I’m a commercial fisherman. In Alaska I was anchored up and flew my drone to shore to get some bear footage. For some reason the drone stopped short of my vessel by 30 feet . It would not fly over the boat! I had to watch it hover out of reach for the last 5 minutes of its life, taunting me, until it descended into the abyss. My question is WTF? I try to read up on my toys. Was there something I missed in regards to flying over water? And before you ask, yes, I let out some anchor chain and as the boat drifted back towards it the MF drone backed away!!! Please enlighten me so I know whether or not to by another Dji drone. I didn’t even bother asking for a replacement. I have a habit of cussing when land lovers tell me things aren’t covered by warranty
These aircraft at times have issues over water related to the VPS. In your instance most likely was the OA detecting the boat as an obstacle, depending on the size of the vessel. If you upload your flight log to the link below ( Instructions are on the link ) we can take a closer look for you. You may be able to determine the issue yourself, but if you need assistance, share a link to your uploaded log file back here.
The Mini 2 does not have any obstacle avoidance therefore the size of the boat was irrelevant, otherwise you could not fly your drone back to a building and some folks often fly from their balconies.
I do not know where you were anchored, but were you perhaps in a DJI Geo Zone, as in near some critical infrastructure, an airport, a military installation, etc…
It is possible to take off within a geo zone, cross over its border, but not return to its stating point (Home Point…).
This is the link to the DJI Geo Zone map, you can check it yourself as only you know where you were…
https://www.dji.com/flysafe/geo-map
I am curious, rather than just stare at your drone helpless hovering, just running its battery down, why did not fly your drone over to the shore (but not so close to be of interest to the bear?
The drone wouldn’t fly over the shore either. I tried that. I was anchored by a closed down cannery on the northwest side of Kodiak, Ak. There’s nothing out there. I jumped into the water after it. Had it in my hand but let go when I realized I wasn’t getting closer to the boat despite my best efforts.
I did come across an article mentioning something about the reflectivity of the water messing with the downward facing camera.
Either way, lesson learned. I’m now in search of a company that can program a return to home based on the transmitter location and not the take off gps coordinates. It’s another problem people on moving boats have. Thank you for your input.
Yeah, the Home Point can be updated. But, for a moving boat it would have to be continually updated as the landing proceeded. The only real solution to the moving landing site would be to manually land it. But, that was prevented because the Mini 2 was over riding the control stick inputs.
@Dan_Illo I suspect that you won’t be able to find a manufacturer that provides a Return To Controller function. If you want to push forward with a Mini 2 solution then you’ll need to provide the log file(s). The strategy would be to determine why the Mini 2 over rode the stick inputs and, then, how to defeat that.
Sometimes Plan B is to work harder on Plan A.
The issue of flying over water and how it messes with the Downward Sensors is to likened a “Vampire looking at its reflection in a mirror.”
I once put an old mirror on the ground and tried to land my Mini 2 on it, it descended as if it would land normally and then the sensor caught its own image “coming at it” and it canceled the landing climbed up a couple of feet…
The downward sensors should not have limited its lateral (sideways) movement, especially over land. Now, depending on what is beneath it, the App may try to keep you from landing because it “sees” debris under it, but it should land once you override the input.
Highly reflective surfaces like water and Low Contrast Surfaces, like White Painted Walls fool or confuse a drone’s obstacle avoidance which is why some drones will not land or even fly into a wall or window…
Now, there is the possibility that your low-battery, and the Return to Home feature of a Low Battery, coupled to its confusion over the downward sensors “seeing” water or rather nothing might have just “put the firmware into a loop” that your controller could not override…
Did you ever get to the bottom of this? I’ve not taken my mini 2 over water yet and reports like this make me nervous of doing so. As far as I’m aware (and although a newbie, I tend to read manuals front to back and side to side for anything new and complex) the mini 2 doesn’t have any capability - aside from RTH - for automatic sideways movement, no collision avoidance. AFAIK the VPS can only control vertical movement. So as for backing away from you, that’s weird. Surely this has to be a bug, or someone sneaked you a mini 3 without you knowing 
I have seen videos of folks skimming their drones barely inches over the water and it only takes little bit of “down” on the stick to plant it in pond, river, or ocean… Find a nice flat piece of ground (football, soccer field, etc… and start it out at “chest high…” Fly it out a ways, then just put it in reverse and fly it back, not touching that Yaw/throttle stick, when it is close to you, stop it and fly it back and forth, several, even a lot ot times, and it should always return at approximately the height.
When folks are flying their drone over water, they often fly right/left/crab right/crab left/ yaw around in a circle and that is when they misjudge the altitude and the drone goes swimming…
Over a period of the back and forth, my Mini 2 might gain or even loose a foot or two. But just flying over water is not a problem, it’s when you want to “drag a finger in the water…”