Solo Fly Away Lost GPS on Perfectly clear day...How to find it?

Davideo · Feb 18, 2017

I'm at a State Park and got permission to fly on a beach area with no-one around. My first flight was fine, no problem. My second flight, "Lost GPS, fly manually". The solo shot up into the air above the level set in the limits and flew downwind lickedy split. My manual control to fly back to me was ignored and the drone went veering towards a heavily wooded and brambled area. No signal from the camera, but the drone was still connected by wi-fi. How to find it? I turned off the controller and turned it on and got a GPS lock. So somewhere the GPS data is in the controller. I submitted a ticket to 3DR and am waiting.

The day was perfectly beautiful for Ohio in the middle of February, 70 degrees, no clouds, no large metal structures or buildings. I leave tomorrow and hope that I get GPS coordinates before I have to go. The altitude says that it is somewhere 7 feet off of the ground.

andrew.baker.142 · Feb 18, 2017

I don't use the 3DR app much, but I believe if you swipe in from the right of the screen you will get the map view.

BTW, the 7 feet isn't above the ground, it is above the take off point.

Good luck!

pyrate · Feb 18, 2017

nothing you are describing makes sense
loosing GPS would not cause it to fly up, it would drift in the wind and respond to controls
shooting upward is a RTH behavior that could not happen if you don't have GPS
Submit a trouble ticket via the app, and post the logs here

Davideo · Feb 19, 2017

Swiping the app on the screen, got me close to the location. I went back at night, the battery was still on and saw the Lights, we bushwhacked about 200 yards and found it. It had cut through the briars ending upside down entwined. The props are sheared off, camera working but it had turned off on impact and the GoPro file is corrupted and won't play. Waiting on the report from 3dr I sent in a ticket. I will post the logs when I get them.

Davideo · Feb 19, 2017

andrew.baker.142 said:
I don't use the 3DR app much, but I believe if you swipe in from the right of the screen you will get the map view.

BTW, the 7 feet isn't above the ground, it is above the take off point.

Good luck!

Thanks, swiping the screen got us close. Went back at dark, saw the lights and found it. The GoPro camera fixed the file. The camera stopped mid-flight just after the drone shot up in altitude. I've never had the camera stop recording. It's a Hero3 and would not be able to start stop from the app. Maybe it was some sort of power glitch.

andrew.baker.142 · Feb 19, 2017

Davideo said:
Thanks, swiping the screen got us close. Went back at dark, saw the lights and found it. The GoPro camera fixed the file. The camera stopped mid-flight just after the drone shot up in altitude. I've never had the camera stop recording. It's a Hero3 and would not be able to start stop from the app. Maybe it was some sort of power glitch.

The GoPro probably stopped recording when it crashed. Since the camera never marked the end of the file it looked corrupted to your playback software. Reason the file ended with the Solo in the air is it takes a finite amount of time to buffer and write to the memory card. When the Solo crashed whatever was in the buffer was lost. The size of the buffer depends on the recording resolution and speed of your memory card. Could be several seconds long.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

miranda · Feb 25, 2017

Almost similar experience with me. I lost Solo due to the GPS lost on Feb.20. Just after I saw the GPS signal lost message in controller during the flight, I tried to control manually and return it back to me. But Solo flied with wind blow and disappeared in the woods in the mountain. And I found that I have only controller and smartphone in my hands.

Davideo · Feb 25, 2017

pyrate said:
nothing you are describing makes sense
loosing GPS would not cause it to fly up, it would drift in the wind and respond to controls
shooting upward is a RTH behavior that could not happen if you don't have GPS
Submit a trouble ticket via the app, and post the logs here

I have not heard back from my ticket with 3DR. I have downloaded the logs from the controller and solo. I've just installed Mission Planner on my PC and am trying to follow instructions about renaming the log files and getting them into MP. Right now it looks like a lot of stuff, but I really can't tell what is there yet.

Davideo · Feb 25, 2017

miranda said:
Almost similar experience with me. I lost Solo due to the GPS lost on Feb.20. Just after I saw the GPS signal lost message in controller during the flight, I tried to control manually and return it back to me. But Solo flied with wind blow and disappeared in the woods in the mountain. And I found that I have only controller and smartphone in my hands.

Submit a ticket to 3dr, you can do that from within the app.

miranda · Feb 25, 2017

Davideo said:
Submit a ticket to 3dr, you can do that from within the app.

Yes, I already sent the log files in controller to service center the day I lost it. Thank you.

Davideo · Feb 25, 2017

miranda said:
Yes, I already sent the log files in controller to service center the day I lost it. Thank you.

Did you have any luck looking for it?

nvpowerdoc · Feb 26, 2017

Just Google GoPro Corrupt File or GoPro Video Won't Play. There are a dozen or more web tips on how to get your video back.

The easiest is just upload the (corrupt) File to YouTube. It's free and takes little time to accomplish.

Davideo · Feb 26, 2017

nvpowerdoc said:
Just Google GoPro Corrupt File or GoPro Video Won't Play. There are a dozen or more web tips on how to get your video back.

The easiest is just upload the (corrupt) File to YouTube. It's free and takes little time to accomplish.

I put the card back in the GoPro and it fixed the file. I lost some footage though, I have the part where Solo took off, but did not include the crash.

Davideo · Apr 8, 2017

pyrate said:
nothing you are describing makes sense
loosing GPS would not cause it to fly up, it would drift in the wind and respond to controls
shooting upward is a RTH behavior that could not happen if you don't have GPS
Submit a trouble ticket via the app, and post the logs here

I sent the logs to 3DR over a month ago and they responded by asking to send back the SOLO and Gimbal. I did that and they just sent me a refurb Solo and Gimbal. They did not say what had happened. I have the logs from the controller and SOLO.
Controller
Dropbox - controller

SOLO
Dropbox - solo

Any Idea what happened?

Armandito05 · Sep 16, 2018

pyrate said:
nothing you are describing makes sense
loosing GPS would not cause it to fly up, it would drift in the wind and respond to controls
shooting upward is a RTH behavior that could not happen if you don't have GPS
Submit a trouble ticket via the app, and post the logs here

MY 3DR SOLO MAKES EXACTLY WHAT HES DRONE MAKES ... I TAKE OFF THE SOLO AND WHEN I PRESS RETURN TO HOME BOTON IT SAYS GPS LOST ! AND MY SOLO FLYS AWAY FROM ME IN MANUAL MODE I HAVE TO FIGHT TO BRING HIM BACK ! WHAT CAN I DO ... MY EMAIL IS [email protected] IF ANYONE CAN HELP ME PLEASE WRITE TO MY EMAIL THANKS PEOPLE IM FROM PUERTO RICO...