suddenly went into Fly:Manual, then LAND!!!

[5r49cfu]

Flying the Solo today. This is unbelievable...

it was close to the edge of the radio range (~700m), all of a sudden the controller said "Fly:Manual"....then almost immediately it said "LAND"!!!!!

Then the controller lost Solo, and the iPhone display froze with the last freeze frame of the video feed.

I waited a minute or two thinking it might RTH, but no sign of it.

Hopped in the car, drove to where I thought it would be.

Somehow reconnected to Solo, video feed showed blades of grass (in the proper orientation, not flipped!)

I swiped the screen to see the map, saw a GPS location....it showed close by!!!

I got out on foot, using the map to see the Solo and my position....FOUND IT!!

It was amazing, it somehow missed a bunch of trees and landed on a small grassy patch.


Looking at the Gopro footage, a couple things...

1--At the point I lost connection to Solo, the GoPro video shows it tilt forward pretty massively, and it started beeping like crazy.

2--After the beeping and disconnection from the controller (remember, it said "Fly:Manual....LAND"), Solo kept going forward, but descending.

3--It was moving right towards a bunch of trees...but it jogged left, then right. it went around the trees!!!

The only issue was that it clipped on tiny stick with one of the props, didn't interfere with the flight at all. It landed on a perfect spot.

NOTE 1: when I found it, the Solo battery light was still on, and with plenty of bars. I was connected via the controller. However, the GoPro had solid red LED indicator and had stopped recording (it got to about 10 minutes). The video shown on the iPhone may have been frozen, I didn't pay attention when I picked it up. the card had plenty of memory left. I had to pull the GoPro battery, then it said "repairing file" after I rebooted the GoPro.

NOTE 2: you'll see from my other posts that I had a SPOT Trace on top of the battery (it is a satellite based tracking system). The only thing I can think is that the SPOT started transmitting and messed with Solo.

Any ideas????

 

[Stimmy]

"GoPro video shows it tilt forward pretty massively, and it started beeping like crazy."

You activated a failsafe by going under 14 volts. It should activate rth at this point but possibly due to the massive pitch forward had lost gps accuracy and reverted to land.

Was there a headwind?

 

[Maddog]

Wow!!

 

[5r49cfu]

"GoPro video shows it tilt forward pretty massively, and it started beeping like crazy."

You activated a failsafe by going under 14 volts. It should activate rth at this point but possibly due to the massive pitch forward had lost gps accuracy and reverted to land.

Was there a headwind?

wow is right.

wind wasn't too bad.

EDIT:

Possible Causes:

1) RF interference from SPOT Trace?

2) Bad battery (see post from Raston Warrior)

What would be the reason for the flight to continue forward while descending to auto land???

 

[Stimmy]

Could you post logs of the flight? Or the video? The loss of gps is the reason it was moving forward, it will drift with the wind in "fly manual" .

 

[Jubalr]

Sounds like it lost signal with the controller and also lost GPS lock. In those situations it is programmed to land. Without GPS it has to go into manual mode. As it was landing it will drift with any wind as it lands since there is no GPS to maintain position. The constant beeping you heard could have been the alert Solo will give when GPS has become disconnected. Check you connections carefully. Even if the GPS appears to be plugged in, check that there is not a wire pulling out of the connector.

 

[5r49cfu]

Stimmy and Jubair--that makes a lot of sense, it was drifting with the wind.

The wind would have wrapped around the bank of trees (it can't go through it).

looks like I got really really lucky!

If Solo loses GPS and connection to the controller, does it automatically land?

 

[Jubalr]

Stimmy and Jubair--that makes a lot of sense, it was drifting with the wind.

The wind would have wrapped around the bank of trees (it can't go through it).

looks like I got really really lucky!

If Solo loses GPS and connection to the controller, does it automatically land?

Yes, as stated above that is all it can do. Loss of controller AND GPS= Land. Loss of controller only= RTH. Loss of GPS only=Manual Mode.
Fly Safe..
Jubal

 

[SPP]

SPOT is a transmitter, I read it transmit on 1.610 to 1.620 GHz, which is near what the GPS sats are transmitting, which L1 civilian is 1.575 GHz.

I think it can surely effect GPS lock on the Solo or perhaps even interupt wifi 2.4 ghz for solo-link if Solo is far away from you, if SPOT is placed on the Solo battery's top.

U can always track back when was/were the SPOT transmission/s you received and the time your Solo went banana. I never download Solo telemetry log yet, but you can do that and if there is a GPS based clock which is atomic clock, I am sure SPOT uses the same accurate clock and you can start your own detective work . What I do not know is, SPOT to its sattelites and then to you, does it show tranmission clock/time from SPOT to satellite or the time/clock the server transmit the email/data to you ? What logging interval did you set your SPOT to ?

If you want to use the video/camera clock for the detective work, do not reset your camera or remove its battery. Go to NIST atomic clock website and take photo of the clock, read photo EXIF data to see time difference between your camera and actual NIST clock.

I would not dare to place something with transmitter on a Solo while it is flying.
Even GoPro's wifi if turned ON , is known to have some negative effect to the Solo.

Anyway good to hear you get back your Solo.

 

[5r49cfu]

SPP, thanks for that info.

I just re-checked the SPOT Trace points.

Here is something very strange, when I checked SPOT Trace app just after the crash, there was a waypoint at the landing spot.

I go back one day later, and a new waypoint a couple minutes earlier shows up RIGHT BEFORE where Solo went haywire!

Perhaps SPOT Trace took the GPS waypoint, then it starts transmitting. Maybe SPOT Trace will buffer a waypoint if it is not transmitted properly, and therefore it uploaded it some time later.

SO, it looks like SPOT Trace may have been the culprit that caused Solo to lose GPS and controller signal...for just long enough to initiate LAND.

I don't think I'll be flying with SPOT Trace again anytime soon...