Broken body: better to repair or replace?

william35 · Nov 29, 2016

duboisj said:
Ouch! What happened? You haven't flown it since the crash that way, have you?

All was good for about 30 mins. I had my second battery in for the day and just took off. just a normal flight and about 20 secs after takeoff the controller stopped responding. with the drone hovering there I thought I was good. I thought it would just land itself. but nope that was not the case. it must have lost all GPS signals. started flying around in circles. and after about a minute of that. it started to decent, and just as it touched the ground it flew back up. then slammed back into the pavement. then flipped over and broke all the propellers. still with no control of the drone it continues to spin the motors with half propellers spinning on the ground. at that point I run over to it and grab the leg and lift it off the ground unable to press the power button on the battery because the propellers were warping and stuff. I let it keep spinning. then finally the controller reconnected I thought I was in the clear. but nope it thought the drone was 650 feet in the air. after many attempts to "lower" the drone still nothing worked and it was spinning away for about another 2 minstrel before it gave up

duboisj · Nov 29, 2016

william35 said:
All was good for about 30 mins. I had my second battery in for the day and just took off. just a normal flight and about 20 secs after takeoff the controller stopped responding. with the drone hovering there I thought I was good. I thought it would just land itself. but nope that was not the case. it must have lost all GPS signals. started flying around in circles. and after about a minute of that. it started to decent, and just as it touched the ground it flew back up. then slammed back into the pavement. then flipped over and broke all the propellers. still with no control of the drone it continues to spin the motors with half propellers spinning on the ground. at that point I run over to it and grab the leg and lift it off the ground unable to press the power button on the battery because the propellers were warping and stuff. I let it keep spinning. then finally the controller reconnected I thought I was in the clear. but nope it thought the drone was 650 feet in the air. after many attempts to "lower" the drone still nothing worked and it was spinning away for about another 2 minstrel before it gave up

Dang! That's interesting. Unlike my crash (flying indoors), that sounds like a case of drone malfunction. I know 3dr is basically out of the consumer drone business ... I wonder how they'd react to getting logs from that. People have been saying worse and worse things about customer service lately.

I want to use the Solo for tinkering and programming, and one thing that would be really useful is a set of powerful shutoff / safety features. Seems like a tricky problem, though, since 1.) a lot of malfunctions are probably caused by loss of signal; and 2.) the drone often doesn't know whether it's on the ground or in the air, and just shutting all the motors off isn't an obvious win if you think you're 650 feet high.

People who do development on these seem like they'd have at least partial solutions for this sort of stuff. Alternate communications channel that's more reliable than wifi or something? I wonder how you deal with this?

(And yeah, when mine crashed I noticed very quickly that the power button wasn't accessible while the props are spinning. That seems like one design flaw that could be remedied.)

william35 · Nov 29, 2016

duboisj said:
Dang! That's interesting. Unlike my crash (flying indoors), that sounds like a case of drone malfunction. I know 3dr is basically out of the consumer drone business ... I wonder how they'd react to getting logs from that. People have been saying worse and worse things about customer service lately.

I want to use the Solo for tinkering and programming, and one thing that would be really useful is a set of powerful shutoff / safety features. Seems like a tricky problem, though, since 1.) a lot of malfunctions are probably caused by loss of signal; and 2.) the drone often doesn't know whether it's on the ground or in the air, and just shutting all the motors off isn't an obvious win if you think your 650 feet high.

People who do development on these seem like they'd have at least partial solutions for this sort of stuff. Alternate communications channel that's more reliable than wifi or something? I wonder how you deal with this?

(And yeah, when mine crashed I noticed very quickly that the power button wasn't accessible while the props are spinning. That seems like one design flaw that could be remedied.)

I'm not going to hold my breath on them replacing it but I really hope they do. I've flown for awhile now and have never encounter something of this matter. and honestly it was terrifying. I was going to take off my shirt and disable the propellers that way but I thought that might do more damage if the torque is strong enough

SARDG · Nov 29, 2016

Solex has a programable Kill or Instant Kill (no confirmation) switch that stops all motors immediately. Go to the Solex thread and read the Solex documentation to find out more.

duboisj · Nov 29, 2016

SARDG said:
Solex has a programable Kill or Instant Kill (no confirmation) switch that stops all motors immediately. Go to the Solex thread and read the Solex documentation to find out more.

Does that use a different mechanism than the Solo controller A+B+Pause key combination? That's supposed to be an instant-kill for the motors. @william35 - is that one of the things you tried that didn't work?

That's what seems so tricky - if communication with the controller is really lost, then you need either a.) a truly alternate communication channel which is likely to still be working; or b.) better smarts onboard the device itself which can figure out how to "do the right thing" in an emergency without human input.

william35 · Nov 29, 2016

BTW I've managed to get the battery out it seems like in the middle of spazing out with the motors spinning at different speeds it made the battery get hot and melted a piece of plastic above the terminals

Coastwise · Dec 3, 2016

william35 said:
I think it's funny you're solo broke like that because mine is almost identical

Mine, too. I replaced shell when they were still available. I saved broken one thinking I would "sew" parts together with high strength fishing line at several points, then seal all with epoxy, keying epoxy around stitching and into such seams as possible.

JWHV

Coastwise · Dec 3, 2016

william35 said:
All was good for about 30 mins. I had my second battery in for the day and just took off. just a normal flight and about 20 secs after takeoff the controller stopped responding. with the drone hovering there I thought I was good. I thought it would just land itself. but nope that was not the case. it must have lost all GPS signals. started flying around in circles. and after about a minute of that. it started to decent, and just as it touched the ground it flew back up. then slammed back into the pavement. then flipped over and broke all the propellers. still with no control of the drone it continues to spin the motors with half propellers spinning on the ground. at that point I run over to it and grab the leg and lift it off the ground unable to press the power button on the battery because the propellers were warping and stuff. I let it keep spinning. then finally the controller reconnected I thought I was in the clear. but nope it thought the drone was 650 feet in the air. after many attempts to "lower" the drone still nothing worked and it was spinning away for about another 2 minstrel before it gave up