Hi All,
I'm using all the lastest firmware, 2.5 I believe. I've been flying my new quad since last Friday, with wonderful results, this APM2 is absolutely incredible!
Anyway, this morning, I was loitering, about 3 meters in elevation, it suddenly went to the ground (hitting it), then back up! It's never done this before.
I landed it and everything seemed ok, so I flew several times again. Then "one last flight", I took off like a bat out of heck, (I love doing that!), it went up to about 50 meters, then it stopped responding to my radio, the quad was going left, but I couldn't make it go right. It still seemed to be flying, but then suddenly the motors stopped, and it fell all the way down on the (fairly tall) grass. Nothing I could do. It hit the ground right side up, then flipped over.
I broke a prop is all, I replaced the prop, and everything still works. I've flown it since, and everything seems to be working fine. I looked at all the connections, everything seems fine.
I don't have a telemetry kit, but I just ordered two of them, so I'll start logging my flights.
I charged the 5000 mah battery and it only took 1700 mah, so I know it wasn't a dead battery.
Does anybody have any ideas what went wrong?
My theories.
Radio interference.
Short in my kludged 5 volt regulator for my radio camera. (Later flights I disconnected this). There's no evidence of this happening, I was pretty careful. I do electronics for a living....
Obscure quad bug in version 2.5.
For show and tell......
First Flight Video, taken Friday, 06-08-2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jo7_x3adNE
(excuse the bad language of the camera man!!)
Picture of me in my shop, holding my quad....
http://siderealtechnology.com/DanAndQuadInShop.jpg
Dan Gray, Portland, Oregon
Replies
Do you have a camera that transmits the picture to a screen on the ground?
It seems the developers are ignoring the presence of this bug in 2.5.x and this is concerning as I have been commissioned to put one of these Hexa's into a commercial application at the mines.
This is probably the 6th incidence of this random motor cut that I have read.
As it has happened to mine, I am scouring the forums looking for answers, and therefore have noticed this. Only seems to have happened since 2.5.5 was released.
Come on guys, don't just fob this off, Dan mentioned the motor cut he had earlier at only 10 meters height.
It sounds like the expected failsafe behavior for a lost radio signal: Throttle OFF. When the radio loses signal, most RX units will go into failsafe and cut-off the throttle. It sounds like you did a "bat out of hell" straight out of radio range. I had a similar crash, now I stay low and slow...
Did you range check your radio?
What TX/RX are you using? (model, brand, freq). Please don't forget to mention the RX as it influences failsafe behavior