I purchased the Liveview for my Iris+ on Friday, installed it today. Took it to the park to check it out and try it for the very first time. I've been flying my Iris+ for several months now, so I am a decent pilot.
It was flying a little oversensitive but I was able to maintain control. I took it for the first flight for around 5 minutes, landed it, changed the battery and flew again.
The second flight is when it decided to either lose power or lose connection with my controller. After about 3 minutes, the motors were spinning but it was dropping steadily, twitching as it fell. As I'm holding the throttle up as hard as I can hoping it's going to pull out of it at the last second, it landed hard on some rocks.
The GoPro Hero Black - Absolutely destroyed.
My Tarot 2D gimbal, messed up.
New Clover antenna, broken
Propellors - all chipped up
And to put salt in the wound, the 32GB Micro SD card was ruined, the video is not retrievable, the computer won't recognize the card. I can't even get a cool "drone crash" clip out of it!
I've attached photos of the damage, and the log from the "successful" flight just prior (of course the disastrous flight wouldn't have uploaded a log!)
I'm hoping you can find what's wrong from this 1 log, and offer up some kind of explanation.
I've just watched a $2,000 investment literally fall from the sky and shatter on the rocks.
I've been filming with GoPro for years now, and not only is my brand new drone in pieces, but my GoPro Hero Black is absolutely destroyed. So even if I walk away from the Drone scene, I have no GoPro to film my Mountain Biking and WakeSurf videos. I'm disgusted at this loss tonight.
I might just have to walk away from piloting and aerial photography after this. I'm devastated.
I sent this in tonight to help@3drobotics. I really doubt I'll receive any help from them. Any suggestions?
EDIT: I've located the ACTUAL log of the crash, and it is attached here. Thanks for your help!
Replies
Hmmmm. I know I have mentioned this in another thread. I do not have an Iris and from what I have been told, there is no room to install a backup battery alarm. They are an excellent idea and work very well and are very cheap. Your battery is the most critical part. Hopefully 3dr will consider allowing room for such devices.
cheers, Steve
It would probably use up more battery life lol
I'm currently having a similar problem (presumed to be a power problem) with my Hobbyking HAL w/ KK2 board. I don't think my problem stems from the battery as I have had the same problem using two different batteries. Going to try to re-flash firmware.
My copter yaws right a little and dips as it decends in the direction of motor # 3. Replaced ESC's, Motors test ok. . .
entered in error
I've already posted the following analysis over on the facebook page (which I don't usually visit but someone from 3DR support asked me to have a look) but for those on this thread, it generally looks like a dead battery or some other form of power failure. It's not a brown-out but rather a loss of power from the battery.
Unfortunately the voltage/current monitor wasn't configured properly for some reason (it was configured for a PX4 instead of Pixhawk so it was using the wrong pins) so we can't see the battery voltage/current directly. Still we can see the vehicle climbed quickly in stabilize mode to about 120m. The IRIS is generally a bit underpowered when it has a gimbal attached so it was running at about 80% throttle on the way up.
Then it starts to lose power and motor #4 (back right) hit's it's maximum. To maintain attitude (i.e. to not flip over) it has to start reducing the power to the other motors which makes it start to fall. On it's way down motor #3 (front left) his it's maximum but the overall effect remains that it must reduce power to maintain attitude. The fact that the motor hitting the max changes means it's unlikely to be a motor failure... much more likely to be an overall loss of power from the battery.
1. it wasn't charged fully
2. the battery itself was defective and couldn't output the current required after the fast climb
Hey Randy,
Could you tell me what is Alt R and DAlt R in the above logs you posted? I'm really making an effort to learn log analysis more - it is such a useful tool.
Thanks
Andrew
Randy...When I fired up my Iris for the first time in late Feb, MP wanted to load the new firmware 3.2.1...which then required extensive compass/accelerometer calibrations , and an esc cal. As well, there were some values such as the battery monitor that were shut off. This is a steep learning curve for a person new to the hobby.
secondly, the Sky RC peak charger supplied with the Iris never quite seems to peak and fully charge batteries. I've tested it on smaller batt's and I get the same issue. I use another charger I have to peak the Iris batteries.
I've mentioned these items to 3dr support. I have a suspicion that 3.2.1 firmware was not properly configured before release, but I have no proof.
This could explain some things. I don't exactly excuse myself from any mistakes, this definitely isn't my first crash!
But we are advised to update to the latest firmware, are we not? I did this, and David, if what you say is true, this would have disabled my failsafe. I would have NEVER disabled this manually! If there was some kind of warning that my battery failsafe was now disabled,
Nobody would expect their failsafes to be disabled after a firmware update. And for the beginners, most won't know where to go and activate them again.
Thank you for the info, David.
I have done several firmware updates and have had none that changed parameters. The only time parameters changed is when I picked the wrong options in Mission Planner.
If the battery was your issue in that last flight you need to check this battery. A simple test in another copter would confirm that is was low at the time of the crash. Bare in mind that a battery will recover some when it is disconnect from the copter but as far as charge goes it will be close to cutoff.
I have a battery that has been used over 400 times and I will say they become weak after time. The biggest thing is the internal resistance of the battery. It will charge up fine but when you put a large load on the battery it will sage by as much as a few volts. This leads to short flights. When I check the battery after flight it will be well above the cutoff voltage because of the large internal resistance.
You will see this in the logs as you will see large sages in the battery reading when put under load.
I use these batteries for testing and just playing around. When I want to fly with the gimbal I use my other good batteries as my other batteries will only get it off the ground before the failsafe kicks in.
Thanks for the battery advice.
How do you check the status of your batteries? I noticed Mission Planner will give some data, but is that enough?
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