Post-Crash Blues

[PhillyUAV]

Hey folks,

So my Phantom had a "hard landing," in which it inverted and struck a tree. After that, I got the fast-yellow blinking light for about 60 seconds on startup (it usually just got straight to the red/green lights.) But then it'd be fine. Flight controls all good, no other problems.

Then, midway through another flight, my Phantom suddenly went rapid-yellow/lost link again, caught a wind gust, and smacked into another tree. (Notice a pattern?) After that, the intermittent yellow-flashing came back more and more frequently. It'd go green/red, the rotors would spin, and then it'd lock up flashing-yellow. Just wasn't safe to fly.

I calibrated the IMU (repeatedly) and also recalibrated the compass. No luck. The Naza-M software indicated that it was receiving no data from the RC controller, and also, getting no GPS data, either. Now the yellow light just flashes consistently, no matter what I do. Seems like my bird is brain-damaged.

I've contacted DJI, but the response was...difficult to understand and not very helpful. They suggested I get help from "the dealer," which was Amazon.com, and despite recent 60 Minutes specials, I don't think they offer drone repair.

Any suggestions? I'd love to be able to fix it at home, but I'd settle for recommendations on a good drone doctor...
-Matt

 

[ReubalSky]

Are you sure that Amazon is "the dealer"? Yes, you bought it off of Amazon, but of 22 dealers on there, only ONE is Amazon. Or did you just happen to buy it from the single dealer on there that you wont get support from?

Oh... and stay away from trees.

 

[Dave Pitman]

Hey folks,

So my Phantom had a "hard landing," in which it inverted and struck a tree. After that, I got the fast-yellow blinking light for about 60 seconds on startup (it usually just got straight to the red/green lights.) But then it'd be fine. Flight controls all good, no other problems.

Then, midway through another flight, my Phantom suddenly went rapid-yellow/lost link again, caught a wind gust, and smacked into another tree. (Notice a pattern?) After that, the intermittent yellow-flashing came back more and more frequently. It'd go green/red, the rotors would spin, and then it'd lock up flashing-yellow. Just wasn't safe to fly.

I calibrated the IMU (repeatedly) and also recalibrated the compass. No luck. The Naza-M software indicated that it was receiving no data from the RC controller, and also, getting no GPS data, either. Now the yellow light just flashes consistently, no matter what I do. Seems like my bird is brain-damaged.

I've contacted DJI, but the response was...difficult to understand and not very helpful. They suggested I get help from "the dealer," which was Amazon.com, and despite recent 60 Minutes specials, I don't think they offer drone repair.

Any suggestions? I'd love to be able to fix it at home, but I'd settle for recommendations on a good drone doctor...
-Matt

Open the shell, and have at the jumper wire that connects the receiver to the Naza. It can come loose at either end.

Worth a try.

 

[PhillyUAV]

I did actually crack the case open and checked the connections. It looked okay, but I'm not 100% sure I really knew what I was looking at. Would anybody have a high-rez photo that shows what the connections SHOULD look like?

And yeah, the vendor was, in fact, "Amazon.com LLC."

 

[Blubud]

If your fail safe switch is on when you power up the led will flash yellow constantly and you won't get a gps home lock ...could be a problem with your transmitter switch ... Also I've noticed sometimes when I connect to the assistant software after I've opened it up it shows no readings so now I connect the phantom to the USB and then open up the software and have no problems...have faith my man you"ll get to the bottom of the problem if you keep at it ...the fact that it still powers up tells me it's not as bad as it seems the electronics are pretty solid in these birds ...I had a water landing and was getting all sorts of errors in the software but I changed the main board and worked my way through it and I'm now flying again.