Solo flew away and Crashed

Nik

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I was at Sugar House Park in Utah flying at about 200 ft high and I was doing an orbit shot. My solo lost control and it was returning home. Once the signal recovered, I tried getting back up to continue my orbit shot. Solo started flying on its own almost crashing into the power lines, but narrowly missed. Solo didn't respond to the controller and stared flying violently and ended up crashing into some trees and landed on its back. All the props broke, gimball is definitely broken(glitches with a loud noise) and GoPro 4 balck wont turn back on. While trying to turn off the drone manually one of the broken props cut my hand really badly.

I bought my drone from best-buy on 25th of October. I have contacted 3DR and submitted log files. Have any one of you had a similar experience as I did? Is it a common problem to fly away and not respond to controller. How did 3DR handle the issue?
 

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Nik- sorry about your crash AND your hand! Hope it heals ok.

That's not a common problem.

3DR will look at the logs and if they determine the crash was caused by Solo and not pilot error of any kind, they will replace Solo and your camera.
 
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Post your logs here if you want some quick analysis. some people here are very good at determining causes.
 
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Nik- sorry about your crash AND your hand! Hope it heals ok.

That's not a common problem.

3DR will look at the logs and if they determine the crash was caused by Solo and not pilot error of any kind, they will replace Solo and your camera.

Here is a picture of my hand two days before the accident. You can match them by my scars from the past.
 

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I was at Sugar House Park in Utah flying at about 200 ft high and I was doing an orbit shot. My solo lost control and it was returning home. Once the signal recovered, I tried getting back up to continue my orbit shot. Solo started flying on its own almost crashing into the power lines, but narrowly missed. Solo didn't respond to the controller and stared flying violently and ended up crashing into some trees and landed on its back. All the props broke, gimball is definitely broken(glitches with a loud noise) and GoPro 4 balck wont turn back on. While trying to turn off the drone manually one of the broken props cut my hand really badly.

I bought my drone from best-buy on 25th of October. I have contacted 3DR and submitted log files. Have any one of you had a similar experience as I did? Is it a common problem to fly away and not respond to controller. How did 3DR handle the issue?
So long as 3DR still exists they should take care of you on this. It may take some time, but they have in the past taken care of such things.
 
I do not know how to retrieve the logs. How do I do it?
Plenty of information if you use the search function. Start reading past posts the more you know about the Solo the better things are going to go.
 
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I was at Sugar House Park in Utah flying at about 200 ft high and I was doing an orbit shot. My solo lost control and it was returning home. Once the signal recovered, I tried getting back up to continue my orbit shot. Solo started flying on its own almost crashing into the power lines, but narrowly missed. Solo didn't respond to the controller and stared flying violently and ended up crashing into some trees and landed on its back. All the props broke, gimball is definitely broken(glitches with a loud noise) and GoPro 4 balck wont turn back on. While trying to turn off the drone manually one of the broken props cut my hand really badly.

I bought my drone from best-buy on 25th of October. I have contacted 3DR and submitted log files. Have any one of you had a similar experience as I did? Is it a common problem to fly away and not respond to controller. How did 3DR handle the issue?

I had something similar happen to me a while back. Here is the video to show you what happened.
I was flying at my work picnic and all of a sudden SOLO dips forward and takes off really quickly. i had no control. i hit fly and i had no response, The controller did not say Manual ever during this entire event.
It was windy this day but not bad. i had been flying for about 30 minutes before this happened so im sure the wind wasnt too much for SOLO. Either way as you can see in the video it dips and takes off, SOLO is twisting and turning so much the gimbal can't stay level. then all of a sudden i hear. "RETURN HOME" and then i see SOLO flying up as it gets ready to Return Home. Needless to say i was happy that it was returning but i still have no idea why this happened. 3DR said it was a GPS loss but i had no manual control either so im not really sure what happened that day.

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I had something similar happen to me a while back. Here is the video to show you what happened.
I was flying at my work picnic and all of a sudden SOLO dips forward and takes off really quickly. i had no control. i hit fly and i had no response, The controller did not say Manual ever during this entire event.
It was windy this day but not bad. i had been flying for about 30 minutes before this happened so im sure the wind wasnt too much for SOLO. Either way as you can see in the video it dips and takes off, SOLO is twisting and turning so much the gimbal can't stay level. then all of a sudden i hear. "RETURN HOME" and then i see SOLO flying up as it gets ready to Return Home. Needless to say i was happy that it was returning but i still have no idea why this happened. 3DR said it was a GPS loss but i had no manual control either so im not really sure what happened that day.

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Might've been cloud cover, or just be interference from flying in such a congested area. You were damned fortunate Solo didn't have a serious, earth-bound malfunction at warp speed.
 
Mike, what did the logs say? Did you send your logs in to 3DR?

It looks like it switched to one of the manual modes and once it got out of range, it returned back home automatically.

Sticky buttons?
 
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Not familiar with the signal for Solo. But in RC, my Spektrum DX18 Transmitter and Receiver in the plane/heli will use multiple 2.4 channels and constantly switch if it detects interference. With all the Wi-Fi devices around and other things on 2.4Ghz I would be surprised if our signal is not compromised at times.

My Solo started to fly off like that today at an open field. But there is interference in the area. We fly RC there and it occasionally shows up. Anyway it flew away for a few seconds and then hit RTH just like this video.

My theory is that the Solo picks up interference and you lose signal. The Solo thinks it is still getting signal due to the interference and continues to fly what it thinks is being sent until it flies out of the interference and then switches to RTH once signal is lost.

GPS shouldn't effect this since you are flying in manual mode. That's why I think it is 2.4 signal interference.
 
I like Dadawada's theory better. Either way, I'm glad no harm was done. You were lucky.
 
I had something similar happen to me a while back. Here is the video to show you what happened.
I was flying at my work picnic and all of a sudden SOLO dips forward and takes off really quickly. i had no control. i hit fly and i had no response, The controller did not say Manual ever during this entire event.
It was windy this day but not bad. i had been flying for about 30 minutes before this happened so im sure the wind wasnt too much for SOLO. Either way as you can see in the video it dips and takes off, SOLO is twisting and turning so much the gimbal can't stay level. then all of a sudden i hear. "RETURN HOME" and then i see SOLO flying up as it gets ready to Return Home. Needless to say i was happy that it was returning but i still have no idea why this happened. 3DR said it was a GPS loss but i had no manual control either so im not really sure what happened that day.

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Wow-lucky! Just curious but did you try the PAUSE (||) button?
 
None of that is what it does. It's just WiFi establishing a data link between the controller and the solo. Either the data link is up and stable, or it's disconnected. There is no assumptions, coasting, frequency hopping, etc.

What I see in that video is certainly not supposed to happen under any normal circumstances. When GPS is lost or the controller signal is lost, there are no circumstances where the designed response is "fly away at flanking speed." When GPS is lost, it switches to manual and responds to the controllers inputs as normal. When the controller signal is lost, it will return to home. If the controller signal and GPS are both lost, it will land gently on whatever happens to be below it while drifting with the wind/momentum. That is what is supposed to happen.

What I see happening in this video is the solo flying away at maximum tilt angle in a random direction, and the controller still connected but unresponsive. This is what we have seen happen with an EKF Error. This error occurs when the IMUs, compass, and GPS exceed a threshold of agreement. In normal, proper conditions, the IMU will sense movement in a direction that jives with what both the compass and GPS are telling it. If one or more of those sensors starting reporting erroneous data that disagrees with the others, the EKF system in the pixhawk will fail it.

On the Solo, every time this has happened (very few), it has done exactly what yours did. The controls become unresponsive and the solo takes off in a random direction trying to compensate for something that isn't happening. And when it gets out of range of the controller, or the battery gets too low, the failsafe seems to kick it in the head bring it back to reality. Not everyone was lucky enough to have that happen, where it crashed before a failsafe kicked it back to life.

More than likely it was the a GPS position disagreement that triggered it since that's what 3DR said went wrong. But they of course neglected to mention anything else I just said.
 
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I was at Sugar House Park in Utah flying at about 200 ft high and I was doing an orbit shot. My solo lost control and it was returning home. Once the signal recovered, I tried getting back up to continue my orbit shot. Solo started flying on its own almost crashing into the power lines, but narrowly missed. Solo didn't respond to the controller and stared flying violently and ended up crashing into some trees and landed on its back. All the props broke, gimball is definitely broken(glitches with a loud noise) and GoPro 4 balck wont turn back on. While trying to turn off the drone manually one of the broken props cut my hand really badly.

I bought my drone from best-buy on 25th of October. I have contacted 3DR and submitted log files. Have any one of you had a similar experience as I did? Is it a common problem to fly away and not respond to controller. How did 3DR handle the issue?

I had a very similar experience. My Solo was flying a MPCC when it suddenly went full speed off in a random direction. I repeatedly pushed the pause button and then tried to use the control sticks but Solo was completely unresponsive. Mine also crashed through trees and ended up crashing upside down, breaking the gimbal and 2 motors. It came dangerously close to hitting a person on its way to the ground. I sent the Solo to 3DR to evaluate it and retrieve the logs. They said the logs revealed that it lost GPS, which they don't consider to be a failure. They said that I should have been able to recover and land it manually in spite of my description to them of the complete loss of control and unresponsiveness to flight control input. They wouldn't take care of me and refused to cover the damage. I did have them replace the 2 broken motors and gimbal but it cost me $350 plus shipping. I have not flown it since it was returned to me so I don't know if they fixed the issues or not. I'm actually afraid to fly it anywhere near people or property so I'm waiting for a chance to get way out in the open in case it does the same thing again.
 
Many experienced operators recommend you program the A or B button for manual control. If the quad drops GPS but doesn't automatically shift to manual mode it can (and often does) take off in the direction it thinks is where it supposed to be. Switching to manual mode will often save the day. Hitting Fly or pause won't help if GPS lock was lost.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
sigh, my very complex flying machine did something I don't understand.
It could no way be my fault.
 
3DR told me that my Solo had switched to manual mode at the time it went off course and was in fly manual before it crashed. In spite of this it was completely unresponsive. Manual stick input had no effect on it whatsoever as it flew full speed to its death
 

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