Signal loss alarm

[jensjk]

I have lost two Phantoms in flyaways and am now going to great length to prevent it happening again.
One is to never fly out of sight, another to have mounted Flytrex live.
I have also bought a Turnigy 3 in 1 alarm:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor ... Alarm.html

but it seems to be difficult to mount in the Phantom 2. Any experience/advice?

 

[crash1sttime]

Can't see the point of that, it signals if it loses controller signal , but if the quad flies away how does it actually help you find it ?, it also needs a spare port, and the DJI TX doesn't have any.

Surely a GPS enabled tracker would be better?

 

[jensjk]

I do have a GPS tracker. However, the one I lost also had a similar tracker, but I couldn't get in contact with the tracker when lost (I am in an area with poor phone coverage). The Flytrex 3G live may solve that problem - but the idea of a signal loss tracker is, that it emits a beeping sound. And, I might know the Phantom is somewhere in a field with tall grass - or among dense bushes - but it may be hard to locate anyway. A loud beep would help in that situation.

I realize that the Phantom doesn't seem to have a spare port, ie for gear - on the other hand there are a lot of unused contacts on the Naza - so I asked this question, hoping that somebody might know a workaround there.

 

[TeamYankee]

The main problem is then when the Phantom 2 crashes, the battery invariably pops out!

This is a much better option - RF transmitter with beeper.. activates 30 minutes after being armed.
It also has an integrated battery that can last a week!

http://www2.pmb.co.nz/blog/

 

[jensjk]

Seems to be the solution for me - will order a set today - thanks

 

[ianwood]

So are you assuming both of your flyaways were caused by a bad radio connection?

 

[jensjk]

I really don't know the reason for the flyaways. One was with a Vision, I was flying at about 150 m from Home, suddenly it started off in quite another direction, and was uncontrollable - just carried on, on the track to China or wherever. The battery was full, so it could have gone quite far.
The other was similar (Phantom1), but I could hear it behind some trees, until it the engine sound died away, the quad also unresponsive to every attempt of control (I could see what the Gopro saw on my monitor, so it probably were only a few hundred meters away, in dense bushes) - but a search afterwards in the pinpointed area didn't recover it. It was equipped with a GPS-tracker, bearing the fate of the Vision in mind - but apparently the tracker was out of phone coverage, anyway it didn't respond to me calling it, no texts came back.

So I lost quad and tracker (and Gopro).

For some time, I lost everything I may have had for DJI and didn't want to hear anything Phantom - but nevertheless, 6 months later, I find myself in a possession of a Phantom 2 - that I don't want to lose.
A loud, audible alarm would probably have located the second one lost, and the beacon suggested previously in the thread may have had located both of them.