PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Scraping for Parts

[Chuggie]

Well,

I tried everything suggested in this post, and tried flying the Phantom again. I had 4 successful test flights this afternoon with no problems. On all of those flights I kept the phantom no more than 6 feet above the ground so if there was a problem the crash would be minimal. The phantom preformed flawlessly on all 4 flights, and I did try put it through maneuvers to give it a thorough test. Tonight I tried giving the phantom a little altitude, which proved fatal. The Phantom flew perfectly for about 10 minutes, then suddenly dropped like a brick from the sky, and hit the pavement. It is in bad shape, the camera mount is broken, one of the prop arms is cracked and bent, and there are several loose parts rattling on the inside. I don't know if I trust the Phantom enough to warrant putting it back together again, so I might use some of the parts in another quad copter build. I guess the phantom had a decent life with 200+ flights, but I think my time as a phantom pilot has come to an end...

I am building a Quad on an X650 frame with a WooKong flight controller, with a goal of long range FPV with a 40min+ flight time.

Greetings:

I have had over 200 successful flights with my PV; however, lately the Phantom has developed a power loss issue. The first time I noticed the issue was while landing after the low battery alarm had sounded, I was descending to land and the phantom would not recover from the descent, I even tried full throttle up and it still descended, fortunately the phantom crashed into a deep snow drift where it was not harmed.

I had the issue a second time, maybe 10 flights later, and noted that the un-recoverable descent happened on battery #1, my original phantom battery, with less than 30% battery charge reporting on the cell phone app. I assumed that I might be having a issue with battery #1, and once again I was lucky and crashed into a deep snow drift.

Yesterday my Phantom went into a unrecoverable descent, but this time it happened on battery #3, my newest battery, and with 70% of battery life left. The other two un-recoverable descents happened while trying to land; however, this one happened mid flight, while just trying to descend a bit to get a different view. This time the Phantom dropped 150ft (50M) and unlike the other two unrecoverable descents the phantom rocked from side to side as plummeted. There was no wind. Once again I was fortunate as the Phantom landed in deep snow and does not appear to be damaged, even though it hit the snow hard enough to break all 4 props, but the body and camera seem fine. It was also a reasonably warm day, 45F (7.2C).

Any advice anyone has for diagnosing my problems would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chuggie

 

[Visioneer]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Not obvious from your description but if you were descending rapidly and straight down, your phantom may have gotten caught in its own prop wash. This happens to all types of 'copters. The fix is to descend more slowly. If you need to descend rapidly, add some lateral movement so that the craft is always in "fresh air".

 

[Pull_Up]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

When it was descending uncontrollably in all these situations did you notice if the signal LEDs were flashing red at all, or were they giving the usual flight indications?

 

[amrflyingdude]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Sounds like an internal electric issue to me, not a descent or battery issue. 200 flights is a lot and you sure had a tested platform.

I would bench test it and see if you can reproduce the issue, try giving it throttle and move it around to see if you can make th9s happen again in a controlled environment. I would not be surprised if you battery contacts are the ones to blame. Either that or the voltage regulator (inside NAZA?)

 

[Pull_Up]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Check the state of the battery data pins, too. Have you got the original single point ones and have you had any "invalid battery" errors?

 

[jimdenburg]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Kind of sounds like this...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x10-yL-J7IU[/youtube]

Mine dropped from the sky today too...had more to do with losing orientation and improperly placed trees though.

 

[Chuggie]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Check the state of the battery data pins, too. Have you got the original single point ones and have you had any "invalid battery" errors?

Hey Pull Up,

I couple of months ago I did have an issue with the LED's occasionally blinking red. Cleaning the battery data contacts seemed to be a temporary solution to that problem. I did a software update and have not had that problem since. But re cleaning the contacts seems like a very good idea.

Thanks,
Chuggie

 

[Chuggie]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

When it was descending uncontrollably in all these situations did you notice if the signal LEDs were flashing red at all, or were they giving the usual flight indications?

Hi Pull Up,

During the first two un-controllable descents the 30% low battery alarm had already gone off, and I was coming in for a landing. During yesterdays un-controllable descent it was very bright out and the copter was 100ft away, so I could not see the LED's as it descended. After I picked it up from the snow drift the LED's were blinking yellow. Also the props engaged at full throttle when I pulled it out of the snow drift, and throttling down the transmitter did not slow the props. I had to turn off the battery while the props were spinning to stop the Phantom.

Thanks,
Chuggie

 

[karatkij]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Hello, Bought a P2V from Atlanta Hobby on 2/24/2014, they gave no help, told me to send it to DJI.
Phantom-2-Vision,
First flight went perfect except with two bars on battery I turned off the remote controller to have the P2V fly back. It worked perfect but would not start up again( like it was out of power)., 2nd flight fully recharged all batteries to full, around 5 mins in 3/4 to 1/2 remaining on battery P2V went out of control and went down(like it was out of power). Landed in a pol of water 2' deep. Pulled it out lights still on. Dried it out waited two days. Battery fully charged under 10 mins. Two motors work( white props) other two don,t work. No Wi-Fi, so I don,t know if camera works. DJI said to send to them and it would take 3 weeks to get a answer from them.

 

[Chuggie]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Hello, Bought a P2V from Atlanta Hobby on 2/24/2014, they gave no help, told me to send it to DJI.
Phantom-2-Vision,
First flight went perfect except with two bars on battery I turned off the remote controller to have the P2V fly back. It worked perfect but would not start up again( like it was out of power)., 2nd flight fully recharged all batteries to full, around 5 mins in 3/4 to 1/2 remaining on battery P2V went out of control and went down(like it was out of power). Landed in a pol of water 2' deep. Pulled it out lights still on. Dried it out waited two days. Battery fully charged under 10 mins. Two motors work( white props) other two don,t work. No Wi-Fi, so I don,t know if camera works. DJI said to send to them and it would take 3 weeks to get a answer from them.

I hope they get a brand new PV out to you soon. The switch for turning the Wi-Fi on and off is on the camera, if the camera got wet in the two inches of water where the Phantom landed, it could have affected the switch. I am still trying to figure out what went wrong with my Phantom. I sure have had a great time flying it. I am working on building a long range FPV quad copter from scratch. It will be a 700-1000 class (the phantom is a 350). I would like to have 4 miles range for the FPV and transmitter. I think I can build this for just a little more than the Phantom cost.

Thanks,
Chuggie

 

[rfernandez]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Something just occurred to me. take the guts of a phantom 1 and install on a phantom 2 case and use the phantom 2 batteries, attach a nice gimbal for the go pro and a FPV and that is some long flight times!!!

 

[Waterborne]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Chuggie,
Unlikely this may have been the cause but out of curiosity, how often are you changing the RC batteries? We have seen lots of talk on various threads about batteries and terminals for the PV itself but to my knowledge, there is no battery indicator that reflects strength of the RC batteries.

Could this have been a possibility? Am I right that there is no battery level indicator for these 4 "AA" batteries?

 

[rfernandez]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

unlikely since the RC will warn you with repetitive beeps about low battery and goes from green to red before eminent shutdown

 

[Pull_Up]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Something just occurred to me. take the guts of a phantom 1 and install on a phantom 2 case and use the phantom 2 batteries, attach a nice gimbal for the go pro and a FPV and that is some long flight times!!!

Someone's already there. Check out Deweys thread about doing exactly that. He's got a video up and people are missing then to work with either the P2 batteries or standard lipos... He calls it his Phantom 1.5

 

[Pull_Up]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Something just occurred to me. take the guts of a phantom 1 and install on a phantom 2 case and use the phantom 2 batteries, attach a nice gimbal for the go pro and a FPV and that is some long flight times!!!

Someone's already there. Check out Deweys thread about doing exactly that. He's got a video up and people are missing then to work with either the P2 batteries or standard lipos... He calls it his Phantom 1.5

viewtopic.php?t=7017

 

[Justgregg]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Mine did the same thing last week. 2 flights with 2 loss of power crashes. Changed out all the motors to the upgraded tmotor anti gravity. Didn't help. Does anybody know why this is happening??
This is BS.

 

[Jebus]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

Gotta throw this out there...

I had my v1.1.1 tumble out of the sky last weekend, but as it was falling I realized that I had been holding both sticks down and in (the startup/shutdown sequence) and had shut off the motors while 60 or 80ft in the air.

I would like to think that the Phantom is smart enough not to shut it's motors off while above a certain altitude - but obviously not.

Anyway, just throwing this out in case it's something that you guys might be doing and not realizing it (although it sounds like you have logged enough hours to know better).

 

[SlackerATX]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

The firmware automatically starts to descend where it's at when it hits 15% battery. It did this to me once when my battery read 30%+ on my phone. When it landed I noticed that all my readings we're stuck (distance etc). I powered off and back on and my battery was reading less than 10%.

That's different than dropping from 80% to 10% instantly after just flying 5 min. Maybe a bad battery? Anyone put a volt meter on the battery?

 

[RickF]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

I can’t believe some of these posts that I’m reading. I just sent my Phantom Vision 2 off to Aerial Media Pros, today, March 20, 2014, to have them solve the problem described below.

Enclosed is my Phantom 2 Vision. Two days ago I crashed it into a wooden deck and other than broken propellers the copter seemed fine. But I did notice that something, like a very small piece of plastic, seemed to be loose inside the body of the copter. You could hear what sounded like a small piece bouncing around inside if you turned the copter upside down or shook it. Still, I replaced the propellers and took it out for another flight to see if it was really okay. But the copter was unstable, not really responding properly to the radio inputs, sometimes moving in a direction opposite from what I was trying to do with the controller, but then recovering somehow, and I had a lot of trouble landing it, grabbing hold of it midair because it was so unstable and unpredictable.

Today I took the copter apart to see what was loose inside. I could not find anything. In fact, though I really have no idea what I’m doing, I would say that everything seemed just fine inside the body of the copter. I recalibrated the compass and took off for another test flight. The first flight was fine but I still had a sense that the copter was a little unsteady, not quite responding to controller inputs with the same stability and sureness it had done before the crash. I landed the copter, shut everything down, turned everything back on and, after getting GPS lock, took off again, climbing to 200 feet. I did a complete rotation but the copter seemed to be fluttering up and down a few feet during the rotation, appearing to be unsteady.

I gave up trying to fly it and decided to land, knowing that something was wrong. On the way down, at about 75 feet, the copter started to swing wildly, up and down a little bit, back and forth a lot, fluttering around, pretty much unresponsive to my attempts at controlling it. At that point it started to fall quickly and though I tried to stop or at least slow its rapid descent the copter proceeded to crash into the ground. Fortunately, because I was in a field where the ground was soft from melting snow, the copter appears to have suffered minimal external damage other than yet another complete set of props.

In closing, after the crash from two days ago, the copter has become pretty much uncontrollable. So this is where you come in. I need you to troubleshoot the problems I’ve described and let me know what is wrong.

 

[skyhighdiver]

Re: PV Power Loss, Vision Drops from Sky, Need Advice

I can’t believe some of these posts that I’m reading. I just sent my Phantom Vision 2 off to Aerial Media Pros, today, March 20, 2014, to have them solve the problem described below.

Enclosed is my Phantom 2 Vision. Two days ago I crashed it into a wooden deck and other than broken propellers the copter seemed fine. But I did notice that something, like a very small piece of plastic, seemed to be loose inside the body of the copter. You could hear what sounded like a small piece bouncing around inside if you turned the copter upside down or shook it. Still, I replaced the propellers and took it out for another flight to see if it was really okay. But the copter was unstable, not really responding properly to the radio inputs, sometimes moving in a direction opposite from what I was trying to do with the controller, but then recovering somehow, and I had a lot of trouble landing it, grabbing hold of it midair because it was so unstable and unpredictable.

Today I took the copter apart to see what was loose inside. I could not find anything. In fact, though I really have no idea what I’m doing, I would say that everything seemed just fine inside the body of the copter. I recalibrated the compass and took off for another test flight. The first flight was fine but I still had a sense that the copter was a little unsteady, not quite responding to controller inputs with the same stability and sureness it had done before the crash. I landed the copter, shut everything down, turned everything back on and, after getting GPS lock, took off again, climbing to 200 feet. I did a complete rotation but the copter seemed to be fluttering up and down a few feet during the rotation, appearing to be unsteady.

I gave up trying to fly it and decided to land, knowing that something was wrong. On the way down, at about 75 feet, the copter started to swing wildly, up and down a little bit, back and forth a lot, fluttering around, pretty much unresponsive to my attempts at controlling it. At that point it started to fall quickly and though I tried to stop or at least slow its rapid descent the copter proceeded to crash into the ground. Fortunately, because I was in a field where the ground was soft from melting snow, the copter appears to have suffered minimal external damage other than yet another complete set of props.

In closing, after the crash from two days ago, the copter has become pretty much uncontrollable. So this is where you come in. I need you to troubleshoot the problems I’ve described and let me know what is wrong.

sounds to me like you had a c clip come lose on your first crash