Phantom 4 Advanced flyaway

[BSMDBT]

I honestly can’t tell you where the drone went...but I looked at the data, and your friend had three significant issues within a minute of take off. Excessive voltage deviation across the battery cells, IMU compass failures, and a stuck controller control dial.
First observation..if u see these faults...land immediately. Not joking. Your aircraft cannot find its way home.

Now, I suspect something was amiss, causing an intermittent extreme power draw periodically. Whatever it was, and I have my suspects, I’ll speak to a little later...it may have caused such an internal power spike that the dc power conditioners specs were exdeeded causing Compass/IMU failures.

So this explanation to this point covers two of the three error messages...The las warning message was the stuck right control disc...this could have been the source of the power spikes causing the excessive out of spec periodic battery cell voltage deviation. Can’t know for certain...but definately a suspect. Two other possibles, or even coconspirators, could be a motor was acting up or a transmitter, or both...reason is , it was such a high over spec, I’m likely to think it was something with some real amperage draw, genetically speaking, your RF transmitters, motors and camera gimbal are the obvious suspects...the right control disc has gimbal involvement.

Now, only the operator knows when the drone became unresponsive and how many times, but it looks like there was ample warning to put it down within 1 minute of takeoff...even if your friend didn’t know what was wrong. My personal takeaway from this will be, quite simply...never ignore the warnings. Sorry I get to learn that from your friends bad experience, but in a small way her loss is going to help me, that’s for sure.

Well put. I don’t think we can know, but certainly there is data showing weird compass errors and such. I haven’t had that error message. I think if I saw that, I would land, shut down and then reinitialize.

 

[BSMDBT]

I don’t put this person in that box of wreckless , they might have been, but not based on the post or the data, there is far and away enough data to show something bad was happening to this drone...now ignoring the messages makes more sense to me after hearing you say compass failure messages are not uncommon. That is where I would have said they were reckless..but if I saw compass messages routinely and never had a n incident I might ignore them too..but what if they are REAL? That drone was a goner.

I have NEVER received a compas error just so you know, got mine end of January fly it three or four days a week (I’m hooked).I’ve never seen a single Compass error, I would definately land mine as soon as I did. I hear you.

 

[BSMDBT]

No - I said that compass errors are relatively common. The FC is continually comparing the magnetometer data with the time-integrated rate gyro data. When they disagree it throws a compass error. The disagreement can be due to external or internal factors, such as a local field distortion or a bad compass calibration. Neither of those indicates a design fault.

I don’t think it’s a design fault, I have never had a compass error message, I believe I did see a GPS error message my first flight back in January. So I can’t say this is common either, I tend to believe that message is problematic, now I have never seen that data collection tool before so I don’t know how it collects it or anything about how that data was collected.

 

[BSMDBT]

I think you're reading a bit much between the lines.
There's nothing in the data that shows anything bad happening.
If there was we could lock on to it and maybe have an idea what the problem was.
The compass error messages in this case appear to have been false alarms and not related to anything.
The battery cells being 0.1v different isn't a big deal and doesn't indicate any serious issue.
There's definitely no correlation to any voltage spike - as there is no voltage spike.

I still don’t like the compass error reports, I never get those, I tend to believe , if that data is real, that compass error message is troubling, I don’t know anything about that data collection though. I guess if I saw that error on my controller screen, my gut tells me I should probably land before something bad happens. But I’ve never had that error in almost 200 hrs of flight, yes it would freak me out.

 

[sar104]

I don’t think it’s a design fault, I have never had a compass error message, I believe I did see a GPS error message my first flight back in January. So I can’t say this is common either, I tend to believe that message is problematic, now I have never seen that data collection tool before so I don’t know how it collects it or anything about how that data was collected.

The compass error message is problematic if it persists - in which case it triggers ATTI mode. That did not happen here, at least not before downlink was lost. As I mentioned previously, the compass error is believed to be triggered by a mismatch between two IMU-computed parameters - the yaw angle derived directly from the magnetometers and the yaw angle derived from a time-integration of the rate gyro data modified by instantaneous accelerometer and magnetometer readings (which is the quantity listed as "yaw" in the logs). In DAT files where the compass error occurs it always seems to correspond to that discrepancy.

Personally I would bring the aircraft back if I saw those, but many times they are ignored and often it does not appear to cause problems.

 

[With The Birds]

No reported bang was heard

I wasn’t serious....

 

[Slickvolt]

I wasn’t serious....

I know....just playn along

 

[BSMDBT]

The compass error message is problematic if it persists - in which case it triggers ATTI mode. That did not happen here, at least not before downlink was lost. As I mentioned previously, the compass error is believed to be triggered by a mismatch between two IMU-computed parameters - the yaw angle derived directly from the magnetometers and the yaw angle derived from a time-integration of the rate gyro data modified by instantaneous accelerometer and magnetometer readings (which is the quantity listed as "yaw" in the logs). In DAT files where the compass error occurs it always seems to correspond to that discrepancy.

Personally I would bring the aircraft back if I saw those, but many times they are ignored and often it does not appear to cause problems.

I think I would too.

 

[Slickvolt]

I have NEVER received a compas error just so you know, got mine end of January fly it three or four days a week (I’m hooked).I’ve never seen a single Compass error, I would definately land mine as soon as I did. I hear you.

Yup. Hey you had a P4P since January? Are you video ing anything? Any anomolies?

 

[Meta4]

Yup. Hey you had a P4P since January? Are you video ing anything? Any anomolies?

Slick ... you don't need to come here to talk to yourself.

 

[BSMDBT]

Yup. Hey you had a P4P since January? Are you video ing anything? Any anomolies?

I have a few, but I’m just a hack, not a professional.

I learned by trial and error and DJI site forums...just joined this one today.

the new guy

 

[Slickvolt]

These guys are really attacking you, then pretending you are the attacker, that’s not cool. Sorry dude.

U noticed.

 

[Meta4]

U noticed.

Slick ... Flight data isn't the only thing I can read
How about you and your new mate BSMDBT get together somewhere and read our rules: Community Guidelines
I'd suggest you might find something particularly interesting and relevant down toward the bottom of the page.

 

[Slickvolt]

Slick ... Flight data isn't the only thing I can read
How about you and your new mate BSMDBT get together somewhere and read our rules: Community Guidelines
I'd suggest you might find something particularly interesting and relevant down toward the bottom of the page.

I'm sorry I'm not following...we weren't arguing...

 

[Meta4]

I'm sorry I'm not following...we weren't arguing...

Go somewhere and have a cup of coffee and a chat with BSMDBT.
It seems like you have a lot in common

 

[Slickvolt]

Go somewhere and have a cup of coffee and a chat with BSMDBT.
It seems like you have a lot in common

What? What is wrong with him...is it because he is talking to me, or left comments...what now ?

 

[Erised]

WOW I can't believe I read the whole 6 pages! (116 posts). I salute our moderators that stick with the facts and keep their cool, nice work guy's

 

[ChipperRay]

Thanks mate. That was my mistake to be honest... I just wanted to see how high my bird would go on the first flight, just so I can watch the footage when it comes down, and also test it to it's max limit as I have 30 days to exchange it if anything is not working.

It really could be the same case here, and yet sadly a lot of people here are just giving him a hard time. I know when I first started I must have broken so many rules... Wasn't meant to be rebellious or intentionally breaking the law, but I broke the law at first as I 100% forgot every single rule, regulation, etc... With the excitement of having the drone.

A year later... I can't even remember when I broke any rules. Once the "honeymoon" phase is over, then I went to carefully skilled shots which is legal and I bet this guy will do the same.

So for anyone here giving the OP (or any new member) a hard time, just remember... We all been their ourselves. May not be drone related... But we all got over excited at some point and done things we shouldn't have done. It's just human nature [emoji4]

Spot on Neon!

 

[Mick Deene]

Doesn’t really matter where you are in the world, just seems pretty stupid to fly in the vicinity of any airport.

 

[Envirodiver]

Hopefully it didn't hit something, because it was up at pattern altitude for the downwind leg of the airport just to the north. Either way, that was a very stupid place to fly at that altitude.

it was also above the legal altitude unless you had a permit or were flying above a tall building, over 300 feet tall... and no mention of ATC notification...