M600 Flight Limit way to unlock it?

XionicFire · Mar 7, 2021

Hello

Basically we are a small surveying company, we do LiDAR surveying work, most of it in hilly terrain, we work in Latin America mostly where the FAA does not exist.

The problem we have is when we try to survey mountain slopes we never fly over 50-80m AGL, always in line of sight, with permits, and always complying with applicable legislation, the problem is from where we take off to where we need to get to the drone locks at 500m (see image), while it may sound like a lot, its not, working in this kind of terrain (see picture) a 500m difference in height can be as close as 150m in front of you.

There's no planes or people here, its barren dessert canyons, no risk to anyone or anything.

We've tried explaining this to DJI but well yeah you know how that went.

Since we are a business, we do have legal authorization to fly (we fly larger birds like the Terrahawk CW-30 for these kind of missions) but chose not to here for obvious reasons, the canyons are too steep and the $$$ danger too great.

Were tired of wasting our time and decided to bite the bullet, we just bought another M600 with the sole purpose of making sure we CAN fly higher than 500m what ever it takes for these kinds of situations.

Since were we are now no laws are being broken, does anyone know what options are there??

CopterSafe looks legit, but send me $700 worth of bitcoin, with no phone, address or email and hope for the best while their last post was on 2017 does not inspire any confidence. there's another Skyhack ru that's all Russian (apparently they don't speak English) but at least it has a phone number.

Were desperate here, we have a business to run and we bend over backwards to comply with all local legal legislation but DJI just doesn't care. we've been climbing up the hills carrying the drone on a backpack as a workaround to this stupidity but after our second snake bite in a week we've had enough.

Anyone know any options we can use to fix this? if you tell me to bite the bullet on CopterSafe ill do it, we just want to at least do some due diligence before sending $700 to a Nigerian prince

And I'm sorry if this post breaks any forum rules, I did search and found there are other posts with similar questions regarding other models so I assumed it would be ok to ask, if not I'm sorry, we just don't know where else to go.

Thank you all for your help in advance.

SanCap · Mar 7, 2021

I do not know if you have tried this but maybe a terrain following flight program might work such as UgCS?

XionicFire · Mar 7, 2021

SanCap said:
I do not know if you have tried this but maybe a terrain following flight program might work such as UgCS?

Actually we do use UgCS, however the issue is not the terrain follow, its the fact that DJI has locked altitude at maximum of +500m no matter what from launch point, its absurd we can climb the mountain and do the scan downhill just fine, we cannot however do it from the bottom up, seems we have to pay for every point in the lidar scan with blood and sweat.

Its very dangerous to have to climb near vertical walls for nearly 400m straight up just because some programmer decided it was "Allowed" and fine if risked your life climbing first to do it from the top down, but absolutely impossible and dangerous to do it from the bottom up.

If there is a problem with the altitude then it shouldn't be allowed period, and if it is allowed, just allow it completely, this double standard where if you start from 500 and go down is ok, but up from 0 to 500 is not, is ridiculous, its the exact same terrain and the exact same flight altitude, the only difference is where you start from.

In any case, update we found 2 possible alternatives, we have one scheduled for tomorrow, lets see what happens, if its successful ill keep you all posted in case anyone runs into issues like us they know what to do.

Maybe someone should find a way to make the drone believe its taking off from a virtual cylindrical pedestal about 500m in height and 1m in diameter so the drone thinks you started from there but have it land at point B (lower altitude) when its done with its mission haha

CactusJackSlade · Mar 8, 2021

This has been one of my major issues with DJI products since they initiated the 500 meter limit back on the what?... Phantom 3 or so. I too do a lot of terrain following at or below the legal AGL height. I have literally been only 150 feet vertical from my "video target" and unable to get there, even though I'm only 200 feet AGL at that point.

There is an idea that I have not tried, but sounds plausable and has been proven (I watched the video):

Take off, fly up until you hit your 500 meter limit, find a safe, suitable landing spot and land. Reset your RTH to that point. Take off again and from what I have read and seen you should now have another 500 m to work with.

Obviously there is a huge risk if for whatever reason you cannot regain flight and the waste of time and battery power to do so but I did indeed see a video of a guy who did this. Also, if you are flying a waypoint mission I don't see this as an alternative, and of course finding a "safe" place to land, reset and take off again presents it's own set of challenges.

This is a big reason I (for a short time) owned the Autel Evo 2 Flir duo, I did not want these kind of constraints.

XionicFire · Mar 8, 2021

CactusJackSlade said:
This has been one of my major issues with DJI products since they initiated the 500 meter limit back on the what?... Phantom 3 or so. I too do a lot of terrain following at or below the legal AGL height. I have literally been only 150 feet vertical from my "video target" and unable to get there, even though I'm only 200 feet AGL at that point.

There is an idea that I have not tried, but sounds plausable and has been proven (I watched the video):

Take off, fly up until you hit your 500 meter limit, find a safe, suitable landing spot and land. Reset your RTH to that point. Take off again and from what I have read and seen you should now have another 500 m to work with.

Obviously there is a huge risk if for whatever reason you cannot regain flight and the waste of time and battery power to do so but I did indeed see a video of a guy who did this. Also, if you are flying a waypoint mission I don't see this as an alternative, and of course finding a "safe" place to land, reset and take off again presents it's own set of challenges.

This is a big reason I (for a short time) owned the Autel Evo 2 Flir duo, I did not want these kind of constraints.

yeah for small photoshoot flights on urban areas (where landing on a flat even surface is not a problem) sounds like an excellent idea, i've had to survey some warehouses, I never thought of this it would have saved me a lot of trouble on the last ones at the end, its not battery efficient, cannot be auto done with a flight control software but for optical inspections it can do the job, good info to have.