Another P3 dropped from the sky

[AsiaFlyer]

Yesterday whilst doing a job for a customer my P3 Adv dropped from the sky.

The battery was my newest with only 19 cycles, it had been broken in (10 flights to 50%), it was fully charged, I clicked the battery in nice and firm, temperature was about 28 degrees Celsius (100 degree Fahrenheit.) , all FW up to date and I had already run about 10 batteries with it in the last week or so with no problems, I calibrated compass before i took off as I was in a nice clear area with no metal around.

In the air for about 2 minutes, whilst hovering and adjusting my camera settings, looked up at it ready to back it up out over the sea and it dropped out the sky, only about 30 feet from me but I was on a cliff so the drop was about 80ft. It landed in dense undergrowth and the damage only appears to be to the shell.

Up until now I have always believed that P3’s and Inspires crashes were down to Pilot error/ poor maitenance/ taking off with a partially dis-charged battery, I even wrote as much on my website Phantom’s Falling From The Sky | Phantom Addicts

Analysed the flight logs from the app and Healthy Drones. No stick movement at the time it fell, no battery anomalies, battery was still showing 94% when it hit the ground.

It is now on it's way to my dealer in Bangkok for a new shell and anything else it needs.

Wish I knew what caused it, my confidence is now lost.

 

[Raanan]

Fabulous pictures on your site!!
Great photography

 

[Scozz76]

I'm starting to suspect poor PCB manufacturing/soldering on the battery circuit.

 

[jingthing]

Yesterday whilst doing a job for a customer my P3 Adv dropped from the sky.

The battery was my newest with only 15 cycles, it had been broken in (10 flights to 50%), it was fully charged, I clicked the battery in nice and firm, temperature was about 28 degrees, all FW up to date and I had already run about 10 batteries with it in the last week or so with no problems, I calibrated compass before i took off as I was in a nice clear area with no metal around.

In the air for about 2 minutes, whilst hovering and adjusting my camera settings, looked up at it ready to back it up out over the sea and it dropped out the sky, only about 30 feet from me but I was on a cliff so the drop was about 80ft. It landed in dense undergrowth and the damage only appears to be to the shell.

Up until now I have always believed that P3’s and Inspires crashes were down to Pilot error/ poor maitenance/ taking off with a partially dis-charged battery, I even wrote as much on my website Phantom’s Falling From The Sky | Phantom Addicts

Analysed the flight logs from the app and Healthy Drones. No stick movement at the time it fell, no battery anomalies, battery was still showing 94% when it hit the ground.

It is now on it's way to my dealer in Bangkok for a new shell and anything else it needs.

Wish I knew what caused it, my confidence is now lost.

May i ask which dealer in bkk? curios how helpful or farang friendly they are, my phantom was not acquired in thailand and from past experience i often find they are not interested in warranty repairs on any device not bought here, IBM- LENOVO world wide garrantee for instance.

BTW am based in bkk

 

[AsiaFlyer]

May i ask which dealer in bkk? curios how helpful or farang friendly they are, my phantom was not acquired in thailand and from past experience i often find they are not interested in warranty repairs on any device not bought here, IBM- LENOVO world wide garrantee for instance.

I have sent it to Hobby Thai who I got it from (via Lazada), they are changing the shell with no charge for labour which is good of them. I have dealt with lots of DJI dealers and have had excellent service from all of them, there are some very skilled technicians here in Thailand.

 

[Mako79]

Did you still get FPV or did it get a signal loss and frozen screen?
Did it fall straight down or spiral to compensate for a loss of motor?

Just trying to figure out if you forgot to do a battery 'slap'. Some batteries are known to have gaps when inserted. The vibration from the motors sometimes are enough stop the pins from authenticating the battery and invalidates it by shutting down.

 

[RoyVa]

Back to dropping out of the sky. Understanding electronics and the quads make up, that can normally only happen If their is a total power failure. Do your logs show any thing abnormal. We are hearing about this more often than should be. I am beginning to suspect the battery smart feature is shutting down for some reason or a full reboot of the quads main board which would render it inoperatable for the time it needs to restart, hence drop like a rock. Kind of like a PC or Laptop rebooting. Can be a firmware glitch somewhere causing this action. Just can't seem to get a fence around it.

 

[jingthing]

I have sent it to Hobby Thai who I got it from (via Lazada), they are changing the shell with no charge for labour which is good of them. I have dealt with lots of DJI dealers and have had excellent service from all of them, there are some very skilled technicians here in Thailand.

Thanks for the fast reply, truly sorry for your loss,
Hobby Thai is infact only a few minutes drive from my home, depending on traffic of course,
I have an intermittent imu esc error,
After out flying one day i did call in to hobby thai and showed them the problem, as they did,nt ask about date or place of purchase i assumed they anyway dont deal with dji warranty repairs unless purchased from them, They only said the way to fix it would most likely be a new main board also informing me it would be expensive and anyway not in stock, language is not an issue, but i decided not to question them further,

Guess i was dreaming of a place in bkk to get it fixed under warranty without the hassle of sending it to dji and not having it for what could be a very long time.

 

[AsiaFlyer]

Did you still get FPV or did it get a signal loss and frozen screen?
Did it fall straight down or spiral to compensate for a loss of motor?

Just trying to figure out if you forgot to do a battery 'slap'. Some batteries are known to have gaps when inserted. The vibration from the motors sometimes are enough stop the pins from authenticating the battery and invalidates it by shutting down.

It dropped straight down, logs from healthy drones show the battery being fine right up until it hit the ground

 

[AsiaFlyer]

Back to dropping out of the sky. Understanding electronics and the quads make up, that can normally only happen If their is a total power failure. Do your logs show any thing abnormal. We are hearing about this more often than should be. I am beginning to suspect the battery smart feature is shutting down for some reason or a full reboot of the quads main board which would render it inoperatable for the time it needs to restart, hence drop like a rock. Kind of like a PC or Laptop rebooting. Can be a firmware glitch somewhere causing this action. Just can't seem to get a fence around it.

All logs normal, small dip in voltage on one cell on take off, other than that the logs are all fine and recorded right up until it hit the ground.

 

[AsiaFlyer]

Thanks for the fast reply, truly sorry for your loss,
Hobby Thai is infact only a few minutes drive from my home, depending on traffic of course,
I have an intermittent imu esc error,
After out flying one day i did call in to hobby thai and showed them the problem, as they did,nt ask about date or place of purchase i assumed they anyway dont deal with dji warranty repairs unless purchased from them, They only said the way to fix it would most likely be a new main board also informing me it would be expensive and anyway not in stock, language is not an issue, but i decided not to question them further,

Guess i was dreaming of a place in bkk to get it fixed under warranty without the hassle of sending it to dji and not having it for what could be a very long time.

I contacted DJI support today to check if I could get it repaired under warranty in Thailand but they said I had to send it to Hong Kong.

There is a repair guy called tong who is a wizard at fixing things and is cheap and quick. He was the 1st guy to get a gopro to work on a Vision+, also makes his own retractable legs. This is his facebook: Security Check Required

 

[RudydG]

Another one "without" cause!!

I had exactly the same, 100% freshly charged battery, <2 minutes in the air, and suddenly everything dead.
Still not 100% sure about the cause (probably battery), but never got an warning on my iphone, still in the healtydrones logs i can see clearly voltage under 3v.

Now, the big problem is the los of confidence. I love to fligh long range..... at this moment i am even affraid to cross a road!!!
Hopefully these problems will be solved or at least correctly .4

Never had this BS with my P1 or P2!

 

[jingthing]

I contacted DJI support today to check if I could get it repaired under warranty in Thailand but they said I had to send it to Hong Kong.

There is a repair guy called tong who is a wizard at fixing things and is cheap and quick. He was the 1st guy to get a gopro to work on a Vision+, also makes his own retractable legs. This is his facebook: Security Check Required

I guessed warranty repairs were maybe out the question in thailand, strange thing is my phantom was purchased in hong kong but not by me personally, although i did fly back with it as hand luggage.

 

[dysan911]

Is it just me or does it seem like there's been more sudden drops from the sky since the v1.6.0040 firmware release which was supposed to specifically address issues with sudden battery shutdown?

 

[0DRK3RT]

When did you purchase your P3? Within the last 2 months?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[stujol]

Wow, it sounds like he did everything correctly. This is discouraging, It is like gambling every time you fly. I had to resolder the connector from the ODFM module to the camera, It was definitely cold solders on those pins. I started losing FPV intermittently (mostly soon after take off) and as soon as I started messing with that connector it came loose. Didn't even bend the pins.

 

[happydays]

What version of firmware are you using@AsiaFlyer?

 

[AsiaFlyer]

When did you purchase your P3? Within the last 2 months?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

May 2015, when they first came out

 

[AsiaFlyer]

What version of firmware are you using@AsiaFlyer?

The latest v1.6, already had used about 10 batteries over the last week or so, no problems

 

[AlexSP]

That sucks, hope it gets fixed and you back flying soon.

I guess there's no way to be sure if FW is the cause, but I agree there seems to have an increase in such cases since release of 1.6. Could be just a coincidence, it's also colder in northern hemisphere, some ACs are reaching 100s of hours in use, etc... There are many potential causes if we include HW and FW. Anyway I'm not updating yet, still running the FW version of about sept/2015 (1.4.10) that came with my P3P and 1.4.30 on the TX, both working flawlessly (so far) and with all the Intelligent Flying features on.

Have a feeling that DJI won't ever come forward to explain such things, or even disclose the percentage of cases. They might just come up with a newer update to fix whatever problem the previous had... or something. And on and on. There's a lot going on FW-wise with these aircrafts, I'll stick to what's working for me until something better - and proven - comes. It's not broken, so I have nothing to fix on it yet.