Lost P1 found after 6 months, motors wont start up

Joined
Jul 26, 2014
Messages
110
Reaction score
3
Location
SoCal
Some of you may remember I lost my P1 back in Oct 2014. A gardener found it and I got it back. It was laying in some tall hedges and got wet from rain. The Go Pro and Zenmuse 3D gimbal work, the issue is the P1 motors.

I can do the GPS dance and the PI goes through the warm up sequence and all the lights are good and I get a GPS lock but when I pull the sticks down and out to start the motors, nothing. I double checked everything and I cant seem to find why the motors wont start. Props turn freely by hand, there doesn't appear to be any obstruction

This P1 has an upgrade board in it and stock motors. I tried a ditterent battery to make sure I had good juice and same thing.

any ideas?

Thanks
 
Nice that you got it back, that's very cool. I wonder if the gardener would like an aerial shot or two for a reward???

Corrosion on the board or the ESCs would be my first guess, or maybe they are just cooked from sitting in the bush trying to spin the motors.

Howza bout a link to the thread you posted about loosing it... ;)
 
It was an older gentleman who lived at the house who called me. He wouldnt take the reward so I convinced him that $50 would treat his gardener's family to a nice meal and he finally agreed. I never met the gardener to thank him.

The link to the long saga. I gave up after about 20 searches and 2 months. http://www.phantompilots.com/threads/lost-phantom-youre-never-going-to-believe-why.24632/page-4#post-347009

How many times did you walk/drive past where it was hiding?
 
How many times did you walk/drive past where it was hiding?
I had the bearing (direction) of where it landed but was off by almost 1/4 mile in distance. There was another witness to when it went down in the bottom of the canyon and he had it landing in the same spot that I said it went. It was found half way up the ridge.

When I last saw it the P1 it was out of battery and descending to land. How it kept going and climbed almost 400ft up the ridge is a mystery. We never searched up that high since we didnt think it could climb with a dead battery. I was maybe 2 streets over from it when I expanded the grid search out 2 times. As others have advised, you usually guess short, the drone ends up a lot further away from you then it appears. We even put another drone up in the same spot and I went to where I was flying from to try and judge distance by the size of the Phantom and no luck. I'm usually pretty good at marking downed objects from duck and dove hunting.

What really sucked was the night before I was looking at trackers and almost bought the Marco Polo but waited to check out more tracker reviews. I wont fly another UAV without a tracker, i learned my lesson.
 
Last edited:
Well, it's all good info to learn from. I'm working on FPV and will add a DVR to it. I also have a video camera pointed at it when it's doing things like riding along the side of the mountain, over the pine trees. If it goes down while on video, that should help quite a bit.
My problem with trackers is that so many need phone service. I do a great deal of flying where there is no service.
I liked your strobe idea from the other thread. Did you find what you wanted?
 
This could even be some thing as simple as one of the plugs in the receiver being corroded. Try plugging rebinding the tx just to make sure its bound. Then plug in to the naza with the remote on and see if you can see all your sticks movements and see if you can see the sliders for the switches move in the naza assistant or not. If not then it would likely be a connection in the phantoms receiver not sending the commands to turn on the motors. But if all that checks out and you can see the sticks move there sliders right when you do a csc. Then try gong to the page were you can test the motors one by one. and see if you get any movement out of them or not. and report back to what you find.

oh btw also go the the update tab and see if its showing you have a gps there should be numbers for the firmware and loader ver for the gps then also check to see if you have any mod values for a compass. (tho if not it should be giveing you a pop up window saying some thing about a compass or gps error)
 
This could even be some thing as simple as one of the plugs in the receiver being corroded. Try plugging rebinding the tx just to make sure its bound. Then plug in to the naza with the remote on and see if you can see all your sticks movements and see if you can see the sliders for the switches move in the naza assistant or not. If not then it would likely be a connection in the phantoms receiver not sending the commands to turn on the motors. But if all that checks out and you can see the sticks move there sliders right when you do a csc. Then try gong to the page were you can test the motors one by one. and see if you get any movement out of them or not. and report back to what you find.

oh btw also go the the update tab and see if its showing you have a gps there should be numbers for the firmware and loader ver for the gps then also check to see if you have any mod values for a compass. (tho if not it should be giveing you a pop up window saying some thing about a compass or gps error)

Thanks for the help, I'll give it a whirl
 
I had the bearing (direction) of where it landed but was off by almost 1/4 mile in distance. There was another witness to when it went down in the bottom of the canyon and he had it landing in the same spot that I said it went. It was found half way up the ridge.

When I last saw it the P1 it was out of battery and descending to land. How it kept going and climbed almost 400ft up the ridge is a mystery. We never searched up that high since we didnt think it could climb with a dead battery. I was maybe 2 streets over from it when I expanded the grid search out 2 times. As others have advised, you usually guess short, the drone ends up a lot further away from you then it appears. We even put another drone up in the same spot and I went to where I was flying from to try and judge distance by the size of the Phantom and no luck. I'm usually pretty good at marking downed objects from duck and dove hunting.

What really sucked was the night before I was looking at trackers and almost bought the Marco Polo but waited to check out more tracker reviews. I wont fly another UAV without a tracker, i learned my lesson.
Or just save yourself some juice to get ALL the way home.
 
The SainSpeed TK102 GPS tracker works really well for me, except for once. Anyway, I discovered it only after having lost my P2V. Like you, I couldn't find it myself. Somebody found it quite a ways from where I really thought it had landed, and it needs a new shell and landing gear. However, it also lost its camera (and therefore transmitter for transmitting anything back to me!) Also, the left front motor spins slowly and in a jerky fashion. I posted a thread about it asking whether a new motor would fix it or would I need an ESC or anything else as well.

Here's a link to the GPS.. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CXMRGN2?redirect=true&ref_=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_0 I bought myself a P3A and am using the GPS as extra assurance.
 
The TK109 is a newer version, self contained, smaller, lighter and probably a better choice.
But at the end of the day, they both work.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,314
Messages
1,469,416
Members
105,283
Latest member
NGO
Want to Remove this Ad? Simply login or create a free account