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
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
I love this little thing. Reads overall charge and charge on each cell, programmable alarm levels, very light...http://www.helipal.com/battery-warning-buzzer-lipo-battery.html
Unfortunately this is just the reality of drones right now. I noticed the Solo has a "fly away" replacement. This means 3DR will really work on this so they're not replacing drones & go pro's. I've had to kiss one goodbye too, it's almost not a matter of "if" but "when." The parachute idea seems great, except it's just another switch you can quickly use (meaning false sense of security)
I do 3D rendering as well for landslide repairs. I've had a lot of luck with it, but the other day I was filming a bluff and you could see someone walking towards where it was going to land. You could see from the video when he stood next to me the drone went nuts - I think it was his bluetooth? Either that, or we were near a house with a hefty alarm system that lost connection with the controller. I do film w/ a go pro & pic every 5 seconds. It all happens so fast that the 5 sec pic shows it in the air, 5 sec later on the ground. It wrecked the props and a nasty scratch on the lens, probably wrecked the gimbal.
I have live view too and haven't found it that useful.
The good news is...these are pretty easy to fix yourself. A Phantom you have to send in, the Iris's have a ton of youtube video's and this forum to be able to put them back together. In the MP, you'll see the place where the logs are and then there's another button in there somewhere that give you the analysis of it that's easier to read (mine said "crash").
This is just the beginning of all this, I'm sure it will get better. It's not like when they launched the space shuttle and we all watched it explode. Keep it in perspective, but I would get some liability insurance if you do this for a business.
OK so let's say some parameter was off in my Iris+ ( I really have no idea if it was or not)
What's a good way to set everything back to how it should be, out of the box, for the average pilot like me who just wants to fly around within eye sight? What are some good steps to follow?
I've been hearing that setting it to the defaults in Mission Planner will NOT set everything that I want, such as the failsafe.
I've been going through the tutorials like recalibrating the ESC, accelerometer, compass... Are there any good and simple checklists you guys use to occasionally check if you have the right settings on your drone?
Hello Justin,
We can help you out with the problems of your Iris+
You can send us an email to help@3drobotics.com and we will continue assisting you in there. I am sure we can have the vehicle working again.
The best,
Aram
Thank you for posting Aram. I've currently got an email in to help@3drobotics.com and I've been notified to wait a day or two for a response, from Casey. I haven't been given a ticket number yet, should I have one by now?
Thanks.
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
-
6
of 11 Next