Just had signal loss and crash with my new Solo

Phil Hover · Jun 6, 2015

I prefer to contact them directly and work with them that way - I don't want to smear them or create bad press.

SCO19 · Jun 6, 2015

Think you are the first 'forum' crash so the cat will be out the bag soon enough. At least on the FB site they might be able to assist you posting your logs now, rather than Monday.

David Weston · Jun 6, 2015

Check the "test" thread,,,3500' + feet stock set-up, 1 1/2 miles with panel antenna. Sounds pretty good to me.

SCO19 · Jun 6, 2015

Gotta say with the amount of hoops I've had to jump through to get this solo, and the amount of money it's going to cost when all the bits finally arrive. Even if it arrived by UPS this very moment I probably wouldn't take it out the box till this 'beta' testing is over.

SCO19 · Jun 6, 2015

David Weston said:
Check the "test" thread,,,3500' + feet stock set-up, 1 1/2 miles with panel antenna. Sounds pretty good to me.

Must take a heavy hit with interference then. Both OP & Troy's looks like they were flying in urban areas when their RTH triggered.

Paul · Jun 6, 2015

Phil Hover said:
I had done 4 flights with my solo in the last two days and decided to take it up to capture the sunset over my neighborhood. I was about 100ft up when they controller lost signal with the Solo. Lights started flashing red on the drone and it started to descend (assuming it was returning to home). But, the home spot had drifted or something because it was trying to land over my house instead of the street. Tried to get the controller to reconnect but was not able to and the Solo crashed into the side of my roof ripping the propellers and ending up in a tree. A few scrapes on the sides of the solo and the battery popped off thankfully landing in the tree mostly and not the cement. Hopefully tech support will have an answer. I tried to download the flight data with the app but it appears to not work at this moment. Be careful where you fly not sure if the system might be buggy.

Kmd1984 said:
I never had a drift off 30 feet, but I believe in rare occasions it's possible. Do you check the solar activities before you fly? I have two apps installed, and I always check for solar storms and strong magnetic field "disturbances". Not sure what else to call it. LOL.

Anyhow, what could also have caused the 30 foot "drift" is that your home location wasn't registered until you were already in the air, and further away from where you took off. I don't have my solo yet, and I am not sure if this is actually a possibility with the solo, but it is foot sure with the Pixhawk. Is there an indication in the Solo app that tells you that your home location is set???

Kmd

Solo won't let you take off in normal fly mode unless home is set, however in an urban environment with GPS signal blockage and multipath it is easy to get a 30 ft GPS discrepancy on the ground.

David Weston · Jun 6, 2015

I totally agree. Not a lot of experience with UAV's but LOTS of experience with GPS systems of all types. Signal reflections, distortions, interference, etc can and most likely will give a different position than from a signals obtained in wide open areas free from buildings, antennas, transmitters, etc. Don't know what the final analysis will be but best of luck!

Kmd1984 · Jun 6, 2015

Paul said:
Solo won't let you take off in normal fly mode unless home is set, however in an urban environment with GPS signal blockage and multipath it is easy to get a 30 ft GPS discrepancy on the ground.

I figured. Thanks

Paul · Jun 6, 2015

What did you do to try and get the controller to reconnect?

Phil Hover said:
Tried to get the controller to reconnect but was not able to and the Solo crashed into the side of my roof ripping the propellers and ending up in a tree. A few scrapes on the sides of the solo and the battery popped off thankfully landing in the tree mostly and not the cement. Hopefully tech support will have an answer. I tried to download the flight data with the app but it appears to not work at this moment. Be careful where you fly not sure if the system might be buggy.

Kmd1984 · Jun 6, 2015

One more thought. Aren't you able to take over from RTL? The Pixhawk let's you do that by just switching to a different mode. That is what I do... As soon my bird is close enough for me to see it's orientation, I take it out of RTL and switch to stabilize...

Paul · Jun 6, 2015

Kmd1984 said:
One more thought. Aren't you able to take over from RTL? The Pixhawk let's you do that by just switching to a different mode. That is what I do... As soon my bird is close enough for me to see it's orientation, I take it out of RTL and switch to stabilize...

If you have comms then pressing fly or pause should take it out of RTL.

Kmd1984 · Jun 6, 2015

Paul said:
If you have comms then pressing fly or pause should take it out of RTL.

Well, then it looks to me that this could have easily being avoided... Not to take anything away from the fact that it lost comms, but still, as a pilot you need to be ready to take over at any given moment. Sorry it happened to the OP, but let this be a lesson for everyone!

What I do with all my birds is, I test any and every possible Flight Mode, way before I might even need it. I test all my RTL and Fail Safe Flight Modes, so i know exactly what is going to happen!

thanks,

Kmd

ATx RC Addicts · Jun 6, 2015

My question is how did you "try to regain control"?

Stick input?

Miken · Jun 6, 2015

It would be cool to see our first log file. I would like to see what the data looks like.

ken nielsen · Jun 6, 2015

Phil Hover said:
I had done 4 flights with my solo in the last two days and decided to take it up to capture the sunset over my neighborhood. I was about 100ft up when they controller lost signal with the Solo. Lights started flashing red on the drone and it started to descend (assuming it was returning to home). But, the home spot had drifted or something because it was trying to land over my house instead of the street. Tried to get the controller to reconnect but was not able to and the Solo crashed into the side of my roof ripping the propellers and ending up in a tree. A few scrapes on the sides of the solo and the battery popped off thankfully landing in the tree mostly and not the cement. Hopefully tech support will have an answer. I tried to download the flight data with the app but it appears to not work at this moment. Be careful where you fly not sure if the system might be buggy.

Whooe, thanks for heads up...did you record the crash with on board GoPro? If so would you mind sharing a little video here. Please keep us informed on your experience with tech support...are you going to generate a ticket?

Iconic Images · Jun 7, 2015

Anything in the app or controller that mentions the number of satellites that are connected to the quad? Like with my P2 and an iOSD? I keep a steady eye on that number as I have had it drop below the 7 sats flying in valleys, etc

DesertEagle · Jun 7, 2015

Seems weird, was the battery charged? I don't think it did a RTH but just landed. Wonder if it is set to land if something is wrong? Did you have a cell phone on maybe? Not saying it's your fault just wondering why it did that.

ken nielsen · Jun 7, 2015

Iconic Images said:
Anything in the app or controller that mentions the number of satellites that are connected to the quad? Like with my P2 and an iOSD? I keep a steady eye on that number as I have had it drop below the 7 sats flying in valleys, etc

I occasionally lose satellite connection with my P2 but it has never caused it to crash or fly-away, it just slowly drifts and won't hover in place, requires a bit more piloting skill is all. I have also intentionally flown without satellite so as to give me a smooth floating transition when ending a shot and not a hard stop. This is also why I always fly line of site. Nothing I've needed to video or photograph in the past three years required me to fly out of site. Once you reach an altitude of above 200-250 feet there isn't a whole lot of detail of people objects on the ground, at least that's my experience in well over 100 hours of flight I hope in the future when folks experience a problem with their Solo they will post 3DR's support findings here.

Iconic Images · Jun 7, 2015

ken nielsen said:
I occasionally lose satellite connection with my P2 but it has never caused it to crash or fly-away, it just slowly drifts and won't hover in place, requires a bit more piloting skill is all. I have also intentionally flown without satellite so as to give me a smooth floating transition when ending a shot and not a hard stop. This is also why I always fly line of site. Nothing I've needed to video or photograph in the past three years required me to fly out of site. Once you reach an altitude of above 200-250 feet there isn't a whole lot of detail of people objects on the ground, at least that's my experience in well over 100 hours of flight I hope in the future when folks experience a problem with their Solo they will post 3DR's support findings here.

Indeed, but I would still like to know if the number of satellites are hovering at barely the limit.... especially if flying on a windy day. Being closer to the subject adds to the possibility of collisions as well if sudden loss of satellites send it back to ATTi mode in a breeze. Mid Orbit mode for example....

I was flying in the middle of a canal in Norway when I lost GPS. Although a fairly experienced flyer, when the P2 was 60m out over water and had just cleared the roofline 20m high, the wind which was stronger over the roofline suddenly took it skimming over the buildings next to the canal. Thankfully I sent it straight up just in time and flew it manually till GPS locked in again... It was my fault. I had never been used to checking the number of Satellites during flight.

It's not essential to have of course, but it wouldn't hurt to have that information displayed and add an additional layer of caution knowing you have barely enough satellites to fly. If you are a novice, you really should then be very careful and be sure the wind conditions are close to nil.

I do agree that Sats/GPS is not the issue with the OP's problem though. It would simply have drifted. Sounds more to me like an auto landing, not even a RTH. It did what it would do if the batteries were close to being dead... descend.

Miken · Jun 7, 2015

Without gps lock, the drone will go to fly:manual mode and drift but maintained altitude. The operator would need to control it until lock is re-established. It is not designed to auto land on gps loss.

The op stated red flashing lights. The manual says this is an indication of radio signal loss. In that case, the drone will RTH and land unless you press the fly button again on signal reconnect. It sounds like the first flight was by a house and trees. This is not an optimal location to learn, resulting in a damaged drone when it did what was expected, and the operator did not know how to or could not regain control.

Hard learned lesson. I hope the drone did not sustain any significant damage and you can get her back in the air soon. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get new props.