Oh $#!& Moment Today

Koz

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Hilton Head Island, SC
I have the original version of the stock P2V+ and probably 70 or 80 flights under my belt without ever experiencing any problems with the aircraft (the pilot had a few close calls, but the aircraft has been stable).

I hadn't flown for a few months but now that the weather is nice and things are green again I started flying again yesterday. Charged everything up and went off to fly. Since the last time I flew there has been an Android update and I guess that caused problems with the app. The app either crashed completely or went from the camera screen to the main menu. So I went home, updated the app and all of the firmware (Nexus 7 with Android 5.0x).

When I flew today the app would occasionally close the camera view and go back to the main menu, but the camera was still running. Anyway, on the final shot of the day I took off from a clearing about 40 feet in diameter. In front of me was a two story house, and on all of the other sides there were trees between 30 feet and 70 feet tall. Just beyond the trees behind me was a salt marsh. It was also very breezy today with a constant wind of about 12 mph and gusts to 20.

Even in that small clearing I had a lock on 8 satellites so I popped straight up and set up for the shots I wanted. I was at about 60 feet and backed the aircraft away from the house, over 30 foot trees, and out over the salt marsh.

All of a sudden their is a drastic change in pitch from the sound of the motors, all the lights flash red, and the aircraft starts descending to the march quickly (not falling). Battery is still at 39% and satellites are locked in. I lost sight of the aircraft as it went behind the trees descending towards the marsh. Knowing altitude is my friend I immediately set it into a climb and got above the trees but the aircraft was still trying to come down. Once I cleared the trees I let it come down, but the wind started taking it into the trees beside me. For a split second I forgot that my orientation was now facing the camera and my controls were reversed and I almost hit another tree, but I corrected and had someone with me make the hand catch.

I'm thankful to have avoided the salt marsh and the trees and get the aircraft back in one piece, but I have no idea why it failed. When it did fail it did not Return to Home (I had set the RTH point before taking off). It went straight down from where it was hovering, and it was moving fast (I land slow to avoid the vortex). As I said, all lights were flashing red. Battery was in the green and all contacts are clean. All of the rotors were spinning upon landing. Voltage across each cell is about 3700mV. Low battery level is set to go home. Transmitter and WiFi battery levels were in the green.

Does anyone have any ideas what I should look at next? Also, is anyone else having problems with the camera view shutting down and dumping to the menu screen? I'm going to go charge everything again and go to a big open field and see if I can replicate the issue, but at a higher altitude so I can see more flight data. This also might be a good excuse to buy the new P3.
 
I can't address the app. issues but the red lights and auto-land is a low battery issue.

The battery % gauge is not accurate and the quad has an additional [hidden] low voltage trigger for auto-land (~10.65 volts under load).
Sounds like what you experienced.

How did you store your battery over the Winter?
Above or below 50% charge can be detrimental to it's lifetime.

Plenty of info on the web about LiPo use and care.
 
I have a bunch of RC aircraft and am familiar with LiPo's. I cycled my batteries throughout the winter. When I got home I hooked up the Phantom to the Vision Assistant software and it reported 39% charge left in the battery. I'm not saying that it's not a battery issue, but everything looks fine.
 
Check that your DJI Assistant software is set to RTH upon low battery detection and not just to land.
 
You could have a bad battery. Check out this video.

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