Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly away

Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

tomas99 said:
Great thread!
I did fly some 30 size choppers many many years ago, and I wonder if any one that have been flying in manual mode can give a hint of the "feel" of it?
With the underlying weight and a prop in each corner is it self stabilized in manual mode or does it need constant adjustment to not "tip over"?
If you tried manual and flown chopper before how hard is this thing in manual, very easy, medium or hard?

-Tomas

Edit in,
Found part answers in this thread, but not all,

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=216

There is no self stabilizing in manual mode at all. It's all up to you to keep the Phantom straight and level or whichever other way you want.
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

I'm still really curious if switching to ATTI mode can halt a fly-away. Has anyone been successful doing so?

For the Phantom to fly away so suddenly and erratically, you have to wonder if it's basically a "floating point error" in the firmware/software, somewhere. One particular circumstance where a negative longitude is errantly switched to or interpreted as a positive longitude and the Phantom thinks it suddenly has to fly halfway around the world to catch up.
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

My vision 2 just fly away. When I hover it about 50m height, I saw it start to suddenly fly fast NORTH direction. I try switch S2 and S1, nothing happend. I cannot control vision 2, it just fly fast. After 300m I canoot see it anymore, disappear behind trees. I have about 60% battery left, so it can be far away.

I looking now 3days, nothing. It give loss vision 2 GPS point about 200m whrere I controll it. Nothing found. Now I go deeper and deeper, cannot found yet.

Thanks for DJI, good feedback. I dont trust DJI anymore, have to start looking new copter somewhere else.
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

leopard said:
I dont trust DJI anymore, have to start looking new copter somewhere else.

As far as I know, it's not just DJI that suffers from the occasional fly-away. Even the more expensive ones, do. Hell, even the military ones do from what I hear.

Perhaps DJI has more than most, but that's pretty subjective. I haven't seen any hard data to support or argue that point.

Some questions for you, though...
- did you have your Phantom set up in NAZA mode, or Phantom mode? In Phantom mode, the S1 switch really does very little. Might explain why you couldn't regain control. Might not.
- did you have your Phantom and RC running all the latest firmware? Supposedly the latest firmware prevents a percentage of fly-aways by sensing when it's received the same control signal for more than 10 seconds... to help identify errant signals from other sources. I've actually been curious to find out of this really does anything, myself. Since you said in your other posts that you were out flying around a remote cabin, I would think hazards from external sources would be minimal, but maybe not.

Whether you choose to stick with DJI, or move on to something else, do look into a supplemental GPS tracker. Like I said, all drones have this issue (it's part of the nature of flying with GPS). And no matter what you're flying, you'll want to be able to find it should it fly away.
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

You know... I really started thinking about the fly-away problem this morning.
I've seen a number of theories as to the causes of fly-aways, and I'm a little confused.

Some say that fly-aways are the result of the compass getting confused/uncalibrated (or a "conflict" between the compass and the GPS data). But this doesn't make much sense to me.
The compass only knows NSEW. If the compass wasn't calibrated or if it got confused, it might cause the Phantom to fly in a direction not as intended when you push on the stick (ie - you push up, and because the compass is confused, maybe it goes off to the west - extreme example). But if you release the stick, the Phantom should sit and hover no matter what data the compass is feeding the unit (hovering in place is going to be the same spot, no matter whether the compass thinks the Phanton is pointing north, south, or otherwise). So it doesn't seem like that could ever be a cause of a complete fly-away.

Some say that fly-aways are the result of an external control signal interfering with the control signal from the RC (ie - power lines or other external radio wave producers). But, again, this doesn't make much sense to me.
The connection between the RC and the Phantom is basically a private LAN. As such, there should be hand-shaking going on that ensures the control packets are coming from the RC, and the Phantom giving confirmation. External interference simply would not have these identifying traits and would be ignored (or should be, if DJI did their job right). This is the same architecture that allows more than one Phantom to be flying in the same area at a time. And it's the very reason why we have to go through the "binding" process... to tell the Phantom what RC to pay attention to. If DJI is not using this protocol to ensure the commands are from the specified RC, and the Phantom confirming receipt, then it seems like it would be a simple matter of a firmware update to get that implemented. But I have to believe it's already in place.

So what does that leave?

A short in the main control board that causes the motors to spin wildly no matter what the GPS/compass/RC is tell the Phantom? But by most accounts, some pilots who have recovered their Phantoms after fly-aways say they fly just fine in subsequent flights. You would expect a short to be a permanent or on-going problem.

Complete GPS failure? Supposedly we'd see flashing yellow if the Phantom loses GPS lock completely. That's something a pilot would likely notice, either on the bird, or in the app (well... other than during operator error, where they never had GPS lock in the first place)


Which seems to leave some sort of "minor" GPS issue. And since in most cases, particularly when the Phantom is in the air, it's going to have at least 6 satellites for triangulation, there's not a lot of chance that the GPS data is going to be wrong (or so wrong that the Phantom thinks it's miles away from where it is). So that narrows the issue to a GPS interpretation error... the onboard computer is misinterpreting the data coming in (like I mentioned above... even something as minor as ignoring the negative sign, or adding just 1 tenth or even just 1 one-hundreth to a latitude or longitude value). To me, this seems like the only explanation.

The silver lining is that switching out of GPS mode should regain control every time.
(though it sounds as thought this isn't always the case. So what else could it be??)
 
STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly away

ProfessorStein said:
I'm still really curious if switching to ATTI mode can halt a fly-away. Has anyone been successful doing so?

For the Phantom to fly away so suddenly and erratically, you have to wonder if it's basically a "floating point error" in the firmware/software, somewhere. One particular circumstance where a negative longitude is errantly switched to or interpreted as a positive longitude and the Phantom thinks it suddenly has to fly halfway around the world to catch up.


Interesting Point as I wandered the same thing with Garmin Rino's while hunting.. Bad weather and poor satellite coverage caused erratic and false readings making one believe they are not supposed to be in a certain given area. I have actually seen even with a 5-10meter accuracy open up to about a half mile depending on foliage or for whatever reason. Other than your typical true magnetic North, the said given electronics that we use everyday are subject to interference and can sometimes put you in the wrong place at any given time as many have displayed UNDERSTANDING USER AGREEMENT and of course the DISCLAIMERS!
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

Thanks for the answer BenDronePilot,
I did shop the x-heli simulator that have a phantom among the models and did even work with my very old Realflight controller as well and that was very helpful getting some "rust" out of my system :)
It also have a manual mode, I do not know how accurate but it felt like a small heli so nothing to recommend unless one know your way around those to try out live.


-Tomas
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

Great advice, hope i never am in this situation. I just received my phantom 2 vision a couple weeks ago and its been great. However, I wanted to update the transmitter and I don't have a micro USB port on my transmitter. What's up with that!? I read some people can find it by opening it up. I did this and still couldn't find it... I'm more of a photographer than a tech wiz so i closed back up bc I was scared of damaging it. Any advice on this?
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

I lost my Phantom FC40 at Lake Quinault in the Olympic Forest. Really quite upset due to the fly away. DJI could easily have put some help on board by putting in a GPS Tracker such as the Garmin GTU 10 which if fully charged would last a week. I probably could of recovered it if I had one on or in the Bird
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

I calibrate each time i fly. own P2 vision about 2 month, had about 13 flights.. yesterday a plane like a prop DC3 two engins.. at about 1k feet on it's way to land at Erie airport.. with that I lost my control of my craft. it started to fly away..not fast but away. I ran after it tried regain control back.. pushed the down stick..it hit a pole, no prop guards, I purchased a set but did not put them on. hit pretty hard and tried to take off again.. i got it shut down .. battery came out , camera also. unpluged on ground . rubber mounts every where. I replaced the broken prop, camera, battery .. and it was fine.. Why did it lose signal? was it the big plane! it was only about 20 feet up at the time. scarry.. i have a return to me sticker on it.. my only safety on it..
 
Re: STICKY: Preventing & Recovering a Phantom from a fly awa

Durango9595 said:
Great advice, hope i never am in this situation. I just received my phantom 2 vision a couple weeks ago and its been great. However, I wanted to update the transmitter and I don't have a micro USB port on my transmitter. What's up with that!? I read some people can find it by opening it up. I did this and still couldn't find it... I'm more of a photographer than a tech wiz so i closed back up bc I was scared of damaging it. Any advice on this?

Sorry for the late reply but the micro USB port is located inside the p2v controller so you will have to unscrew the back to access it. The good news is that since you got your phantom recently more than likely the controller is already up to date and you don't need to touch it. Tho better safe than sorry. You can check my YouTube channel Ben7seven7 I have videos in taking apart as well as modding the Phantom radio control.
 

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