Not sure what happened.. Slight crash

RyanG · Jul 8, 2015

So. I went out tonight (first time at night), and kept it real close to home.. Like 15ft close.

I had 8 sats, 2.0 hdop it's a little less than the normal 10, but so I take off. I am at the corner of a totally NON busy street at the end of a dead end. I am about 12ft in the air and nothing around me and it starts to move left and right with me NOT touching the controls. So I fly it a little straight and then as I am going under a smallish tree Solo totally starts to veer off to the left (thankfully I had it in slow mode about 1/4 the way up towards rabbit) and as it's doing this it still says I have GPS, the controller didn't beep or anything to let me know it's in Manual.

I panicked so and saw the Solo headed toward the tree trunk so I cut the engine (meanwhile I am trying to land it by dropping it slowly and it's helping a little) but I cut the engine at about 2.5' and thankfully it didn't hit anything except the ground.

Solo IS ok, nothing even scraped up that I can see. But that was a little scary. No warning, no controller beeping to tell me manual mode or lost GPS. Just wondering what happened.

I am going to send the logs to 3DR. I saved them to my dropbox, which is a cool option if you don't have wifi signal out in the field.

Wondering what people think might have happened?

Ryan G

SteveMyers75 · Jul 9, 2015

I remember you posting earlier that you hadn't done the 1.05 FW update.
Have you done it yet?

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

About to now. I figured I would give try it one more time. I guess maybe it came back to bite me.

Ryan G

Earldgrayjr · Jul 9, 2015

I think you "may" have experienced some variation of the same thing I did. Impossible to know for sure without the log files, but mine went into ALT HOLD with 10 sats and an hdop of 1.6. Mine also had something else more serious going on, but it also experienced what yours did.

If you post the newest tlog file (from the zip file) I can have a look.

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Here ya go. How do you read the Log file? I would love to know what happened.

Thanks
Ryan G

SteveMyers75 · Jul 9, 2015

Also, this would be a good time to learn how to use those logs in Mission Planner.
It's real easy to learn:

Unzip and save your logs someplace you know
For some unknown reason, it saves them as solo.tlog, solo.tlog.1, solo.tlog.2 but you need to rename all of them to end in ".tlog" (as in solo.tlog, solo1.tlog, solo2.tlog) - these are the last three flights)

Run Mission Planner
Select the Telemetry Logs tab
Select Load Log and load a log (the latest one is the one named solo.tlog)

After that you can zoom in on the Right side and use the slider/pause to see the flight.
The 1/10x,1/4x,1/2x ... buttons will slow/speed up the replay.

The Status Tab will show you what was going on with the Controller at the time.

From what I've been able to figure out on my own:

Solo is facing away from you (Camera View is forward)
ch1in = Left <1500> Right
ch2in = Forward <1500> Backward
ch3in = Down <1450> Up
ch4in = Rotate CCW <1500> Rotate CW
ch6in = Gimbal Angle 1000=Cam Angle 0 Deg / 1520=Cam Angle 90 Deg

so
if ch1in is less than 1500, (<1500) you are commanding it to go Left
if ch2in is less than 1500, (<1500) you are commanding it to go Forward
if ch3in is less than 1450, (<1450) you are commanding it to go Down
(GoPro camera view)

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Here is the zip. Not sure if that's what you wanted.

Thanks
Ryan G

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Thanks Steve.. I will try and give that a look. I appreciate it.

Ryan G

Is this what I am looking to download?
http://planner.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-install-mission-planner/

SteveMyers75 · Jul 9, 2015

Yep. That's it.

And what you described is exactly what I saw before the 1.05 update...

Edit: It looks like the 2nd tlog is the flight. (solo1.tlog, was solo.tlog.1 before rename)

My take is:
At 40% in, it armed with 8 SATs and DOP of 1.91
At about 70% into the flight, your SAT count was at 6 and the DOP was at 6.8
At 85%, it went to 11 SATs and DOP of 1.77
At 95% in, it looks like it made a correction, then you landed it.

Bottom line is: Update to 1.05 and you should not see this happen again.

Earldgrayjr · Jul 9, 2015

RyanG said:
Here ya go. How do you read the Log file? I would love to know what happened.

Thanks
Ryan G

I am no expert. I just learned the other day, thanks to people here. Download and install Mission Planner for Windows.

http://3drobotics.com/download_software/

Unzip your log files, and double click on (or otherwise open) one of the tlog files (there is one for each flight). You may need to rename the extenstion on some. You can "play" them back and look at the data on a map, gauges, etc. with the errors and notifications superimposed on the instruments.

Hope this helps

Earl

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Interesting.. Thanks for looking through the logs Steve. I updated successfully tonight. I will be taking it out again tomorrow to do some flying and well, I will be a little more cautious that is for sure and no flying under ANY trees that is for sure.

Ryan G

Earldgrayjr · Jul 9, 2015

SteveMyers75 said:
Also, this would be a good time to learn how to use those logs in Mission Planner.
It's real easy to learn:

Unzip and save your logs someplace you know
For some unknown reason, it saves them as solo.tlog, solo.tlog.1, solo.tlog.2 but you need to rename all of them to end in ".tlog" (as in solo.tlog, solo1.tlog, solo2.tlog) - these are the last three flights)

Run Mission Planner
Select the Telemetry Logs tab
Select Load Log and load a log (the latest one is the one named solo.tlog)

After that you can zoom in on the Right side and use the slider/pause to see the flight.
The 1/10x,1/4x,1/2x ... buttons will slow/speed up the replay.

The Status Tab will show you what was going on with the Controller at the time.

From what I've been able to figure out on my own:

Solo is facing away from you (Camera View is forward)
ch1in = Left <1500> Right
ch2in = Forward <1500> Backward
ch3in = Down <1450> Up
ch4in = Rotate CCW <1500> Rotate CW
ch6in = Gimbal Angle 1000=Cam Angle 0 Deg / 1520=Cam Angle 90 Deg

so
if ch2in is less than 1500, (<1500) you are commanding it to go Forward
if ch3in is less than 1450, (<1450) you are commanding it to go Down
(GoPro camera view)

Great info. I wish they had a set of stick animations. That would be AWESOME!!

Adimuzio513 · Jul 9, 2015

Uh oh same type thing but nearly right above my home point and I've updated and had very little trouble with mine since I bought it mid June. At least thirty flights fine then today started moving erratically so tried pause as I held it away from the trees it wanted to trim and nothing then finally managed to take it down fast but was only from a few feet. After a few trying to get it stabil to land it did flash gps lost but seemed to be jumping from gps to manual and back so I dropped it down. Wasn't very fast but did say crash detected landed on all 4s then tilted back the oposite way it landed. Took a few seconds to power down but after a little work and recalibration seems ok again. Scary that after update and great record so far it lost gps less than 15 feet above home finally landed and flipped a couple feet from where I took off. I had the left veer the first days twice but perfect sense. No trees above clear view of sky I'm waiting to see what 3dr says even though I didn't really break anything. Gota go to sleep but I'll figure out mp and post logs tomorrow after work.

SteveMyers75 · Jul 9, 2015

Earldgrayjr said:
Great info. I wish they had a set of stick animations. That would be AWESOME!!

That would be a nice addition, as would be playback controls while viewing the Status tab.

It's Open Source, who's up for some nice mods to the source code?

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

I guess I need to see these logs to even understand what you guys are talking about.

Thanks again
Ryan G

SteveMyers75 · Jul 9, 2015

Come on Ryan, try some of this Mission Planner... it's fun... all of your friends are doing it....

(How's that for some peer pressure!)

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Hahaha.. I will.. tomorrow. I had to reformat the PC today and still going through all my Lightroom and Photoshop catalogs and files.. Upgrading, etc.. UGH.. I am going to fly with the new firmware too.

Thanks again
Ryan G

Earldgrayjr · Jul 9, 2015

Adimuzio513 said:
Uh oh same type thing but nearly right above my home point and I've updated and had very little trouble with mine since I bought it mid June. At least thirty flights fine then today started moving erratically so tried pause as I held it away from the trees it wanted to trim and nothing then finally managed to take it down fast but was only from a few feet. After a few trying to get it stabil to land it did flash gps lost but seemed to be jumping from gps to manual and back so I dropped it down. Wasn't very fast but did say crash detected landed on all 4s then tilted back the oposite way it landed. Took a few seconds to power down but after a little work and recalibration seems ok again. Scary that after update and great record so far it lost gps less than 15 feet above home finally landed and flipped a couple feet from where I took off. I had the left veer the first days twice but perfect sense. No trees above clear view of sky I'm waiting to see what 3dr says even though I didn't really break anything. Gota go to sleep but I'll figure out mp and post logs tomorrow after work.

Look at my "finally" thread. I would be curious to know if your unit went spontaneously into altitude hold (ALT HOLD) as well as how many sats you had when it did and your hdop.

RyanG · Jul 9, 2015

Perhaps Steve can tell us. Steve (no pressure here buddy)

Ryan G

Adimuzio513 · Jul 9, 2015

I know I had 12 or 13 and stayed below mid 50s all flight but when gps dropped I did see a red 9 for satellites as things were going crazy. I'll try to post my logs and gopro footage after work tho it wasn't a bad landing/crash but isn't fun to watch or hear the motors for the seconds they were on.