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
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?
in the mission planner there is an option to download flight logs, and in the log you can select a log item specifying the current and voltage your craft was using during a flight.
These graphs will basically give you a good indication on your battery health.
Just after takeoff you will see a drop on the battery voltage, which is due to the current it starts taking at that moment.
Your battery health is better when the drop from No load to Max Load immediately after the first seconds hovering (your current graph is moving up and stabilizing) is as small as possible.
So suppose you have a 4S battery pack, then your starting voltage should be very close to 16.8v... Then it drops to 15.5 or close, and then the curve will slowly drop off to the minimum (around 13.5)
The smaller the drop off at the beginning the better your battery health...
Erik
Justin-
I'm saying is that 3.2.1 apparently shut off battery Telemetry downlink... because when I first fired up IRIS and had the RC xmitter on, I saw no battery info in the TLM quick look screen. Nor did I see battery info in the Tower app.
I finally went thru the settings via Mission Planner and corrected that and a couple other things .
What I think is a problem however is the charger 3DR supplies. It will not fully load the batteries. I can put my other charger onto a 5100maH 3DR battery after it has spent 4 hours charging, and it takers ANOTHER 20min at 3amps to peak charge and equalize the cells. So at the field, I put each battery onto the old reliable charger I have and "top 'em off" prior to flight. Battery TLM then shows 12.6 volts at the RC xmitter's TLM screen.
What is a good way to test my batteries? Is there a mode in Mission Planner that will do this?
http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-1S-8S-Li-po-Battery-Voltage-Teste...
You can also set a minimum voltage level at which the buzzer will start beeping, per cell.
Another good thing is to recharge your LIPO's to a storage level voltage which is 3.80v per cell, after a completed flight, or when you are not using the LIPO's for some time (bad weather)
Never leave them fully charged for a longer period of time, as they will start losing capacity faster...
Erik
Justin-
Battery maintenance is an "off drone" activity. Mission Planner will not tell you if a cell in your LiPo battery pack is going south.
There are a couple useful tools on the Hobby King store page: (the IR Meter looks worth the money, But I've never used one..I probably should spring for one)
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4175__HXT_Simple_Lipoly_...
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__56389__Turnigy_LiPoly_Ba...
There are others out there... you might find a good battery monitor / tester for 3S LiPo's at a good RC hobby shop in your area. I've found these shops to be hit or miss for the quad-copter aspect, and I live in the Houston area. If you are out in western Kansas... its a mail-order proposition.
Dave
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