Lost control on solo

Kingy · Jun 4, 2017

Hey guys, I havent had a good run with the solo. i bought one 7 days ago and had 2 flys with it. seemed to work out. the third time i took it out, the controller and the drone would not connect. i went through all the troubleshooting for 4 hours total, still no joy. took it back and the store replaced it.
thats all good, but i took the replacement one out for its first flight, everything was going perfect. i then received a 25% battery warning, all good i was just finishing up anyway and started to fly it back in, but all of a sudden it was not responding. i look down at the controller and its just doing its own thing climbed in elevation and just took off. it then smashed into a bridge and fell to the ground.
I had no control over it what so ever.
The battery is on charge now and ill see if it still works, but my gimbal is smashed to pieces, props are all busted, a crack in the body and the antenna leg is bent.
has this happened to anyone else and what did you do? did you contact 3dr?
cheers

Barramundi · Jun 4, 2017

Holy crap, that sounds pretty tragic! I had a similar incident to your first, in fact sounded exactly the same. I tried pretty much everything, new wifi card, new antennas, reinstalled the SD card, tried to reset the controller and solo, asked for advice on this forum, etc, but it just wouldn't right itself. I ended just buying another controller and pair it up. Finally worked and haven over had an issue since!
As far as fly always... Never had one yet, although the loss of control sounds like you lost GPS signal or the low battery may have caused auto return may to have kicked in. Always freaks me out when it does, especially if you are in confined places, near trees, bridges , etc.
Hope all runs smoothly for you in the future.

Kingy · Jun 4, 2017

Barramundi said:
Holy crap, that sounds pretty tragic! I had a similar incident to your first, in fact sounded exactly the same. I tried pretty much everything, new wifi card, new antennas, reinstalled the SD card, tried to reset the controller and solo, asked for advice on this forum, etc, but it just wouldn't right itself. I ended just buying another controller and pair it up. Finally worked and haven over had an issue since!
As far as fly always... Never had one yet, although the loss of control sounds like you lost GPS signal or the low battery may have caused auto return may to have kicked in. Always freaks me out when it does, especially if you are in confined places, near trees, bridges , etc.
Hope all runs smoothly for you in the future.

I was lucky enough to get the first one replaced.

I thought the fly home due to battery could of been it also but it was at 25%, which is still plenty of time I would of thought.
And where it was going back to is not where I took off from. So it's weird.
Hopefully 3dr can look at the flight log.

BirdDog · Jun 4, 2017

Kingy said:
Hey guys, I havent had a good run with the solo. i bought one 7 days ago and had 2 flys with it. seemed to work out. the third time i took it out, the controller and the drone would not connect. i went through all the troubleshooting for 4 hours total, still no joy. took it back and the store replaced it.
thats all good, but i took the replacement one out for its first flight, everything was going perfect. i then received a 25% battery warning, all good i was just finishing up anyway and started to fly it back in, but all of a sudden it was not responding. i look down at the controller and its just doing its own thing climbed in elevation and just took off. it then smashed into a bridge and fell to the ground.
I had no control over it what so ever.
The battery is on charge now and ill see if it still works, but my gimbal is smashed to pieces, props are all busted, a crack in the body and the antenna leg is bent.
has this happened to anyone else and what did you do? did you contact 3dr?
cheers

When it took off on you, I assume it was in FLY mode? Or were you flying in manual mode?

I've had a couple of random controller disconnects but as the Solo got close to me (after the RTL was initiated) I was able to take control and bring it down manually.

Also, something else that several here have recommended, is to have your A and B buttons programmed for fly manual mode so if something strange starts happening you have a bail out option to try and take over manually. If you don't have a connection between the solo and controller, that won't help much...

pyrate · Jun 4, 2017

guys I am not picking on you but most of what you experienced is explained in the manual
the rise in altitude and loss of control is RTH kicking in.

Loss of GPS solo switches to manual, and it will drift with momentum and wind, you have to know how to fly it in manual else it will feel out of controll
Loss of Controller signal will result in RTH, depending on your RTH setting will rise to your assigned RTH altitude and head straight home, if something is between the solo and home it will fly right into it, unless you have your altitude set high enough to go over it.
Sticks will do nothing in RTH mode, once you regain connection, you can hit fly to take control back

Kingy · Jun 5, 2017

pyrate said:
guys I am not picking on you but most of what you experienced is explained in the manual
the rise in altitude and loss of control is RTH kicking in.

Loss of GPS solo switches to manual, and it will drift with momentum and wind, you have to know how to fly it in manual else it will feel out of controll
Loss of Controller signal will result in RTH, depending on your RTH setting will rise to your assigned RTH altitude and head straight home, if something is between the solo and home it will fly right into it, unless you have your altitude set high enough to go over it.
Sticks will do nothing in RTH mode, once you regain connection, you can hit fly to take control back

Thats what i thought may have happened regarding the FTH however it flew well past where It was launched.

pyrate · Jun 5, 2017

Did you have RTM set as an option?
Also did you have a good fix before taking off?

dronator · Jan 7, 2018

Hi: this exact sane thing just happened to me. I was about to land because of battery at 30% and all of a sudden solo went straight forward full speed. I reacted and hit RTH button which I think it helped to decrease speed but it crashed in soccer goal frame.

that was scary!!!!!

XevetS · Jan 8, 2018

dronator said:
Hi: this exact sane thing just happened to me. I was about to land because of battery at 30% and all of a sudden solo went straight forward full speed. I reacted and hit RTH button which I think it helped to decrease speed but it crashed in soccer goal frame.

that was scary!!!!!

You should of programmed one of your buttons to Manual mode so you can push it and then take manual control over the solo, sounds like the solo was multipathing in gps mode and tried to correct itself. I personally always land in manual or stabilized mode less factors to go wrong..Do yourself a favor and read the manual also do a search on this specific topic. Knowing how to fly manual and how to react in certain situations will keep you safe in the air and with less crashing. Good luck..

CAMXPOSURE · Jan 8, 2018

I'm more interested in what was the store you purchased it from and why didn't I hear the story about returning the 2nd one back... IN PIECES??!!!
I always learn to fly a drone manually- YOU NEVER KNOW!!

KDan · Jan 9, 2018

Funny how a 7 month thread can re-awaken with people having the same old problem. Not understanding how GPS works and what happens when the GPS signal gets compromised. I'm certain that over 90% of these bizarre behavior and flyaway issues are caused by GPS multipath or similar problem. Flying and landing around trees, high vegetation, and buildings is always playing with fire. Hitting the home button does nothing, or makes things worse, because RTH relies on a stable and accurate GPS fix. Heed the advice. Learn to land in manual mode

IrishmanPDX · Jan 9, 2018

Heed all the advice above about manual mode. Hitting "fly" is not flying in manual mode (I've seen a lot of newbies post thinking that it IS manual mode, it's not). I myself live in an area with poor GPS (tall hillside, lots and lots of tree's). I can get a GPS lock and lift off, but at low altitudes there's a lot of GPS drift. The higher I fly, the better the signal, and I've no issues. However, coming back in to land, if I were to leave it on auto, more than likely it would try to land, start drifting around as it gets closer to the ground and finally fly into a tree or flip over on landing. Just because you have a GPS lock when flying, it doesn't mean you won't get signal degradation as you come closer to the ground and nearer solid objects.

Apart from flying in nice big flat open area's, learning when, where and how to fly in manual might just save your birds life!

Good luck!

allen_993 · Jan 9, 2018

IrishmanPDX said:
Apart from flying in nice big flat open area's, learning when, where and how to fly in manual might just save your birds life!

In an effort to emphasize this point...I say "what he said"!

dronator · Jan 9, 2018

Cool!, I think that by reawakaninng this thread I got great advises. Thanks all for your input. I knew that signing up this forum would get a lot of answers.

IrishmanPDX · Jan 10, 2018

It benefits everyone, the less people that crash the more chance there is that parts and gimbals there are out there for the rest of us...

KDan · Jan 10, 2018

I think it's worth pointing out that this problem is not GPS specific or even Drone brand/model specific. DJI, 3DR, or anything else. They are all vulnerable. Relying totally on GPS in every location and situation is almost certainly the cause of 10's of thousands of drone crashes... and very disgruntled "pilots" who are then quick to criticize the manufacturer.