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Tello flew out of water and returned home!

Endgame

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Hi guys!
I wanted to share my experience from the other day.

I was filming in a park with rivers, I set the POI over a little bridge. The Tello accidentally flew over a small river, and Tello kept on falling down and eventually hit water. It drowned soon after, and here is when things get interesting.

First, the drone went underwater for like 5 - 10 cm, I completely stopped using the phone to control it, and started going closer to the drone.

Then, by itself, the drone just went up, exited the water, turned 180 around, and at an altitude of 1 m above the river started going back to the bridge.

I assume it tried get back to the POI.

Unfortunately, a small branch was close to the bridge, I could not control the drone at all, and miraculously, the drone stopped right in front of the branch, maybe it was just at the right distance to the POI, about 2 m from the bridge.

Unfortunately, it eventually did hit the branch and fell into the water. It was maybe half meter deep. I then proceeded to fish it out with a stick and this took about 10 min.

Once I took it out, I noticed the motors were full of small particles from the mud, so they were resisting and scraping when I tried turning the props by hand.

I took the battery out immediately, and rinsed the drone in the river to try to get out the particles. I knew that the Tello had some amazing water resistance so I was thinking if it has survived 10 min underwater a rinsing of a few sec cannot do more damage than it has already sustained. Slowly turning the props allowed me to grind out all the debris, so they started to turn normally again.

Went home, put it in the rice for 24, fired the drone up, and all was working flawlessly.

I believe that if I had not been using the TelloFPV app with the POI solution, I could have said bye to my drone, so thank you once again for this app, it is amazing what you did here.

I just wanted to write this post in hopes of giving hope if somebodies Tello falls into water, it should be fine!
 
Nice! very lucky thanks for sharing, ill keep this in mind when i want to get some water shots. Happy flying
 
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Yes water shots dont go too close becauae the visual system will get confused and will crash mkst probably..
 
Yeah I could not believe it! The video stopped recording once the drone hit water, and when I looked at the feed on my phone when the Tello was coming back it was all blurred I suppose because of water on the lens. But yeah amazing little beast :D
 
I have the video but not much to see, after the Tello hits water it stops recording because it changed flight mode, or registered that he landed or something. If only I had the whole video that would be awesome!
 
How I imagine your Tello's last moment :D

tenor.gif
 
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It hit the water, the props were splashing a little for like a few sec, then it went under, at this point I started running already, jumping over branches and stuff, so I did not see the exact moment it flew out, my gf though did, and she says it just flew out, stabilized itself, turned around exactly 180 to the last POI, and slowly made its way back to the bridge, I tried giving inputs through the phone but it was not reacting. It eventually stopped in front of the branch like 2 m from the bridge, and it eventually hit the leaves and fell in, and sank to the bottom.

I was sure it was over but hey these are amazing haha

Anyways, I saw videos online people actually take them out of the water and immediately turn them on, and it works for them. I simply could not bring myself to do so, but seems that water does not affect them at all, so strange.
 

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