I recently purchased an Iris+, my first two flights seemed to go very smoothly and I was impressed by the stability and handling of the vehicle. I researched the Iris+ for quite a while before deciding to buy and read many of the posts in this forum (thank you for all of your input and experience!).
Unfortunately, on my third full flight I only managed to fly for about 1.5 minutes before experiencing a very strange failure. I was able to hover for about a minute and then brought it up to about 50 feet. It stayed at altitude for about 10 seconds and then abruptly “twitched” and fell directly down out of the sky crashing into the ground. This broke one of the blue arms and two of the long legs (also cracking a third leg). I connected the device to my computer through mission planner and downloaded the logs for the flight. Although being new to using this software I was able to compare the Baro Alt with the GPS RelAlt and noticed that just before the crash, the GPS RelAlt spiked up by almost 10 meters at the same time the Baro Alt was showing the craft dropping (what actually happened).
I have attached both the flight log and the graph to this post. If anyone could provide insight as to what happened I would be very grateful. I am now nervous to fix and fly the Iris+ again due to this erratic behavior.
Thank you in advance!
Replies
I just received word from 3DR. They looked over the data and have determined that it was a failure of the accelerometers. They have offered to process an RMA and have offered to repair the issue. So far my experience with 3DR's service has been great! Now hopefully I can get a working Iris+ soon so I can get onto flying!!!
It looks like the copter decided to go down. The Throttle Out dropped suddenly for no reason other than it seems to have coincided with an increase in Radio link errors. The higher you went the more noise.
Hi Samuel,
I bought my Iris+ a month ago and I experienced exactly the same behavior as yours, only mine didn't break.
I flew it many times already and the response remains erratic, the most ending in crashes.
I am in contact with 3DR support trying to figure out what is the problema. Apparently something with the compass suffering interference. But I am not sure about it because I fly other quads in the same places without a problem.
Now, I am starting to suspect from the FPV transmitter. I am using a fatshark 5.8GHz. Today I flew it without it and without gimbal and camera and the flight was perfect. I tested many functionallities and all ran well: loiter, standard, RTH, mission plan, follow me, etc.
Hope this helps you somehow to find a solution.
Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Miguel.
Thank you for your input. I am using the stock transmitter that came with the Iris+ and have not used an FPV system or gimbal yet. I was anticipating a purchase of the gimbal and the video transmitter but will have to hold off until I can feel comfortable that the Iris+ will not run erratically. In your case does distance effect the performance? My first two flights, after getting a feel for the controls, I went as high as 150 feet and as far as about 500 feet out (laterally) without an issue. The third flight (when it dropped from the sky) was only a little under 50 feet high and about 20 feet out, it was not far from me at all. I hope I receive word from 3DR and they can help me with this!