Old batteries & my Credit Card…

Joined
Feb 16, 2018
Messages
15
Reaction score
8
Age
65
This morning I packed my Solo and went for a real estate photography job. Being in a hurry, instead of taking my first 2 best batteries, I picked the 1st best one and the 3rd best one – which never gave me any trouble if used above 45%.

Story cut short, I was flying at 40-50m high, 300m distance and 67% battery, when Solex App announced that one cell voltage went down to 3.46V. From that moment, the next 30-40 seconds became my worst nightmare. After a few seconds, the Solex Voice told me that my battery voltage dropped to 45%, a few seconds later 30%, 18% and, than something about “Total Battery Failure” and “There is nothing you can do, except looking for your Credit Card…” The real estate agent standing behind and listening to my tablet’s voice messages was stunned and watched my struggle to save my drone. Later, he mumbled something like “I have never thought a drone can be so mean, suggesting you should look for your Credit Card…”. I explained that Solo is not only the first “smart” drone, but also the only one with a sense of humour ?

Yes, I managed to bring my Solo down safely in a very short time, but fighting hard the controller & software. And this is what I want to ask you about. I believe most of you would agree that the fastest way to bring down a drone, in an emergency situation, is by controlling it manually, not by switching to RTL. In my case, I was surrounded by big tall trees and lots of telephone & power cables - RTL would have been a disaster. The control problem I encountered after the “Voice” suggested “I should look for my Credit Card” was that Solo automatically entered into RTL mode and all my attempts to press <Fly> or <A> = Fly Manual, were ignored.

I was lucky to discover that pushing continuously (a few times every second) with my thumb the <Fly> button I could control somehow the drone and bring it down. Twice I did not maintain the fast pushing and Solo went up RTL instantly. Even when it was on the ground, I had to keep on pushing the button & disarm with the left stick, because it wanted to go up RTL…

I do not know the best solution for this emergency landing dilemma, but not allowing the pilot to control the drone in an emergency landing is a bit strange. May be if the software could check if the altitude is decreasing continuously and the drone moves closer to the Launch Coordinates, could justify an allowance for the pilot to control Solo for an emergency landing, or may be, something better & smarter…

Thanks for your time, reading my story ?
 
I also had a similar issue with battery failure with my Solo.
I, however did not get the “credit card” message.
Although that’s funny as hell.
My situation was similar in the way that my battery drained in flight and the RTH function kicked in I was not aware of the way you controlled it but RTH was having it’s way with my bird.
I got it on the ground then it started to lift off again which I could not understand????
Story short all ended well and now I know how a battery acts when it is no longer supposed to b in service.
Fly safe
Fly high
Fly fast
Just fly Friend
God Bless All
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
13,093
Messages
147,741
Members
16,048
Latest member
ihatethatihavetomakeanacc