Broken V+, thoughts about this?

Are you printing your business cards on rare earth magnets? I sure hope so. Otherwise we are all screwed. My drone comes within a foot or two of my speakers in my Jeep all the time... And my speakers in my house... And in my shop...

They are pulling a fast one!
 
So we have an apparently DJI authorised repair centre stating that virtually all the electronics were destroyed by a magnetic business card.

I would love to run that by the small claims court- having validated their DJI status.
 
Hi guys

Below is our reply to Johan today.

Please understand that:
1) This quadcopter arrived in this state. Our initial check (before the customer pays anything) only confirms that there does appear to be a fault and that we can go ahead with the work requested of us (we offered to undo and refund all of our fees when this work didn't resolve the problem, and in fact spending 9+ man hours more on the Phantom has not brought us to a resolution).

2) We can ship worldwide, there is no looming deadline as far as we're concerned. We're certainly not trying to take advantage of Johan leaving the country as was suggested.

3) At this point we would suggest that we send the item to DJI. We would welcome their input. They were unable to help by phone other than to say that the Phantom contains several components with volatile memory which could conceivably be wiped. It's fair to say that these problems may have been caused by Johan's crash, by the journey here, or by something else entirely. The point is that these problems exist and we have swapped out the Naza (twice), the compass (twice), the GPS, etc to no avail. There would appear to be damage to the main board and Johan does not want to go ahead with any further work.

As above, we have offered to refund all of our fees and send the quadcopter back to Johan.

------------------------

Hi Johan

Dan and I have both spent the day so far working on your quadcopter. Whenever we try to arm the Phantom we get three fast red flashes on the LEDs. According to the manual (http://download.dji-innovations.com...antom_2_Vision_Plus_User_Manual_v1.1.1_en.pdf) this means "Not Stationary or Sensor Bias is too big". The rest of the time we see slow yellow blinking LEDs.

We have substituted the Naza with another one (twice in fact, so that's 3 Nazas in total), we've changed the compass - twice (and we've already changed the GPS as you know). We've calibrated the compass(es) on several occasions, we've run the Advanced IMU calibration on several occasions - but the red LED sequence still remains whenever we try to arm the Phantom.

At this point only the main board, motors and ESCs have not been changed.

We have re-installed the firmware on the main board and on the Naza. We have calibrated the RC controller both in the Phantom 2 Assistant and in the RC Assistant software.

We've spoken to DJI and they are at a loss. They said that magnets could cause problems with the Phantom's electronics.

I have noticed that sometimes the Phantom 2 Assistant detects the Zen IMU, and the gimbal works, and sometimes it does not. Given this, and the fast that we've substituted every other component, my feeling is that the main board is damaged in some way.

I want to be clear that this Phantom arrived to us with these problems. Whether that was caused by your crash, your magnets, or being dropped by the postal service is hard to know. What we do know is that the problems exist, short of replacing the main board, we're at a bit of a dead end.

The only thing I can suggest is that we send this off to DJI in the Netherlands for their diagnosis. If they consider this a warranty job then they will repair it for free. If not they will send a quotation for the repair. We can then forward you the quadcopter to your address (UK or abroad doesn't matter, we can post worldwide).

Time spent on this today would have been more than the cost of the discounted Phantom offered before - but we won't charge for our time today as a gesture of goodwill.

I'm sorry that I don't have better news.

All the best

Drone Doctor
 
Surely they have been reasonable... The phantom arrived with them after a crash, they diagnosed the fault but found the problem was worse than expected.

They have offered to refund the repair cost and return the phantom, certainly more generous than a car workshop would be.

Is it really likely that they damaged the phantom when it was the OP who crashed it?
 
Seems like a reasonable reply from Drone Doctor.
But 2 things puzzle me:-
The OP states that it flew in manual before it was sent for repair. This would seem, on the face of it, to suggest a faulty GPS/ compass. I stand to be corrected- but I didn't think that the P2V Naza would arm without a GPS signal.
I really cannot see that the Naza, the main board, the Rx, the compass, the GPS could be bricked by a magnet. But at least Drone Doctor concedes that there may have been another cause.

The only possibility I can think of is a severe over voltage from the regulator or USB interface (or a lightning strike! )
 
Hi Discv

We've now tried a 4th Naza - with the same result. We've also done a hard reset (shorting F1 and F2) which wipes and then reloads the firmware (supposedly on all parts of the Phantom). We still get exactly the same result - slow yellow flashing and three red flashes when doing the CSC.

By trying 4 different NAZAs, 3 different compasses, and 2 GPSs I think we're now confident that the problem does not lay in those components. All that remains is the main board, the ESCs and the motors.

Other than replacing the main board we're at a bit of a dead end. Any helpful advice would be gratefully received!

All the best

Drone Doctor
 
Fair comment DD. I jumped in with both feet at the original comment that this total failure was caused by a business card.
Your professional attempt to sort this has made me sit down again!

I will make no attempt to tell you your job- but out of interest what is the Naza assistant telling you? Can it see the Naza at all?
 
Fair comment DD. I jumped in with both feet at the original comment that this total failure was caused by a business card.
Your professional attempt to sort this has made me sit down again!

I will make no attempt to tell you your job- but out of interest what is the Naza assistant telling you? Can it see the Naza at all?
Phantom 2 Vision+ Assistant reports all systems go. Latest firmware on Naza, main board, GPS, battery, etc. RC shows as working fine (it all moves when we move the sticks, etc).

IMU Calibration looks good: 0.4, 1, 1322 Mod values.

It flashes yellow and when you try to arm it it gives 3 quick red flashes and then goes back to flashing yellow. Its a very strange one!
 
Fixed it! New main board did the trick.

Home time I think! Thanks for your help/ moral support :)

All the best
 
Congratulations!! That set of known and supposed symptoms would have foxed anyone.

Now that you are better aware of the history- you have some interesting commercial decisions-----------------------

Henceforth Drone Doctor can be highly recommended!
 

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