Vision Fly Away this morning

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This morning I had a fly away happen, First time for me. I did not think it would happen to me. But fail safe did work

What Happened?

I went to the same place I did flying last weekend (A local Park). Last weekend I calibrated the compass, so today I did not.
I checked both switches on transmitter were in the upper position.
Turned on Wi range ext and transmitter
Put battery in vision and turned on.
Connected ipad to Wifi.
Checked the number of satellites detected. Num = 9
Green Light on Vision

So I started up and started flying. everything was going good till about 10 minutes into the flight. The vision would not stop going in the direction it was heading. It disappeared over a building and I lost sight of it. lost video on ipad. So I pushed Ascend up for a bit, still could not see it. I then switched to fail safe and about 5 minutes later it was above me. but seemed to be unstable I switched to ATTI and landed it.

I turned off the vision and put another battery in it and tried to calibrate the compass, it would not go into calibrate mode.
Since getting home I have taken the propellers off and have been able to calibrate the compass. It is on firmware 2 maybe its time to update?
 
Do an advanced IMU calibration - check to make sure your compass #s are below 1800
 
Call dji and send it in. I wouldn't trust it.

Did you handle the drone at all while it was on before takeoff? That will **** it up
 
Migmon said:
Call dji and send it in. I wouldn't trust it.

Did you handle the drone at all while it was on before takeoff? That will **** it up

What does fiu mean?

Can u be specific? Sounds like a 'wives tale' to me.

I handle mine just about every flight as I have a small 'lipstick' camera I use which needs to be turned on before flight.

I pick it up, turn it over, start camera, set it back down and wait for GPS reconnect.

Never any problems. Cant imagine why it would be.

Please explain.
 
It's not just being near a magnet either. Being near metal at take off can mess it up. Make sure you don't take off from concrete with rebar in it )or near other metal). I have had that mess up my compass. (Although it usually straightens out once I get high enough).
 
Glad you got it back....

At first when reading I thought some RF from the area was the culprit but landing it and not being able to recalabrate the compass makes me think more a electronic issue with the P2V. I would reset everything including advance resets before going out and re calibrating my compass again then flying.

These are very advanced technologies and it does not seem very robust to variances. Everytime mine goes up I wonder if it will be the last time.
 
Glad you were lucky. I wasn't. Lost mine last week and never saw it again. I got to the point on the ground where the "Find My Phantom 2 Vision" showed on it's map and knew right then I was in trouble. There 10-12mph wind, and my experience began at 1100ft. I also had Distance Limit set that it drifted right on past. I think it went into failsafe and sat down some where in a 1/2 range. Or it went into RTF at too low of a altitude and clipped a tree. However, if it did the RTF option I would have found it with the "Find My Phantom 2 Vision" feature.

Knowing it was going to be laying somewhere with it's led lights flashing, my time on locating it was limited. Had it been around dusk time I would have located it by the flashing lights. What I tried doing was to use the range extender as a locator based on the reception. I would fold it down or aim it at the ground and began walking around while watching the reception gauge. After 3 hours of not getting anywhere I gave up for the day. I wanted to show my wife a demonstration of how I was using the controller and range extender, and when I switched everything on to go through the process, my p2v signal strength was pegged as if it was in my back yard on or on my houses roof. I shot out the door saying noway to myself, and of coarse it ended up being a "phantom signal" (excuse the pun). To this day I don't understand why it did that. But I ended up ordering a new p2v the next day. At that time I use the excuse I was going to use the new one to find the old one. And I'm actually going to go search a spot in a little bit where a reflection wooded area that appeared from, that I hope was from the chrome ring on the front of the camera.
 
Sorry you lost yours frank.

I upgraded the firmware on my vision this morning and took it out to another park armed with my laptop this time.

I connected the laptop to it and looked at the compass readings were in the area of 2150. So I did a advanced IMU calibration, still compass value was around the same. I Disconnected the laptop and did the compass dance, then reconnected laptop and compass values are in the area of 1500.

So I went for a little fly, everything seems normal again. I guess we really need to do the compass dance before every flight to be sure.
 
If someone in dji tech support said that calibrating your compass before each flight was my insurance of not having a fly away, I wouldn't think twice about it. I have always looked at my IMU ranges anytime I was connected to an assistant, and had actually went almost 4 weeks without calibrating the compass.The flight before losing my copter is when I had broken the no compass cal streak. The week before I had experienced nearly the same exact situation, an actual another fly away. However, that time I happened to be watching it take place which luckily was in the dusk hours where I could see the led's blinking. Once I saw it go past where I knew was beyond my set distance limit, I tried in the GPS mode it was already in. Now keep in mind I'm outside the set distance. Btw, there was also a different way dji had the software setup to work in "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". I could not yaw to rotate into the necessary angle to make the shortest flight path back towards me. At the time this took place, they had software set to allow either the forward or reverse, and either roll or yaw. So at this point you are in one heck of a state of mind. Every time I lifted from the throttle stick the wind was carrying the copter that much further away. I'm in a fast walk in the direction of my p2v which at this stage was around 3/8th mile away and growing.

Anyway, my copter was in some freaky phantom possession that it did not have enough power to fly itself at full throttle. Also, When in GPS Mode, and you exceed the distance limit setting, as long as you have a minimum of 6 or more satellite connection, the p2v is programmed to fly itself back into your "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". Less then 6 satellites found it will go into failsafe and sit down. And in my case go into a bizarre chain of events as it is flying away. Some how at the last second before never seeing it again, I managed to get a signal to it that the controller had been shut off and It made into RTH and it flew home barely missing tree's at 60ft in weight. I have it all on video. If any of this interest you here is the vid [youtube]youtu.be/rDz7MDt1alg[/youtube]
 
From the tilt of the horizon which appears pretty soon in the video you can tell that wind speed is picking up fast with altitude. As soon as it exceeds the autonomous manoeuvring speed of the Phantom position hold will fail and it will drift downwind. It will also be unable to stay inside the set geofence for that reason. How much of the movements of the Phantom were the result of user input cannot be determined from the video. What made it descend is unclear. User input? Did you activate failsafe with S1 at any moment? It appears that at lower altitudes RTH was initiated which could be performed because at that altitude wind speeds were lower than the autonomous manoeuvring speed again and the Phantom was able to fly into the wind to its home point.

I'm guessing you didn't use switching to Home Lock mode and pulling the right stick. You may not have NAZA mode enabled which is required to use IOC flight modes.
 
flyNfrank said:
If someone in dji tech support said that calibrating your compass before each flight was my insurance of not having a fly away, I wouldn't think twice about it. I have always looked at my IMU ranges anytime I was connected to an assistant, and had actually went almost 4 weeks without calibrating the compass.The flight before losing my copter is when I had broken the no compass cal streak. The week before I had experienced nearly the same exact situation, an actual another fly away. However, that time I happened to be watching it take place which luckily was in the dusk hours where I could see the led's blinking. Once I saw it go past where I knew was beyond my set distance limit, I tried in the GPS mode it was already in. Now keep in mind I'm outside the set distance. Btw, there was also a different way dji had the software setup to work in "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". I could not yaw to rotate into the necessary angle to make the shortest flight path back towards me. At the time this took place, they had software set to allow either the forward or reverse, and either roll or yaw. So at this point you are in one heck of a state of mind. Every time I lifted from the throttle stick the wind was carrying the copter that much further away. I'm in a fast walk in the direction of my p2v which at this stage was around 3/8th mile away and growing.

Anyway, my copter was in some freaky phantom possession that it did not have enough power to fly itself at full throttle. Also, When in GPS Mode, and you exceed the distance limit setting, as long as you have a minimum of 6 or more satellite connection, the p2v is programmed to fly itself back into your "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". Less then 6 satellites found it will go into failsafe and sit down. And in my case go into a bizarre chain of events as it is flying away. Some how at the last second before never seeing it again, I managed to get a signal to it that the controller had been shut off and It made into RTH and it flew home barely missing tree's at 60ft in weight. I have it all on video. If any of this interest you here is the vid [youtube]youtu.be/rDz7MDt1alg[/youtube]

It is difficult to determine what happened. I think that high winds may have pinned your craft to the set limit or beyond. At 4:56 in the video, it looks like it either went into fail safe mode or you just came out of Fail Safe. My guess is that it went into fail safe mode. My experience is that the Phantom 2 (not sure about the Vision) can only travel at about 15 mph or 24 k/h in Fail Safe Mode. If the wind is higher than 15 mph, then it will not come back unless you switch out of Failsafe mode and fly it back in either GPS mode or atti mode. If winds are above 25-28 mph, you can be in real trouble getting it back.

What puzzles me the most about the video is the RTH and the height traveling back to you. Return to Home normally returns at the height the craft is flying when the feature is initiated (either manually with S1 or by turning off the controller). In your case it is hard to explain why it would descend to 20 meters and then return to home as seen beginning at 9:25 into the video. The other thing that seems odd to me is how shaky the flight is after 9:45. My videos from a Phantom 2 with no gimble is a much smoother video. Looking at the tree tops... there seems to be little to no wind at that low altitude.
 
Add me to the list...Saturday evening,never thought I'd be one of "those guys" but here I am. Took off from the same place I flew successfully just a few hours before (my yard). Went out over the lake and back once with no problems. Then I ascended to around 400 feet so I could get a view of the lights in town for orientation. Put it in atti and zipped out, no more than 600 feet and I get the lost connection warning. So I put it back into GPS mode to at least get it to stop but it doesn't. So I switch to home-lock and pull back on the stick and that only seemed to push it away further. So then I switch to failsafe, kept on going. Turned off the remote, nothing. So I hopped int the kayak to try and chase it down and caught a glimpse of what could have been my bird heading for town way across the lake. So I follow, get out and start walking around aimlessly looking for a sign of it, but nothing. Then I checked find my Phantom in the app. and it was pinned about 2500 feet away from where I took off, but on the edge of a marsh. I think it went much further than this as the battery was at least 90%. I did have my contact info on it so I'm holding up a little hope that someone will call/email me, but its pretty rural so there's a 50/50 chance it went down in someone's yard and of course with all the foliage it would be impossible to see if it landed anyplace other than an open field/yard. It seems that the craft had a different idea of where "home" was and it all happened so fast! Kicking myself for not getting a tracker! I really enjoyed flying and was just starting to play around with panorama stills, but no budget for a new one for a few months at least. In order to make me feel better I thought to myself, "I've lost that kind of money in Vegas" (not often but once anyway!). So I guess I got 5 months in Vegas for my gamble.
 
jimdenburg said:
In order to make me feel better I thought to myself, "I've lost that kind of money in Vegas" (not often but once anyway!). So I guess I got 5 months in Vegas for my gamble.

Sorry to hear about your loss man, but that's the spirit though and that's what I will tell myself :lol: Thnking about it I have done more than that on a night in Vegas but that's another story :twisted:
 
xgeek said:
jimdenburg said:
In order to make me feel better I thought to myself, "I've lost that kind of money in Vegas" (not often but once anyway!). So I guess I got 5 months in Vegas for my gamble.

Sorry to hear about your loss man, but that's the spirit though and that's what I will tell myself :lol: Thnking about it I have done more than that on a night in Vegas but that's another story :twisted:


Thanks man. I was honestly in the camp that the recent flyaways were due to new flyers and inexperience. I'm sure a lot fo that is the case, but the more I've flow and read about flyaways on this forum (and facebook), the more careful I've become yet when it went down it happened so fast I barely had time to do anything and it was out of range. My #1 takeway is to get a tracker. Looking back I could have reacted differently and maybe gotten it back to me somehow, but if not, I'd still have something to go on at this point with the tracker. I'll be back. Can't say for sure when, but I will. And if anyone has a use for a remote/wifi-extender(with tplink)/new shell/extended landing gear etc., let me know because I don't.
 
jimdenburg, I feel your pain and I'm sorry you don't have a option to get another one any sooner. I ordered a new and was flying again 2 days later. However, the one I bought is a lemon and I'm sending it back to the dealer today.

Btw, I lost mine with no visual contact whatsoever. I had a marked location on the map of the 'Find My Phantom 2 Vision' feature. I used google earth to lay line of direction from Home to that spot and beyond to get some kind of reference where to possible look. In 2 days the foliage doubled reducing the visual that much more. I had painted the top cover and a few other parts with florescent bright red, but I never have found it yet. I have also used my new one to look also. I got a possible lead on where it might be though near the end of last week. From my house I had flown up around 170ft facing in the direction of where I have always thought it might be. And when watching the flight video back I see a reflection flash from a wooded area right in the area as I say I have always thought it could be. When this reflection beam hit me I thought what the hell?! Then I about fell out of my chair with great joy. It hit me that the reflection beam came from the chrome ring on the face of the p2v camera. I then worked on a plan/mission to go investigate, which included walking around with the small pair of binoculars which are to use while standing out from the tree a little. And then fly around the area scanning with my new lemon p2v. I went to the location and just as soon as I arrived 6 deer came out of the heavy brush snorting and kicking all about. I then attempted to walk in the area, but that was an instant lost cause due to the area appearing worse then the amazon. My fly over was very short due to the copter issue of losing network connection and no video stream to the monitor. I will have to wait until late October early November

But you really may want to try some of google earth
 
Zinnware said:
flyNfrank said:
If someone in dji tech support said that calibrating your compass before each flight was my insurance of not having a fly away, I wouldn't think twice about it. I have always looked at my IMU ranges anytime I was connected to an assistant, and had actually went almost 4 weeks without calibrating the compass.The flight before losing my copter is when I had broken the no compass cal streak. The week before I had experienced nearly the same exact situation, an actual another fly away. However, that time I happened to be watching it take place which luckily was in the dusk hours where I could see the led's blinking. Once I saw it go past where I knew was beyond my set distance limit, I tried in the GPS mode it was already in. Now keep in mind I'm outside the set distance. Btw, there was also a different way dji had the software setup to work in "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". I could not yaw to rotate into the necessary angle to make the shortest flight path back towards me. At the time this took place, they had software set to allow either the forward or reverse, and either roll or yaw. So at this point you are in one heck of a state of mind. Every time I lifted from the throttle stick the wind was carrying the copter that much further away. I'm in a fast walk in the direction of my p2v which at this stage was around 3/8th mile away and growing.

Anyway, my copter was in some freaky phantom possession that it did not have enough power to fly itself at full throttle. Also, When in GPS Mode, and you exceed the distance limit setting, as long as you have a minimum of 6 or more satellite connection, the p2v is programmed to fly itself back into your "Your Distance Limits Cylinder". Less then 6 satellites found it will go into failsafe and sit down. And in my case go into a bizarre chain of events as it is flying away. Some how at the last second before never seeing it again, I managed to get a signal to it that the controller had been shut off and It made into RTH and it flew home barely missing tree's at 60ft in weight. I have it all on video. If any of this interest you here is the vid [youtube]youtu.be/rDz7MDt1alg[/youtube]

It is difficult to determine what happened. I think that high winds may have pinned your craft to the set limit or beyond. At 4:56 in the video, it looks like it either went into fail safe mode or you just came out of Fail Safe. My guess is that it went into fail safe mode. My experience is that the Phantom 2 (not sure about the Vision) can only travel at about 15 mph or 24 k/h in Fail Safe Mode. If the wind is higher than 15 mph, then it will not come back unless you switch out of Failsafe mode and fly it back in either GPS mode or atti mode. If winds are above 25-28 mph, you can be in real trouble getting it back.

What puzzles me the most about the video is the RTH and the height traveling back to you. Return to Home normally returns at the height the craft is flying when the feature is initiated (either manually with S1 or by turning off the controller). In your case it is hard to explain why it would descend to 20 meters and then return to home as seen beginning at 9:25 into the video. The other thing that seems odd to me is how shaky the flight is after 9:45. My videos from a Phantom 2 with no gimble is a much smoother video. Looking at the tree tops... there seems to be little to no wind at that low altitude.

You mention the RTH Height. Right after this took place I was posting either here or on mcp.com about DJI needs to raise the 60ft height setting. We have some tree's that exceed 120ft here, and most our common adult tree's are around 80ft. I think of the landscape in the state if Washington(location of 2014 Superbowl champs) and pretty much all their tree's 100ft and up. People say do your flying in a flat open field where maybe no tree's are at. I say, what about the family that wants to take their copter on vaction with them and use it in all types of landscape settings. For one, even though the 60ft height is supposed to come in play if at a low level it needs to be an adjustable height. When my p2v finally went into RTH, it did so in an area that is actually 100ft lower in elevation. But that still should not have had anything to do with why it continued descending down as it was flying towards the tree's near the end. It'd like it was determined to operate at the 60ft height. It was probably around 4 weeks ago when that flight took place. I remember the wind at the time of flight was 7mph with an occasional gust up to only 10mph. In watching the vid, you can clearly see the copter was in tilt consistently, and unable to get back in the the safe zone cylinder. You can see when I put it into the atti mode. And because I had no video connection, and you also do not have full stick use when outside the cylinder.And that folks is a major issue when you are in a situation like this.

Oh, and I don't have any experience with home lock pull back right stick, or what it was a couple you mentioned. jimdenburg, you ready to locate that p2v yet?
 
flyNfrank said:
Oh, and I don't have any experience with home lock pull back right stick, or what it was a couple you mentioned. jimdenburg, you ready to locate that p2v yet?

I searched and searched on Sunday morning with no joy. Wish I had another to do an some aerial recon.

As far as home lock...when you have NAZA activated in your software, the S2 switch on your remote controls IOC (intelligent orientation control). Basically all the way up is off, middle is Course Lock and down is Home Lock. With Home Lock, no matter where your aircraft is positioned or pointed, pulling back on the right stick will bring it back to your home point. I've used it many times in the past when the Phantom gets out a ways and I lose fpv or orientation, and it worked great, provided the craft knows where home is. The other thing I did when it got away was tap on the radar screen so I could point the thing toward me and bring it back. It either wasn't responding to my stick inputs or again, had a different idea of where home was at that point, because it only seemed to get further away. I was on the old firmware, 1.08? and the old app so I had no cylinders to deal with. Whenever I do get back into this I'm getting a tracker for sure.
 

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