Good bye to my #2 Phantom............
- Thread starter cczx14r
- Start date
Sorry, meant WEST. There has been a report that if in Assistant one looks deep enough that a default home lock is in CHINA! Someone mused they should change that default to the lat/long of their home. In all honesty, I am sure if this is true that the manufacturer would prefer to set it some whereelse...but how would they know where?
Also, we don't know whether the PH is sophisticated enough to calculate and take a great circle route versus a simple compass heading...but I suspect the latter. In any case, for those birds last seen heading serenely and purposefully SOMEWHERE, it would be interesting to note a general compass heading.
We have not heard whether the OP got a good home lock before flying....which can lead to a host of problems once things start going sideways.
Also, we don't know whether the PH is sophisticated enough to calculate and take a great circle route versus a simple compass heading...but I suspect the latter. In any case, for those birds last seen heading serenely and purposefully SOMEWHERE, it would be interesting to note a general compass heading.
We have not heard whether the OP got a good home lock before flying....which can lead to a host of problems once things start going sideways.
A long distance constant heading is loxodrome, always leading to mag NP. That will be the resul of a compass route. What it needs to go back home China is ortodrome, possible under gps navigation.
Enviado desde mi GT-I9000 usando Tapatalk 2
Enviado desde mi GT-I9000 usando Tapatalk 2
Intersting post. Sound like a GTU-10 is in my future. Stories like this scare me and make me not want to fly my 1200 dollar machine.
Is it possible to get the actual GPS coordinate of the last known place of the Phantom? The Red Pin on a google Map only works IF you have cell coverage. In Nevada, I can think of many many areas that do not have cell coverage, and that goes for Colorado and Utah as well. The option to Find My Phantom Vision would be useless until you got back into a coverage area and tried. Only then you could take screen shots and hope you make it to the right area.
However, if your Phantom flies away with a near full battery it could go miles, and you last known GPS coordinate could only be a portion of the distance it has traveled. The GTU-10 would work regardless, feet away to across the US.
Jeff
Is it possible to get the actual GPS coordinate of the last known place of the Phantom? The Red Pin on a google Map only works IF you have cell coverage. In Nevada, I can think of many many areas that do not have cell coverage, and that goes for Colorado and Utah as well. The option to Find My Phantom Vision would be useless until you got back into a coverage area and tried. Only then you could take screen shots and hope you make it to the right area.
However, if your Phantom flies away with a near full battery it could go miles, and you last known GPS coordinate could only be a portion of the distance it has traveled. The GTU-10 would work regardless, feet away to across the US.
Jeff
MrFlats said:
Tracking devices like the Garmin still require GPS cell coverage to be able to receive requests and relay their location back to you.
The other option for post-flyaway locating is to have a telemetry and/or FPS system(s) onboard, that will continue to transmit GPS coordinates even when control is lost...up to the limit of their transmitting range, of course.
On a side note, I see now that Amazon has amended their listing for the GTU 10 to say "Discontinued by Manufacturer"...but there's still plenty in stock it seems. Might be a good time to grab one for anybody who is considering it, before the supply dries up.
true but then again, you never know what a cell phone will cause near the flight controller, i think everybody know the noises when a cell phone lays near a radio or something and a GPS tracker will contact to cell phone antennas, even if you dont track the position. I dont think the original TX is the fault, i heard from 450 fly aways as well and it dont use the phantom remote.OI Photography said:
Are there any reports of somebody using a Garmin that had a fly away, found it and then documented any other info once found?
also wish there was someway to have a mini black box onboard recording it's inputs.
also wish there was someway to have a mini black box onboard recording it's inputs.
Davek said:
I'd love to see a "black-box" for the phantom. I do what I can to record data while flying, but is essentially all GPS based, so if I have a fly away and recover it, I'll have speed direction and distance, but nothing to specific from the naza controller (I can pull the pitch and roll via the gimbal servo connector)
In my phantom I have an FBOSD with a memory card module to log the data, I also record my FPV feed (useful to get a general direction of the flyaway and last gps co-ordinaries etc) and I'm also awaiting a flytrex flight data logger.
The one sample of data I'd love to be able to log is the actual motor rpm for each motor! I imagine it would be fairly simple to design too (I'm just not that good at designing pcb from scratch lol) but with a little photo sensor mounted as close to the motor as possible and a small sticker on the motor, you could get a Hz signal from each corner, multiply the Hz by 60 and you should get rpm! With this on each motor, I could log wether a motor has seized etc causing the problems.
Great dealer support!!
Well, as promised an update for those of you that remember my fly-away of a new V1.1.1 Phantom a few weeks ago. I was really lucky enough to find the Phantom approx. one mile away the following day and returned it to UAVdirect.com the day after.
Anyway, I just got off the phone with Jake of UAVdirect.com and he told me that they're shipping out a brand new V1.1.1 replacement for me! That really makes me happy, you can't expect better warranty service than that, especially when dealing with a DJI product where support of any kind is notoriously suspect!
Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with UAVdirect.com, but merely passing on a very positive personal experience with a great place to do business with. To say I'm stoked would be an understatement!
Well, as promised an update for those of you that remember my fly-away of a new V1.1.1 Phantom a few weeks ago. I was really lucky enough to find the Phantom approx. one mile away the following day and returned it to UAVdirect.com the day after.
Anyway, I just got off the phone with Jake of UAVdirect.com and he told me that they're shipping out a brand new V1.1.1 replacement for me! That really makes me happy, you can't expect better warranty service than that, especially when dealing with a DJI product where support of any kind is notoriously suspect!
Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with UAVdirect.com, but merely passing on a very positive personal experience with a great place to do business with. To say I'm stoked would be an understatement!
Re: Great dealer support!!
Good to hear, Jim. Maybe they'll send a P2 by mistake!
Good to hear, Jim. Maybe they'll send a P2 by mistake!
cczx14r said:Well, as promised an update for those of you that remember my fly-away of a new V1.1.1 Phantom a few weeks ago. I was really lucky enough to find the Phantom approx. one mile away the following day and returned it to UAVdirect.com the day after.
Anyway, I just got off the phone with Jake of UAVdirect.com and he told me that they're shipping out a brand new V1.1.1 replacement for me! That really makes me happy, you can't expect better warranty service than that, especially when dealing with a DJI product where support of any kind is notoriously suspect!
Please note that I am not affiliated in any way with UAVdirect.com, but merely passing on a very positive personal experience with a great place to do business with. To say I'm stoked would be an understatement!
WOW! That is great that you found yours after all.
I experienced a fly away last week, with my GoPro attached and searched unsuccessfully for it on Sunday. I ordered a new one this morning, along with a GoPro 3 Black version and have been searching for a GPS tracking device which lead me to this thread.
The Garmin GTU seems a bit large. Where do you attach it and can you still attach your GoPro?
I experienced a fly away last week, with my GoPro attached and searched unsuccessfully for it on Sunday. I ordered a new one this morning, along with a GoPro 3 Black version and have been searching for a GPS tracking device which lead me to this thread.
The Garmin GTU seems a bit large. Where do you attach it and can you still attach your GoPro?
Really??? You ordered a new one after a flyaway? Not me, brother. If my Phantom ever flies away on me or acts wonky in any way, I would lose what little faith I have left in DJI's products and move on to some other manufacturer's product. So far, I've had zero problems...although I'm pretty astounded at the number of people who HAVE had legitimate issues and fly-aways. Lately, I've been having way more fun building a v-tail quad based around a KK2.1 flight controller than flying the Phantom.
My principle beef with the Phantom is its ability to fly in any meaningful wind is pretty much ZILCH. It is just too small and light. A craft in the 550 or 600mm motor to motor range provides more stability and opportunity to fly. I doubt I'll be flying the Phantom at all after the v-tail construction is finished and the copter dialed in for acrobatic flight. Fact is, I haven't flown the Phantom in a month. Too boring. I'll probably sell it and move onto more acrobatic and larger, more powerful quads.
PF
My principle beef with the Phantom is its ability to fly in any meaningful wind is pretty much ZILCH. It is just too small and light. A craft in the 550 or 600mm motor to motor range provides more stability and opportunity to fly. I doubt I'll be flying the Phantom at all after the v-tail construction is finished and the copter dialed in for acrobatic flight. Fact is, I haven't flown the Phantom in a month. Too boring. I'll probably sell it and move onto more acrobatic and larger, more powerful quads.
PF
vanatic99 said:
I used velcro outside on the bottom side along the flat part of the battery compartment. It's really tucked in there just fine and doesn't effect camera area.
Davek said:
Check this out, I just found out about it too. www.flytrex.com
...but you have to pull the memory card everytime you want to download data. Pretty cool though.
PhantomFan said:
I'm surprised to hear you have difficulty with flying your Phantom in "meaningful" wind...I live on the Canadian prairies, in an area notorious for near constant winds, and although I draw the line in the 18-20mph range, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever flown with it below about 10mph. I have been often impressed at how well this small quad flies in wind; I've flown a variety of heli's for more than a decade, and my first venture into quads was a Gaui 500X. The Gaui does no better than the Phantom in windy conditions (meaning it handles wind surprisingly well)
I'm in the same boat as you in that I've not had a lick of trouble with either of my Phantoms. I have two; one with a zen muse on it and a Gaui FPV system with a monitor, mainly for framing shots. My second system is set up for FPV, with a 5.8ghz fat shark system, iOSD, BT datalink and ground station system. Both have more than 100 flights on them, and neither have glitches in any way, ever.
I think that as others have pointed out, there is no one, single cause for these glitches. Personally, I question whether the Phantom really has an appreciably higher number of fly-aways than another multi may have; people being people, we seldom comment much, especially online, about things that work the way we expect them to. We are however VERY quick to point out problems, real or imagined.
Given that, and the sheer number of Phantoms that have been sold in the last...what...year? 18 months?...certainly far more than any other multi in the same period, I wonder if we simply hear more about fly-aways with Phantoms because of the sheer volume of Phantoms out there flying. I think it's also worth acknowledging the reality that MANY Phantom pilots are not only new to R/C flying, they're new to R/C. Where it's still quite uncommon to hear of someone with no previous R/C flying experience buying a collective pitch helicopter, it's more the norm than the exception to hear about someone with no experience at all buying a Phantom to further explore another hobby, usually photography or videography.
With a decade of R/C/ heli flying under my belt, 25 years as a pilot of "big" aircraft (ones you actually sit in), 30 years of R/C experience and a 40 year career in aviation, I know I generally spend/spent at least an hour of tinkering/adjusting/balancing/repairing SOMETHING, or many "somethings" for every hour I spent flying. It's just the nature of the beast.
With an aircraft as sophisticated as the Phantom is, I'm sometimes surprised it's as relatively trouble free as it is. I don't believe I just "got lucky" with my Phantoms...only one of mine was purchased new. The other I bought used. I do think that at least a part of the reason I have had no issues is that I do the exact same things every single time I fly, and I do many of the same things after flying, every single time.
I know from my years of flying big airplanes that checklists are critically important for the same reasons as they are with small ones; verification of equipment viability and safety of flight operations. I also know that even when I started flying, my memory wasn't good enough to remember everything I needed to check, so I had a checklist written out that I could use every time. I do the same thing with my heli's and with my Phantoms.
A lot of those things are pretty simple, common sense things; checking all of the nuts, bolts, screws, tape, velcro, etc. to make sure it's the way it's supposed to be. When I say I "Check it", I don't mean I look at everything, and as long as it all looks good, it must BE good...I CHECK it...it doesn't take 5 minutes to check every screw, nut & bolt on the entire machine with the appropriate tool. Every time I open the hull ( no set schedule, but often every week or two for one reason or another) I always check each connection. Again...5 minutes max.
Some of them are less common sense but equally important, maybe more so when we're talking about fly-aways. Do you check for wifi signals in your immediate area? Is the wifi on your GoPro turned off? What about bluetooth? Your cellphone has both too, how about those? are you flying in an open field, or in your back yard? is your wifi operating normally in your house? how about your neighbours? There are free wifi scanner apps for your smartphone...you'd be surprised at how much contamination there is out there, a lot of which can potentially affect your Phantom.
Are you near any above ground high voltage power lines? What about old telephone lines? Even though fibre optics are the standard for telephone service delivery on land lines now, there are still old lines still providing service for a variety of telecommunications equipment, all over the world. Thinking about your environment is just as important to trouble free flight operations as mechanical issues, especially as these systems increase in complexity.
Is that all there is to ending the fly away "problems"? Not hardly...that would be way too easy. I do think though that there is a significant number of fly-aways that could have been prevented or avoided. Without a doubt, there are problems that originate in the hardware or firmware that DJI needs to address. They've also done a pretty poor job in addressing some past problems, and they have a long way to go before their communications with customers even hit the "adequate" level. If they do a better job of addressing the things they can fix, and we as the end users do a better job of making sure we address things in our control, I'd suspect we'd hear a lot less about fly aways than we do now
We need a new top side shell that is clear in the middle, or with an access hatch. I'm on flight # 35 no fly aways.
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