Drone Flipped?

[Brother Dave]

A few days ago, I flew my Phantom 3 Standard to my friend’s house. I kind of circled, or at least that was my intention, but the video feed was acting up. Shortly after, I was sent home via RTH.
Later, I watched the video from the card in the camera, and it jumped as I was turning to leave.
I slowed the video down, and it looked like the drone flipped.
Here is the DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[Erised]

Please post your video Dave. Sometimes when you turn fast with high G force plus the wind the force is greater then the gimbal motors and the camara will just flip or get pushed back and on the video it looks as if you may have flipped but it's just the image. The gimbal resets and your straight again, on some P4 (mine also) sometimes the gimbal just goes limp, you have to land and restart for it to reset. The first time this limp gimbal thing happens you think your going down.

 

[Brother Dave]

That may have happened, because I received several error messages that there was strong wireless interference, and one of the things I saw in the video was a landing gear. The whole video is almost 1Gb, so I’ll try to find the spot where it happened, plus/minus a couple of minutes, so you can look at it.

 

[Brother Dave]

Do you know a good video editor I can use to clip the file?

 

[Brother Dave]

The point where it happened was at 2m50.7seconds And around that area. You can see on the map to the west (left) a kind of dogleg. That’s it!

 

[Erised]

VLC player is a free download that works very well to view and clip. You also have one in the editor of dji GO

 

[Brother Dave]

Here’s the footage:

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[Brother Dave]

You also have one in the editor of dji GO

I did not know that. Thanks

 

[N017RW]

Gimbal ‘hiccup’ not an aircraft loop/roll/flip.

Couldn’t occur that fast.

 

[Brother Dave]

Do you know what causes that? It kind of worries me, because I recently ripped my gimbal off and had to replace the antennas inside the phantom body due to the end of the wires being pulled off.

 

[captainmilehigh]

No idea what the cause of the hiccup would be....but just wondering something. Did you do an IMU calibration, and perhaps a gimbal calibration once you got the bird back together?

 

[Brother Dave]

No idea what the cause of the hiccup would be....but just wondering something. Did you do an IMU calibration, and perhaps a gimbal calibration once you got the bird back together?

Yes, I did. One of the reasons (probably the main, possibly the Only reason) for the crash is that I had downgraded the firmware to 1.7.9, and hadn’t seen the posts about the compass errors that people experienced when doing that.
So, the first thing I did after repairs was upgrade the firmware back to 1.8.2 and the second thing was to recalibrate the IMU. The third thing was compass recalibration. One side note here, I seem to remember only seeing the compass calibration screen pop up when it was necessary in the past, but now, it pops up every time I fly. If I’m in a good area, I’ll go ahead and recalibrate, but I haven’t tried in an area where I didn’t trust recalibrating.

 

[captainmilehigh]

Well, it was worth a shot to ask.

I very rarely have to do the compass dance to calibrate, but I try to launch away from metal buildings or other interference. Out here in the woods that’s pretty easy.

Since it seems only the gimbal is now affected on your bird, you might want to closely watch the ‘gimbal dance’ on power-up and see if it looks normal. If not, you may want to calibrate the gimbal in the GoApp to be sure all is happy. Good luck. [emoji106]

 

[oconnb]

Always a possibility you might’ve gotten clipped by a bird or again it could just be a glitch with the gImbal but definitely not the craft because the recovery was way too quick.

 

[Brother Dave]

Thanks, guys. I have seen several flips on my X8C, and this looks like it didn’t quite do a full flip, as you said. Somehow, I feel better, knowing that. I was pretty much at my control limit, and there was strong wireless interference, so I was worried about a crash into my friend’s house. I’m definitely less likely to do that again, lol.

 

[patman561]

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Never thought a Phantom could recover from a flip but it happened to me. A scary moment when I hit a power line. In the video you can watch/feel the bird do a full sumersault. Crazy.

 

[Big_A]

Here’s the footage:

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I have had that when using a lens hood. Notice its when the drone gets moving its happens. The lens hood is cup shaped and facing forward, at a certain speed it will overcome the gimbal motors and flip the camera.

 

[Brother Dave]

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Never thought a Phantom could recover from a flip but it happened to me. A scary moment when I hit a power line. In the video you can watch/feel the bird do a full sumersault. Crazy.

Nice flip, lol. It looks like oa came in just before it(nearly) hit the ground. Glad it only ruined a prop.

 

[Brother Dave]

I have had that when using a lens hood. Notice its when the drone gets moving its happens. The lens hood is cup shaped and facing forward, at a certain speed it will overcome the gimbal motors and flip the camera.

Yeah, I did notice that it did its little “jig” just as I was starting to move out. I don’t have a lens hood, though. No filters either, just camera.
Since it happened, I have done a re-flash with the firmware, using P3C_FW_DEBUG to make it take, recalibrated IMU, recalibrated compass.
I don’t want a repeat.