Hi All,

I've been doing lots of research on here and other sites trying to find out what might of happened to cause crash a week ago.

 

Bit of background,

  • APM2.5 running v2.70 arduplane. 
  • Power to APM via 3DR power module, and Turnigy UBEC 3A powering servos. (jp1 removed)
  • Ubloc GPS, 3DR telemetry 433mhz radio link.
  • TX/RX Hitex Aurora 9. 
  • FPV 12v camera and 5.8ghz video tx
  • Plane EPP FPV , 4S 5000mah Zippy flight battery, powering everything on board.

The day in question I had been flying around in manual, stablize and FBW-A all perfectly fine, probably could do some work on the PIDs, but flys perfectly ok.

Had used RTL, Loiter, Auto successfully, 

Landed, recharged batteries and went again with a different mission, slightly different positions on the misson and slightly higher altitude. 

Went round the mission fine, so whilst in loiter I sent a "restart mission" command and set it off again. Had a little trouble hitting home position so "nudged" it over home. and away it went to wp1 as shown on the HUD on laptop. 

Every thing was going fine until almost reaching a wp at which point the plane entered a spiral dive and had no control over the plane from the remote, Can confirm that the position the plane was in and where i was standing has never entered fail safe on any flight (prob 50-60 flights), so I do not believe i was out of range although I don't have rssi signal from tx/rx..

Now i've been looking at the logs, both downloaded from APM and the tlog saved during the flight and from what I can tell the tlog stopped just before the plane went into its death dive. 

Would this indicate there was a problem and APM was trying a reboot?

FPV continued transmitting all the way until impact point, at which point battery was ejected and disconnected. It seems the tlog stops about 5-6 seconds before impact point. 

The video also shows the point at which the control was lost, a very slight right hand roll and decent, almost as if the controls locked in position and did not move until impact.

Now not sure what to check next, or really what the tlog data is showing me, consider myself still a noob, even after few months of reading as much as i can and reading the code to try and get a grip on how its working. Programmed several ardunio projects so know the basics.

If anyone can take a look and give any advice I would be grateful. The one thing I did notice on this tlog compared to others is the Vcc, which looks strange. On all other logs i can see steady voltage +/- 0.1 volt from around 5.2 to 5.1v.

Thanks, as the plane has now been repaired and almost ready to go back in the air, I want to make sure  this wasnt stupid user error or a fault that could happen again. 

Thanks in advance.....

20130421124503.tlog

20130426165585.log.gpx

20130421124503.rlog

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Replies

  • Thanks to all who have helped.

    I have now rebuilt the plane with APM powered by UBEC and smoothed with a 1fd capacitor. Output powered by seperate UBEC and so far all seems good on the benchtest.

    I did find a dry joint on one of the power cables whilst rebuilding, which may of been the root cause of the reboot. 

    Anyway, just to say thanks again.

  • The problem is in the Power Module. It has been known to brown out with as little as 500mA. Replace it with a high quality UBEC and don't put any other devices on that UBEC like servos. So you'll need 2 UBECs total. You can still use the PM to measure volts and amps, but disconnect the power leads. Power through the Input side with JP1 removed. Be sure your input UBEC is putting out no more than 5.5v.
  • Hi Andrew,

    As Paul mentioned, if you graph your 3DR radios, rssi, remrssi, remnoise, noise and also alt, you can see at around 931 seconds into the flight altitude reading stops and 3 seconds later the remote radio stops. (hitting the ground!) Interestingly at 913 seconds the remote radio drops out completely for a brief moment.

    When J1 is removed are the 3DR radios powered from the UBEC or Power Module???

    Waz

  • I had a similar crash with similar circumstances with a quad. My volts were not low enough to cause a brown out but the quad just dropped into the top of a tree as I was coming home and video went out about the same time. Checking the tlog it stopped before any useful information and the flash log also stopped.

    I'm starting to wonder if there is a problem with the new Power Module that's dropping power to APM for some reason.

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