Question about RTH

[Don H.]

Hello all,

I'm curious if any of you have seen this. I was flying yesterday over my neighborhood. It was flying great and after about 10 mins I decided to land. I was still indicating about 40 percent on the battery. As I was bringing it down it automatically went into RTH from about 6 feet up. I'm pretty sure I hit pause due to I wanted to bring it down in manual mode. I could not stop it from RTH. I tried pause again and the "A" button since it is set up as stabilize. I could not get it to stop the RTH.
I don't know why it went in that mode.
I do live in a wifi intense neighborhood. I'm wondering if all of the wifi in the hood will cause it to lose connection and initiate the RTH? I didn't get any error messages on the controller that I could see.

It ended up trying to land on the curb fell over upside down on the spinning props.
No crash errors, nothing.

Has anyone had this happen?

Don.

 

[aidanlou]

I can't be sure I had the same problem but there are a few reasons Solo will go into RTH.

1: Loss of signal, which is indicated by some bleep blooping of the controller and flashing alternating reds on the arm LEDs. This can happen in wifi-dense areas but has happened a lot less since the updates. When this happens, I try to move my controller around to see if that helps otherwise I just wait for it to get closer and hope I'll get control back (at which point I hit FLY while I figure stuff out.

2: Battery failsafe: This is usually indicated on the controller. I wanna say it happens around 5 or 10% but don't quote me on that. When it goes into battery failsafe mode and returns to home, you can take control of it using the FLY button or going into FLY: MANUAL if you have that set somewhere.

There may be other reasons but these are the big two in my experience. Sounds like it wants to do RTH for one of those reasons or maybe you hit the RTH button by accident? Hard to say without more info (logs, etc).

 

[Don H.]

Thanks for that. I too was second guessing if I accidentally pressed the button. In any case, it should have stopped when I hit pause and and allow me to go back to stabilize. I believe the battery was around 40 percent.
I had the similar scenario when the battery got to 9 percent. It went into RTH and I was abt 4 inches above the table attempting to land while in stabilize. I kind of wish it wouldn't go into RTH when in a manual flight mode.

It appears to be number 1, loss of signal.


I just checked the 3dr website and read that if the LEDs are flashing red on all four, it's a loss of signal from the controller.

It's kind of hard to believe that happens appx 8 feet up and 8 feet horizontally.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Even with a lot of nearby WiFi, losing connection 8 feet away shouldn't be happening. Has it been able to reconnect since then?

 

[Jubalr]

Thanks for that. I too was second guessing if I accidentally pressed the button. In any case, it should have stopped when I hit pause and and allow me to go back to stabilize. I believe the battery was around 40 percent.
I had the similar scenario when the battery got to 9 percent. It went into RTH and I was abt 4 inches above the table attempting to land while in stabilize. I kind of wish it wouldn't go into RTH when in a manual flight mode.

It appears to be number 1, loss of signal.


I just checked the 3dr website and read that if the LEDs are flashing red on all four, it's a loss of signal from the controller.

It's kind of hard to believe that happens appx 8 feet up and 8 feet horizontally.

Hi Don, Best answered by looking at the log. Do you have access to a PC you could run Mission Planner on? If not, post the log here and we can take a look at it for you.

 

[Don H.]

Even with a lot of nearby WiFi, losing connection 8 feet away shouldn't be happening. Has it been able to reconnect since then?

I checked it this morning and it does connect. It's only 3 feet apart but it does connect.

I opened a support ticket and uploaded the logs.

Hopefully 3dr will be able to tell me what happened.

 

[Don H.]

Hi Don, Best answered by looking at the log. Do you have access to a PC you could run Mission Planner on? If not, post the log here and we can take a look at it for you.

I'll try to download the files later today. I have an old netbook around here with a very old version of MP loaded on it. It should auto update.

Don.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

You won't be able to download the logs with MP like you could with a traditional pixhawk / APM. You'll need to use WinSCP to connect and file transfer the BIN files to your PC. Then use MP as you normally would once you have the file. There are instructions online but I don't have the link handy at work.

Later today, hit up 3DR via chat on the website to speed up response to the ticket.

 

[pyrate]

My memory could be failing as I have been in DIY mode for the past month or so but could have swore I got solo logs with MP


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jubalr]

My memory could be failing as I have been in DIY mode for the past month or so but could have swore I got solo logs with MP


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You probably did. I was never that patient. They can take a very long time to DL through MP.

 

[pyrate]

that I did remember, the udp connection was very slow
so the other method would be better

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I've tried numerous times to download logs from Solo with MP. It was unreasonably slow. I looked into why and it became painfully apparent. Mission Planner connecting via WiFi to solo suffers 80-95% packet loss. You'll never get anything uploaded or downloaded in a timely manner with that kind of connection quality. I have no idea why, and I've never seen a solution addressed. I'm guessing there is no good solution since even 3DR doesn't bother trying or fixing it.

Connecting with WinSCP and doing the file transfer that way takes only a minute. Especially if you save the connection parameters and password. As annoying as it is use two different tools for what should be one, there doesn't seem to be an alternative.

 

[PdxSteve]

Well, when you're pulling directly from pixhawk via MP you're limited by pixhawks 115k baud serial port. 1990s speeds. When you use winscp or another ssh app its pulling straight from the sd card on solo so it's a lot faster.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

I tried lowering the speed as low as 9600. I don't know if that even applies for UDP connections. But it didn't change anything. Still had 80-95% packet loss and a link quality of something stupid like 4%. It wasn't just slow. It was nearly complete packet loss.

 

[PdxSteve]

It goes from pixhawk -> solo -> mp. It's internal. Adjusting it through MP only changes the connection to Solo, not between PH and Solos computer inside. That's why they started putting the flashdata logs in their own dir on the controller and solo so it bypasses that internal bottleneck.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

So it's probably that jumping from PH to Solo to Controller to Latop that's causing the packet loss? Sounds like a problem that is what it is and the WinSCP method is the way to go, unlikely to change.

 

[PdxSteve]

Even with no packet loss it would be slow. The limiting speed is the pixhawk serial port at 115k baud. Remember 56k modems? This is basically 2x as fast, which is quite slow in todays standards. Perfectly fine for realtime data to sensors/pixhawk, not very fast for transferring a 5MB or 10MB file.

 

[Pedals2Paddles]

Many many log downloads from my Pixhawk and APM birds over the years conditioned me for that. So those speeds wouldn't have bothered or surprised me. I would have accepted it as the norm. But the packet loss makes it more like sending the data by postal mail one bit at a time. I'm not sure it would ever actually finish and produce an intact file that wasn't corrupt with that kind of loss.

 

[fpvsteve]

You can retrieve the data flash logs by logging on into Solo with eg WinSCP, go to the /logs/dataflash directory, and drag&drop the log to Yor PC drive. A matter of seconds to transfer.

Then open the file in MP (dataflash tab) for analysis.
Look at any error events (red labeled), the GPS sat and HDOP values at the point of RTH in the results window.

You may also check vibration levels -> see Arducopter documentation. Heavy vibrations can also cause a reset of the GPS.

 

[Don H.]

I was able to collect the log files from my Nexus 7. The bummer is Gmail limits email size to 25mb.
I'll try and upload the zip file here.
I've been trying to send the files via the app but 3dr says they aren't making it.
I can only load 10mb files here so it doesn't look good.