From your experience/ observations: What are the main specific reasons DIY mini-uavs crash & recommended equipment/procedure to address it(point form)? This discussion thread will serve as guideline for amateur uav designers, system integrators, operators, hobbyist etc. It contains the most likely failure modes to worry about on your uav & the solutions. These statistics are brought to you, through the magic of crowd sourcing. This is a very important question since uavs are being integrated into the NAS by the FAA. Any thoughts(specific points, in point form preferred) ?
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How about something simple, like much better documentation. The level of information you get with your copter from 3DR is horrid, to say the least. I have wires that I got in my kit that I still have no idea what they are for. And if you are using Mission Planner 2.0 on a Mac get ready to basically figure most of it out through trial and error.
The forums and Youtube are nice tools, but often unorganized with the quality information spread out over a wide area.
I have had a couple minor crashes, due to pilot error. But the serious lack of quality/organized information has really kept me from "spreading" my wings and really seeing what is possible.
I'd think some simple collision avoidance capability would help with both flyaways and operator error, but I haven't researched what's being done currently. Whatever my next rig is, I hope to mount either sonar or some of the cheap new mini laser rangefinders and find out how hard it is to set "proximity fences" with them. I think you could get full spherical coverage with an array of 6 to 8, plus (as demonstrated on some video I found) the ability to hug terrain in auto mode (go from A to B at X feet above the ground surface).
My issues...
Based on my experience, the flight controllers need to improve to detect a component failure or invalid value (like compass vs GPS readings) and react to it.
For any 'real' photo or video etc tasks, use an Octo.
Logic in planning software & flight controller to warn if mission exceeds battery life when activated (because currently you can initiate a 10m auto mission when the battery is nearly flat - so guaranteed to crash!)
Also, just remembered... a friend had a serious crash by accidentally activating an AUTO mission when 40 miles from the first waypoint (flown a few weeks prior). He thinks this was caused by radio interference - no way to know.
The hex started flying towards the first waypoint, went out of radio range, hit a tall building and broke almost every component including GoPro and gimbal.
There is currently no logic in the flight controller to determine that this mission was impossible and therefore refuse to start it.
The logs and GPS track afterwards showed that AUTO had been engaged, and following the track by zooming out on google maps it went to the area of the 1st waypoint!
A very expensive crash :(
Sometimes I remember to clear waypoints from the craft before I take off for the first time on an outing. I had better make this a required part of my setup procedure!
Old thread, but good question...
My major crashes were caused by:
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