Frightening (but now I have a better sense of hover time on a new battery.)

[NightStorm]

Took a new or near-new battery off the charger out for a flight. Flew out over the woods to around 1,700 ft about the limit of where I can see it, started to bring it back and then took RTH as a shortcut (Solo wastes no time getting back in RTH).

When it got overhead I hit "Fly" to take back control (could have hit A which I have set for Manual but did not think of it). The transmitter vibrated and I started on the sticks. No response. I looked down at the controller and it said either "Lost Connection" or "Looking for Solo" (don't recall which).

So it is 200 some-odd feet straight above me and I cannot connect. I rebooted the transmitter three times and even tried doing a full reset by removing the battery. Nothing.

All I could do was hope it would do the sane thing when the battery ran down.

It did, it landed, it shutdown.

Bonus: now I know one battery that can keep it in the air for 16 minutes and 5 seconds.

Meanwhile: I need to be able to trust this craft more. Losing control is just not an option. After bringing it in the house connections are no problem, I throw a battery in and it connects fine, starts looking for GPS (good luck with that from inside).

I was fortunate, it was dead-overhead when it went dead to me. Were I over the woods, over the pond, ??

I did a search for "Lost connection" here (an uncomfortable number of hits which I have not yet read). I'm going to get some dinner and then come back to do some reading. I hope I can find some hints for regaining control!

That helpless feeling is no fun.

 

[pyrate]

depending on your antenna angle directly above you is a dead spot

 

[Frank Foster]

Solo did exactly what it was supposed to do.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

The battery failsafe will engage whether your controller is connected or not. And it will always Return to Home, or Return to Me, whichever you set in the app. That failsafe should also kick in immediately if the controller connection is lost. What you experienced was a pretty atypical malfunction. Most likely the companion computer was locked up, and didn't see itself as disconnected. I've had that happen once. The battery failsafe will kick in regardless.

 

[NightStorm]

depending on your antenna angle directly above you is a dead spot

Thanks Pyrate. I had the presence of mind to think of that when it was happening and was working both the antenna angle (I had the Alphas on) and my angle relative to the hovering craft. I can rule that one out.

 

[NightStorm]

The battery failsafe will engage whether your controller is connected or not. And it will always Return to Home, or Return to Me, whichever you set in the app. That failsafe should also kick in immediately if the controller connection is lost. What you experienced was a pretty atypical malfunction. Most likely the companion computer was locked up, and didn't see itself as disconnected. I've had that happen once. The battery failsafe will kick in regardless.

Thanks P2P. This whole incident has got me motivated to go dig into the params. around battery fail safe. When it finally decided to land (I believe you, but since it was already overhead the takeoff point I cannot tell if the battery fail-safe did a real RTH or just a land-in-place) the battery was pretty flat according to the blinky lights. I like to have a little more margin when I fly, as it is in this case I cannot tell how low the battery was when it landed. It was low enough that it won't power the craft back on w/o it screaming at me (same kind of scream a Pixhawk makes when it is not happy). I tried to do that so that I could see just how low the battery was. It was having none of it. I usually try to be back overhead at 30% so if this is now set to RTH at something like 10%, well I'm uncomfortable with that slim a margin.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

The default battery failsafe is 520mah remaining, or 14 volts remaining, whichever occurs first. It is not based on %, which is a common misconception. You will typically hit one of those two points between 10 and 12% remaining, and it works out to about 1.5 to 2 minutes before empty.

If you were directly overhead at 200ft, that is more than enough time to descend and land safely. It would probably have one light blinking on the battery, and 8-10% remaining.

The "battery is too low for flight" restriction that prevents you from taking off again has a much higher threshold. It's like 25% or something.

 

[NightStorm]

The default battery failsafe is 520mah remaining, or 14 volts remaining, whichever occurs first. It is not based on %, which is a common misconception. You will typically hit one of those two points between 10 and 12% remaining, and it works out to about 1.5 to 2 minutes before empty.

If you were directly overhead at 200ft, that is more than enough time to descend and land safely. It would probably have one light blinking on the battery, and 8-10% remaining.

The "battery is too low for flight" restriction that prevents you from taking off again has a much higher threshold. It's like 25% or something.

Good to know. Mah/voltage is a much better metric. Thanks

 

[NightStorm]

Argh. Just happened to me again, this time with the other Solo (I have two).
Same launch location, this time flew only a couple hundred feet away and then saw it do an RTH. Looked down and sure 'nuf, controller said "Looking for Solo".
So I watched it 150' above me until it exhausted the battery and auto-landed.

This must have something to do with WIFI in the area given that this has only ever occurred from this one launch point (and occurred twice now with different Solos). Nonetheless it is very frustrating (and unnerving) that one cannot reconnect once the signal is lost.