P4P+ Pano mode, complete lockup, almost lost bird, what should I have done?

[island2]

Last night I saw a thread that pano mode had been added to the P4 Pro + controller now too, so I thought I'd give it a try today. Started off great, but ended with a major panic.

I first took it up and did a sphere pano. Then a 180 and a horizontal. All seemed to go fine with the first three.

Then I took it down to around 14' off the ground about 15' from the front of my house to do a horizontal pano. Went fine. Then I changed it to do a 180 pano and it seemed to only turn half way and stopped. I didn't see a complete message, but it was ready to take another photo (solid white circle around white circle photo button, not moving) and nothing more seemed to be happening for 10 seconds, so I clicked the (on screen) photo button again to take another 180 pano. It seemed to take a few photos, turned to the left, and then just seemed to stop with nothing happening on the controller for 30 seconds. It did not seem to be taking any more photos so I decided to move it... I could not move the bird with the sticks at all. Nothing.

Sometimes when flying at the same spot (when not taking a pano) I'll get an obstacle avoidance sensor that won't let me fly in one direction due to being close to the house and tree to the left, but I can always back up, or change altitude or turn. So I thought maybe in pano mode the forward obstacle sensor was triggered when it auto-turned left for the pano and it was stuck. (although there was no beeping this time) There was also sunshine in that direction which in other circumstances has sometimes kept me from flying forward when it directly hits the camera... not exactly like this circumstance as I wasn't asking it to fly forward and always before I could always turn... But in case, I went to the Visual Navigation Settings menu and slid the green slider to "Off" for Enable Forward and Backward Obstacle Sensing. Still nothing, no response to sticks.

(I didn't go to advanced to turn off other obstacle sensing settings... just turned off forward and backward obstacle sensing there... maybe I should have turned off more of the advanced settings, not sure?)

I also didn't see any way to cancel the pano.

Luckily it was 15' from the ground, so I grabbed my tallest step ladder, and put my hand on the drone. A friend arrived, and I had her hold the throttle stick fully down while I was holding the drone. Nothing. Motors didn't stop as they normally would when hand catching for me. Motors continued.

Then I tried pushing the power button on the battery of the drone itself and then holding it for 5 seconds. Nothing again, motors continued to hold position.

Tried turning remote off and then on again. Remote did power off and on, clicked go fly, seemed to connect normally (although was in a bit of a panic and didn't note specifics, but didn't get any connection error, saw normal green bar). Still didn't respond to sticks or throttle down.

Tried pushing the power button of the battery and holding for 5+ seconds a couple more times, and still nothing. Motors at full speed since I was holding the drone now.

Finally had to physically remove battery to power off drone.

Have never seen a lockup like this, and am now scared silly of the pano mode.

Has anyone experienced a lockup like this?

 

[Meta4]

I also didn't see any way to cancel the pano.

When you need to cancel any of the automated flight modes, flick the flight mode switch out of P-GPS and back.
If that did not work I would have tried switching off the controller completely.
With the + model, it takes longer than for the normal controller before signal is lost (up to 30 sec?) but that should also work and trigger RTH.
But if you were within 20 metres of the launch point, it would have landed in place rather than RTH.

 

[island2]

I went to all warnings on the remote control and see the following:

3:48:02 GEO You are approaching a Warning Zone (Power Plant). Fly with caution.

(I've seen this before ever since I got my P4P+ - this is at my home and I am 100% sure there is no Power Plant within 10 miles of here... the only power "station" of any kind anywhere close to here is a small generator station that serves a tiny town of around 2,000 people as a backup and that is 10 miles north of here. It is a single large pole barn with generators inside and some transformers outside and doesn't appear on the geo map when I looked. The only large "power plants" are 30 miles away...)

3:48:16 GEO You are approaching a Warning Zone (Power Plant). Fly with caution.

3:48:36 GEO You are approaching a Warning Zone (Power Plant). Fly with caution.

3:48:59 GEO You are approaching a Warning Zone (Power Plant). Fly with caution.

(This was a yellow warning and I've ignored this in the past since I know there is no actual power station around here and it seemed informational)

3:50:57 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:51:06 Panorama Captured Successfully

3:52:32 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:52:31 Panorama Captured Successfully

3:54:44 Panorama Captured Successfully

3:55:23 Panorama Captured Successfully

3:55:48 Panorama Captured Successfully

3:56:44 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:57:34 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:57:37 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:57:39 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:57:50 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

3:57:54 Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak.

(many more of these)

4:00:01 Obstacle Avoidance disabled. Fly with caution.

4:03:43 Obstacle Avoidance disabled. Fly with caution.

4:04:46 Weak GPS signal. Aircraft is in Attitude mode and hovering may be unstable. Fly with caution. (I think this is when I pulled it down physically) (no previous weak gps signal messages in log)


Last panorama saved to sd card at 3:55 (9 photos saved in that directory)
It didn't seem like anything was happening after that and bird became completely unresponsive to sticks, unable to move or land at that point. I switched camera to single shot mode and pressed the on screen photo button twice to take two photos. Those are in fact on the card at 3:57 and 3:58.

 

[island2]

When you need to cancel any of the automated flight modes, flick the flight mode switch out of P-GPS and back.
If that did not work I would have tried switching off the controller completely.
With the + model, it takes longer than for the normal controller before signal is lost (up to 30 sec?) but that should also work and trigger RTH.
But if you were within 20 metres of the launch point, it would have landed in place rather than RTH.

Thanks for the reply.
Yes I was only 100' from the launch point.
When I powered off and then back on the P4P+ controller, I only left it off for a ~2 seconds before powering it back on. (no RTH or landing was triggered I guess because it was off for such a short time, which in this case was good since it was reachable by a step ladder thankfully.)
Really lucky I wasn't taking a pano over the lake which was 100' in the other direction!

Mistake 1: I should have put it in A mode and back when problem first occurred.
Mistake 2: I also had "intelligent flight modes" off under the right menu settings. Probably better to leave this on, as when something goes wrong and the seconds are counting down, probably better to have faster access since the only down side I can think of is accidentally bumping the button and it's easy to check that it's in p mode before taking off.

 

[Meta4]

Thanks for the reply.
Yes I was only 100' from the launch point.
When I powered off and then back on the P4P+ controller, I only left it off for a ~2 seconds before powering it back on. (nothing happened)
Really lucky I wasn't taking a pano over the lake which was 100' in the other direction!

RTH will land in place if within 20 metres of the launch point.
20 metres = 66 feet

 

[island2]

Got it - that's right -- thanks. I guess I'm a bit rattled still.

 

[island2]

Related question:
If it was a GEO fencing error related to the erroneous yellow "GEO You are approaching a Warning Zone (Power Plant). Fly with caution." would A mode typically help you have some stick control to land?

(I didn't see any red error and don't see anything but that warning relating to GEO though, although it was repeated a few times exactly as above. One other time about a mile and a half north of here I got that same yellow Geo warning once a year ago and was unable to fly North, but could fly in any other direction. That day a year ago I landed, restarted everything, and then was able to fly normally and actually flew from there a mile and a half south to here, my house, with no issues. I was pointing south today when it happened and couldn't go east or north or change altitude.There is nothing for 25+ miles to the east. I would think if was a geo issue, you would be able to land straight down though, right? And I couldn't do that even with the throttle stick.)

 

[island2]

Second related question:
If the control loss was related to something with the "Forward Obstacle Sensing is not functioning. Ambient Light is too weak" repeated warnings, what is the best way to turn off the obstacle sensing/avoidance? Is turning off the one slider "forward and backward obstacle sensing" enough, or do all those need to be turned off individually and under advanced? Is there a quicker way to temporarily disable/override all obstacle avoidance?

 

[sar104]

What you saw was likely not related to the geo-fencing or the obstacle avoidance system. @Meta4's suggestion simply to go out of P-GPS then back is correct.

 

[island2]

Thanks both of you!

Burned into memory now. I was thinking if P mode failed it would start drifting and didn't consider a "locked in position" gps issue.

Have others experienced a "locked in position" condition with P mode? Curious if it was just a P-GPS lockup of some kind causing it to get stuck or related to the pano function. Not sure if I'm brave enough to test pano again!

 

[sar104]

Thanks both of you!

Burned into memory now. I was thinking if P mode failed it would start drifting and didn't consider a "locked in position" gps issue.

Have others experienced a "locked in position" condition with P mode? Curious if it was just a P-GPS lockup of some kind causing it to get stuck or related to the pano function. Not sure if I'm brave enough to test pano again!

I don't think that was the problem – I would suspect that you found a bug in the implementation of pano mode that caused the FC to freeze. No guarantee that flipping modes would unfreeze it but that is the simplest way to cancel current advanced operations.

 

[Paul2660]

Not sure if this matters, but it has had an issue for me on a P4 Pro.

If you are using a slower card then the camera/drone can get behind and I have had the camera lock up. The White button is non functional for stills. I mix slower cards sometimes. On AEB 5 shot, a fast card should take about 5 seconds to write the files where as slower cards will take 8 to 9 sometimes 10 seconds.

When I get the camera lock, I can go back to video, but stills are done until I land and power off the drone.

I have quit shooting sphere's with the P4 Pro since so much prop shadow shows on all the top shots and it just takes too long to remove it. But still do a lot of the 9 shot horizontals and 3 shot verticals. I often do a lot of 3 shot verticals in series to create long large horizontal pano.

Paul C

 

[island2]

Thanks for the thoughts - appreciated.

I just took the drone up again (up to 6' maximum just in case!), tried pano again including a sphere, 180, and horizontal pano within a 2-3 feet of where I did before, and the issue didn't happen this time.

I noted that when the pano is capturing normally, the photo button turned to a stop button so you can stop it. Sticks are disabled while it's capturing the pano shots, but hitting the stop photo button as a test did in fact return stick control and yields a pano capture failed alert.

Earlier today when the freeze-up issue occurred, the photo button seemed to indicate that the pano was finished (not a stop button, and it did actually allow me to capture two single photos to the card after the last pano. And the last pano did seemto have 9 shots the same as the one before.) But it sure does "feel" like something about that pano sequence earlier today put the P4P in a program to capture the 180 degrees and didn't exit and got stuck there.

So all in all, not sure what to make of it. I think for now I'll use the pano function very cautiously or hold off until I do a couple dozen more tests close to the ground.

 

[sar104]

Thanks for the thoughts - appreciated.

I just took the drone up again (up to 6' maximum just in case!), tried pano again including a sphere, 180, and horizontal pano within a 2-3 feet of where I did before, and the issue didn't happen this time.

I noted that when the pano is capturing normally, the photo button turned to a stop button so you can stop it. Sticks are disabled while it's capturing the pano shots, but hitting the stop photo button as a test did in fact return stick control and yields a pano capture failed alert.

Earlier today when the freeze-up issue occurred, the photo button seemed to indicate that the pano was finished (not a stop button, and it did actually allow me to capture two single photos to the card after the last pano. And the last pano did seemto have 9 shots the same as the one before.) But it sure does "feel" like something about that pano sequence earlier today put the P4P in a program to capture the 180 degrees and didn't exit and got stuck there.

So all in all, not sure what to make of it. I think for now I'll use the pano function very cautiously or hold off until I do a couple dozen more tests close to the ground.

If you really want to investigate then pull the DAT file from the aircraft. That should describe what was happening from the FC perspective.

 

[island2]

What's the best tool to examine the 170 MB .dat file for a case like this?

 

[sar104]

What's the best tool to examine the 170 MB .dat file for a case like this?

DatCon Introduction

 

[Alvaro L]

Hi

I have registered to just to report a very similiar experience with a Phantom 4 advanced which was 80 meters height and about 15 meters horizontal from the pilot position, then it suddenly freezes in mid air. We were not shooting or doing anything special. We had video downlink and we can even move the camera gimbal, but the aircraft would only to RTH to a certain height and nothing else, it would not respond to any kind of manual command even after several reboots of the controller, and when we grabbed it about 2 meters from the ground, we can not stop propelers with the controller and had to manually remove the battery, dangerous stuff btw. We did not tried ATTI mode because we don't have experience on that, but also the phantom never reverted to any altenative mode. I won't give details, but we suspect the C2 signal was jammed by a certain third party in the vicinity, the area was certainly restricted and that "party" had tools advanced enough to make us experience something like this, I mean detecting and jamming a typical drone C2 link, but maybe we are wrong, I mean we were in the border of the restricted area. The phanton was tested the next day in another area and everything was fine.

 

[Meta4]

then it suddenly freezes in mid air.
it would not respond to any kind of manual command even after several reboots of the controller, and when we grabbed it about 2 meters from the ground, we can not stop propellers with the controller and had to manually remove the battery, dangerous stuff btw.

It's extremely unlikely that your drone was jammed.
There must be another explanation for what you observed.
The recorded flight data might give some clues.
If you want to find out, go to DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides.

 

[Alvaro L]

Wilco

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

 

[sar104]

Wilco

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

I'm guessing that you mean the third flight in that sequence, where you took off with 21% battery, ascended to 200 ft, and then repeatedly tried to cancel low-battery autolanding. Would that be correct?