Let's go swimming !

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I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.

No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -

No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)

I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.

Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house (
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) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.

So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.

A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device


I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?



Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.


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I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.

No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -

No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)

I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.

Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house (
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) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.

So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.

A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device


I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?



Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.


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You need to take the battery out of the go pro and put it in a bag of rice and leave it in the sun for atleast 2 hot days, lens facing down of course.

As for the solo, really really take the time to open it up and get all the water out. Id want hot airflow through out it.

Battery seems like there might be water in the button area, rice in a bag for as long as you can stand, of course you dont want to over heat Li-Po batteries so use good judgement there.
 
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You need to take the battery out of the go pro and put it in a bag of rice and leave it in the sun for atleast 2 hot days, lens facing down of course.

As for the solo, really really take the time to open it up and get all the water out. Id want hot airflow through out it.

Rice is a myth / joke. Does almost nothing.
Good airflow for 48 hours and I was flying again. The GoPro being a little more confined with regard to airspace and airflow - will just take a little longer. It works fine - just a little fog left on internal lens elements.
 
I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.

No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -

No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)

I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.

Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house (
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.

So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.

A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device


I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?



Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.


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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Nice Area to shoot-

One big disappointment.:

I wanted to see the CRASH!!

BTW you're right about the rice, tried that with an iPhone I went in the pool with.
Nope. nothing, after 2 weeks in the bag unassembled and only seconds in the pool.

U are lucky!
 
Nice Area to shoot-

One big disappointment.:

I wanted to see the CRASH!!

BTW you're right about the rice, tried that with an iPhone I went in the pool with.
Nope. nothing, after 2 weeks in the bag unassembled and only seconds in the pool.

U are lucky!
I wanted to see it also ! but after recovery - you see the last frames - Must have been trauma induced amnesia on the part of the GoPro - The quality of the file after recovery was not that great either.

I neglected to turn on recording on the iPhone -
 
Rice is a myth / joke. Does almost nothing.
Good airflow for 48 hours and I was flying again. The GoPro being a little more confined with regard to airspace and airflow - will just take a little longer. It works fine - just a little fog left on internal lens elements.
I disagree.

How to Dry Out Your Cell Phone

While I do agree blowing or sucking the water out as best you can is a good first step, an absorbing desiccant is also a good next step. Certainly if you have a large quantity of silica granuals it would likely do better, but rice works pretty darn well.

The problem with just drying things out, is that in some cases it is very tough to do (under IC's etc) and it can also leave behind residue that was dissolved in the water, and that can be an electronics killer. Even if the water looks clear, salt and other minerals can cause havoc.

Without going to deep, I used to repair video games and pinball machines. They were constantly getting doused with beer and worse. At our shop, we had a garbage can with fish tank heaters In it, full of rice :).
 
Last edited:
I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.

No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -

No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)

I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.

Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house (
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.

So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.

A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device


I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?



Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.


To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Nice video! I will admit though I was looking for some under water footage :)
 
I disagree.

How to Dry Out Your Cell Phone

While I do agree blowing or sucking the water out as best you can is a good first step, an absorbing desiccant is also a good next step. Certainly if you have a large quantity of silica granuals it would likely do better, but rice works pretty darn well.

The problem with just drying things out, is that in some cases it is very tough to do (under IC's etc) and it can also leave behind residue that was dissolved in the water, and that can be an electronics killer. Even if the water looks clear, salt and other minerals can cause havoc.

Without going to deep, I used to repair video games and pinball machines. They were constantly getting doused with beer and worse. At our shop, we had a garbage can with fish tank heaters In it, full of rice :).

No worries Earl -
My best friend disagrees as well!

And, I freely admit that this was my first exposure to the post submersion electronics recovery room. Being an internet geek - I had read an awful lot about this and took the fan vs desiccant approach.
Perhaps I lucked out.

For those following - the residual fog was all gone on my GoPro by the time I went flying tonight. I left it on my Airport (sucker throws a nice amount of heat) for around 20 hours. Perfect images out of it tonight.

Oh, and ran three batteries of flight testing on the Solo and pronounce it fit for any mission.
 
No worries Earl -
My best friend disagrees as well!

And, I freely admit that this was my first exposure to the post submersion electronics recovery room. Being an internet geek - I had read an awful lot about this and took the fan vs desiccant approach.
Perhaps I lucked out.

For those following - the residual fog was all gone on my GoPro by the time I went flying tonight. I left it on my Airport (sucker throws a nice amount of heat) for around 20 hours. Perfect images out of it tonight.

Oh, and ran three batteries of flight testing on the Solo and pronounce it fit for any mission.
Awesome :) One thing people are finding out all over is that the Solo is pretty TOUGH...

Side note: They were asking about possible third party apps on the Mod board. I proposed a deployable "bouy" for Solo. It would work on teh same principle as the Ballistic Parachute that is in development now, but would be a tough balloon on a tether, that would keep the Solo afloat in deep water.... Not that it would have helped you, but I thought it was a good idea ;)
 
Without going too deep I used to design video games and pinball machines... Thirteen years at Bally in Chicago...
I worked on those :). And Williams, and Stern, and Gottlieb... Along with Midway etc. Ahhh the good old days. Spending all day in bars :)
 
In the earlier PC days as a tech we used to take keyboards outside and hose them off with a water hose then let the dry off. Works better than a vacuum.
Couscous and instant rice work better than uncooked white rice.
Silica gel works the best out of all drying agents
 
Raybro - we were Solo swimming at the same time. Last Sunday I was in Telluride with my Solo. Really excited about getting some cool mountain terrain footage. But I could not get a GPS lock as much as I tried. Wanted to fly it up to film the waterfalls but its too far to fly manual with no ability to RTL if upon signal loss so I kept it close. Then I decided I would fly it low over one of the streams. When it was in manual mode it was really acting wonky. When in reverse it was loosing altitude. But I couldn't resist trying to follow the stream. So I send it out about 150 feet and then reverse it and it drops straight into the water. The flood of emotions at that moment is indescribable. I ran over and waded in and fished it out. What I found was close to what you described. Lights on battery on but M2 blade was missing and the pod was smoking. I quickly removed the battery and with my tail between my legs went home to start the salvage process. I took it completely apart (benefit of the crash is I had nothing to loose so took the opportunity to learn about all of the components and assembly). But I couldn't get it to come on. A day later I had a thought - what if the motor pod was shorted out. So I removed M2 and got audible and lights! BOOM! GoPro fired up after a day too. So now I have an M2 on order and hopefully when I replace it all will be good. I am, however replacing the NEO M7 GPS with the M8N now that I have it all opened up. Glad you were able to completely recover. BTW, I never got the LEDs on the battery to go out so I got rid of it for the same reasons you describe.
 
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Raybro - we were Solo swimming at the same time. Last Sunday I was in Telluride with my Solo. Really excited about getting some cool mountain terrain footage. But I could not get a GPS lock as much as I tried. Wanted to fly it up to film the waterfalls but its too far to fly manual with no ability to RTL if upon signal loss so I kept it close. Then I decided I would fly it low over one of the streams. When it was in manual mode it was really acting wonky. When in reverse it was loosing altitude. But I couldn't resist trying to follow the stream. So I send it out about 150 feet and then reverse it and it drops straight into the water. The flood of emotions at that moment is indescribable. I ran over and waded in and fished it out. What I found was close to what you described. Lights on battery on but M2 blade was missing and the pod was smoking. I quickly removed the battery and with my tail between my legs went home to start the salvage process. I took it completely apart (benefit of the crash is I had nothing to loose so took the opportunity to learn about all of the components and assembly). But I couldn't get it to come on. A day later I had a thought - what if the motor pod was shorted out. So I removed M2 and got audible and lights! BOOM! GoPro fired up after a day too. So now I have an M2 on order and hopefully when I replace it all will be good. I am, however replacing the NEO M7 GPS with the M8N now that I have it all opened up. Glad you were able to completely recover. BTW, I never got the LEDs on the battery to go out so I got rid of it for the same reasons you describe.
That was Mitten, not me but I did something similar with my P2 when it auto landed in a flooded field. The GoPro went under water. Kept on recording.
Glad you can get it going again. Now you wouldn't want to do that in salt water.
Happy flying.
 
You guys make it sound like standard operating procedures to dunk and dry. I may need to invent that recovery floatation device after all...;)
 
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I took my solo for a swim last Sunday. I was busy flying shots of my wife and pup in the river - over shot and clipped a branch - went into full brush cutter mode and had a nice soft landing in 4' of water.

No gimbal, and a GoPro 3 -

No problem finding it. The battery LED's were flashing (could not get it to stop actually)

I poured the water out, and packed it up, got home and propped everything up in front of a fan - for 48 hours.
Last night I fired up the ship - it linked to the controller and it went satellite hunting. First sigh of relief. Next I spun on the props - and did a fly-manual take off, hover and landing. Everything checked out. The GoPro powers up fine but is a little foggy now. A bud tells me that this will dissipate over time - I am deep cycling it on low heat for a few days to see if it improves the image quality.

Also, the 3DR smart battery - acted goofy in that it would not cycle down no matter what I did. An LED remained on. I let that dry out for the same 48 hours and when I inspected it, the LED was off - so I charged it up under a watchful eye and it seems to be back. I do not however keep it in the house anymore - Not sure I want an Li-ion fire in my house (
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
) That being said, the only thing that happened was immersion in clean water - no impact or penetration. I observed no heat and no pillowing of the cells in the case.

So there it is. Many lessons learned - very little lost in the process. For that, I regard myself as lucky.

A friend suggests Waterbuoy - Miniature Floatation Device


I think I will try a pair… Any other suggestions?



Oh, and here is the footage from the day. I had to do a file recovery as the recording ab-ended and the GoPro was not able to close the file properly.


To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.


Beautiful scenery! Where was that filmed?
 

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