OK, THIS IS A RANT!!
I am done with Arducopter! I have been trying to get this platform to be reliable for way too long.
I don't even want to add up all the damage, time and money I have wasted trying to get this flight
control system to work as advertised.
I actually thought with the new firmware and M.P., that the developers had finally got out all of the
bugs.
NOT!!!!
As I write this, I notice that the top discussion is unexpected scary start-up.
This is what happened to me:
I dumped all programs from my computer, and reset my APM 2.5, I started over.
I downloaded the new versions clean, without any of the zillions of updates.
I was so excited to see that my project was finally working very well, a doing what I told it to, and it
worked very well for two days. On the third day, without any changes at all to anything, it did a full
throttle cut. I turned it off, rebooted my computer, and started over. It behaved normally for about two
minutes, then two motors cut out. I was only up about six feet, and over a lawn, so no damage.
As I approached my machine, to unplug the battery, two motors started to spin at different speeds.
Then they all spun up to full throttle. I always carry my Aurora 9 with my left thumb on the throttle
stick, so there can not be an accident.
OFF IT WENT, into the sun. Hit return to home, no joy. I said goodbye to it, as it went to an unknown
altitude, and into the sun, (downwind, it was just trying to go straight up).
I found it the next day, see the picture. Two miles of walking and searching and cussing.
I went over the logs, and determined that there were error codes all over the list, and it breached the
geofence, but kept going anyway. It had a mind of it's own, TOTALLY NOT COOL, and VERY, VERY
DANGEROUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If this had happened in a more densely populated area, I might be in jail right now, or being sued, or
worse. "Drone kills baby", on the eleven o'clock news. My machine is big, heavy and damn-near
indestructible. I do not know how far it fell, I going to guess at somewhere between 700 and 1000 feet,
(angle of sun, do the trig.) Now it's broken.
I want the FAA to let us do this, but if these kind of failures keep happening, someone's going to get
hurt, and then the Government will make it illegal! Game Over!
What is up with all the flaws in this platform? Ardu may kill any chance for guys like us to go out and
make money with this tech, before the FAA and Congress even make their decision next year.
Oh, and by the way, I was to show and demonstrate my machine to a government contractor, with a
C.O.E., who shall remain nameless, the very next day. I got to show them a hulk. The only plus was
they were impressed by my build, because it's still repairable, and the expensive stuff lived.
My suggestion to ARDU is to get your shit together. Something very bad is going to happen, it already
has to me, and if someone had gotten hurt the other day, and I was being sued, I would sue ARDU.
Then it's all over the news, and all over for us. This "mishap" was of no fault of mine. Does the
software rewrite itself? Did someone embed malware into it? Did the hardware just "decide" to melt
down?
You guys need to perfect this, or it's not going to go well with the FAA.
If they were to ask me if it is a safe and reliable platform, I would have to answer "HELL NO!, take it of
the market, before somebody gets killed." I am not giving up on this technology, just Arducopter,
and SO SHOULD YOU ALL!
UN-FREAKIN-BELIEVABLE!
Replies
Wow, this crash turned into a big deal. And again, I'm impressed that so many stepped up to figure out what went wrong, and Randy trying to write out the possibility of it ever happening again, to anyone.
I read instructions, but I did not see the the part of the wiki about foam on the barometer. If I missed it, anyone can. I guess I'm trying to say that this platform is very complicated, and little details like that can be very easy to overlook. I have a suggestion for the wiki:
An IDIOT CHECK list, (call it Do not fly until you've checked, and completed.....etc...), one page, big letters, so little details like this can not get passed over.
It's easy to say how "easy" this is to do when you do it full time, and get paid for it, but some of us struggle to afford this and find the time to do it.
When I got into this, I had a former friend telling me that he could write arduino code and that it was easy to do and that he was not scared of this. Well, his ADHD caused him to give up very quickly. He couldn't figure out tuning, and gave up. This after I spent a lot of $, and time. So I learned how to tune it, and I did. I guess I spaced out on the little foam detail, probably because I was overwhelmed by everything else. Still, not a good excuse, just a reason.
I apologize to all at 3DR for being so harsh when I started this discussion, but I wanted to hit home the fact that if this can happen to me, and I am a smart guy, it can happen to anyone. I love this stuff, and want to see it become a full on industry, but with the FAA and Congress, and Google, not yet having decided our fates, a bad accident that makes the news, IS the last thing we want.
I also fly a custom, hopped-up 500 size reg heli, 2200 rpm head speed with carbon fiber blades, that CAN cut your head off. I have ducked a few times, scaring the crap out of myself, more than once. Standing over your machine to check the indicator lights seems like the wrong thing to do. I'm not very close to the 500 when it's spinning up! How about an external super bright LED pack on a wire, so that it can be mounted somewhere easy to see. I have flown without MP and the computer before, but not anymore.
Again, GLAD this turned into a safety meeting.
Peace,Tom
There are countless reports of crashes throughout the world in any type of flight electronics, so Thomas i'm very sorry for your crash but this thread for me is obsolete and creates unnecessary alarm, or rather alarmism should be general, not related to APM Copter.
A few months ago I've got big injury to a hand because of a MK multirotor of a friend with FC problems, when I connected the LiPo all the motors go to max throttle, we flew 10 minutes before without any problem.
My hand a few days after this bad event:
These things can always happen, there must convince, live with it and try to minimize the risks.
If you want to be 100% sure to never crash just leave your multirotor on the table, without the LiPo connected, this is the only way to do crash, 100% secure, unless then do not go off the table alone... :P
Cheers, Marco
I agree with Marco's arguments, the quality of hardware and the care in assembling makes the difference.
Large majority of crashed with multi rotors depends from bad hardware design or behavior, those can also lead the software to act in a weird way . For sure it would be better that software could detect wrong informations from sensors or illogical scenarios and enter in a safety state not allowing complex operations, but foresee all possibilities is really hard especially if you not have a close system with a defined hardware.
Sometimes users assemble their copters with outstanding optimism, I saw a guy complaining about his Apm 2.5 quad flight capabilities with four different Esc and three different kv motors .
Replicating the same build many times is a way to detect easily small problems because in fact the same multi rotor is used by different people in different situations.
I will never trust a Dji platform till the day it would provide a complex log system, similar to Arducopter one, that allows user to understand what had happened during a flight.
A final word, do not fly with boards that had a serious crash, multilayer PCB can have some microscopic cracks that can manifest erratic contacts with vibrations during flight, a recommendation that MK users should consider very seriously .
Can anyone 100% be confident that no ideas dreamt up here, by the devs or the wider community hasn't been adopted by DJI.
3DR are making huge progress in my humble opinion and a couple of the points that Florian G made have been progressed, in the form of the PixHawk autopilot.
Hi !
I can share your frustration. After a software bug leading me to go to the hospital and getting my arm put together again, after many many crashes etc. i went away from arducopter. - Up to now, i did not regret it. - I switched to the "three letter brand" entry level Naza control - and never had a single crash since then anymore. Sorry to say 3DR. - Maybe productize your hardware more and test it. In my case it was software bugs and a faulty Ultrasonic sensor - but i never had anything like this with DJI. Alone the "block your baro from sunlight" is a bit of a joke to me. Why do you not install a 50 cent plastic cover with every board to avoid these issues ? - DJI is commercial - true. But if you look at the price of the entry ones and the trouble and cost it saved, my guess is that the return even now is positive before even starting.. - sorry to say this...
Maybe you can get better in future..
I have built over the years dozen of multi rotors mainly with Mk boards and since last year five hexa and an okto with APM 2.5 sold to customers that use them almost every day for working purposes. My phone is not ringing all day long and I did not read in the newspaper of people being harmed by my copters.
A multi rotor is nowadays technological miracle , every platform have weak and strong points . If someone decide to build is own multi rotor he must learn a lot of things about rc universe and understand the way things work in multirotors, it is not simple at all, otherwise it is better if he buys something RTF .
Human operator should be the fist safety device this is why pilots training is essential.
I've added an inertial-nav vs baro altitude check into the pre-arm checks. So it will throw up a message, "Alt disparity" on the HUD when you try to arm if it finds that the two altitudes are more than 1m apart. This won't make it into AC3.1.1 unfortunately but it'll go out with AC3.2.
A barometer sanity checker would be even better but until then, I think that this would have caught Thomas's issue.
Just a word to cheap carbon reinforced Propellers. Beside APM I also get a NAZA v2. I built a hexacopter, first with superb Pure - carbon propellers 11x5.5 and it was flying very well. But because the flight time was quite short, I experimented a little and changed the props to 11x4.7 to see if the flight duration will be prolonged. I purchased those cheap carbon reinforced things and balanced them quite exact, thinking they would be good only if they were good balanced. But what happened was a shocking experience. I changed nothing else but the props (no settings, no calibration, definitely nothing). I started in Atti mode just like before with the carbon props. The hexa was dancing like crazy, in absolutely unpredictable behavior, not stabilizing or holding anything. It acted like a helicopter after ground contact with broken blades. I landed after a couple of seconds in a pile of dog shit on the corner of the field with shaking hands ,big eyes and two broken props. DJI claims that NAZA has an internal vibration dampening and you do not need to decouple it from the frame. Well probably sells DJI better props than those i had on my hexa. But i am sure now, balanced quality props are crucial. Dosen´t matter if you have an APM or NAZA.
Peter
Hi,
Sorry for Off Topic but this thread give me an question (i'm new to APM 2.6, flys helis only):
If i will use the shell (stock case that comes with APM) i still have to use the sponge on the baro?
And if my copter goes into RTL mode can i regain control to stabilize? I mean if i fly in stabilize mode and hit the geofence and copter goes into RTL i can switch to stabilize mode and turn off RTL? Or i have to wait as copter will go back?
Thomas.
Been trying to avoid this thread, but tossing in my 2 cents anyway,
"
"I don't even want to add up all the damage, time and money I have wasted trying to get this flight
control system to work as advertised."
A lot of people have this problem, but this response is, for this group and this place, just plain inappropriate.
This isn't an IPad or even a Nexus or a Car or a PC, this is the place where you come when you want to be on the bleeding edge.
If you fail to understand that and feel you've been mislead by rosy claims of everything working perfectly, then obviously you haven't been reading these Blogs.
This is the leading (and bleeding) edge, it bears almost no relation to a traditional business and for the most part is not trying to "sell you" anything.
The code is in a constant state of flux and improvement and so is the hardware.
By the time any portion of it is fully debugged and operating perfectly, we have already moved on and introduced more nifty new features (with more problems).
So what, for most of us that is WHY we are here.
If you want a fully debugged commercial product you can't have it, in this field they don't exist for individual human beings who are not affiliated with the government.
You can get less capable devices that are a bit more commercial, but most of them approach the same level of problems you will find here too and they don't do as much.
This is like personal computers in the 1960's, we are inventing the future, it is a rocky process.
But, God is it an interesting place to be.
I voice my gripes too (I hate DF13 connectors), but my expectancies are in line with life on the bleeding edge.
Wanting it to be otherwise will accomplish nothing and if you can't take the heat, go away and stop bothering the rest of us.
See, I get to rant too.
Best regards,
Gary
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