that it’s happened to me before) I’ve had it stutter a few times on my Mini1 due to WiFi interference but other than that not had an issue.
Or two if I’m being lazy 