Increase in the number of crash threads recently?

[RockinRog]

I live up in Northern Ontario Canada, I bought a very expensive P3Pro from a seller on Amazon Canada (biggest fail of my life) and mine took 2 tumbles from the sky in less than a month. Presently it's sitting in Carson California awaiting the payment status to roll onto repairs at a costly bill of 600US bucks ouch.
The first tumble was up in a remote bush where it entered ATTI.. Banked hard right and tumbled into the bush.... My dog and I scoured the bush and found it wow. Broken camera ribbon cable.
Second crash out on my farm way above power lines (DJI notes I hit power line) it entered ATTI mode beforehand and completely went off in various directions while I tried in vain to take control. It was in eyesight and me and others watched as it revved up streaking and turning on its own doing its own thing then fell into a pile of white plastic parts.
Now yes I'm new of course, I've read up and used Internet to learn of course... I'm listening with big wide ears ready to find out anything else to either sell it off for fear of rebuilding it again.

I'm open to give out logs so I can help others out but I need help to properly get and post them... Let's do this!

 

[fly-catchers]

I have had a few crashes myself - lost two phantoms into the water (both total losses) and initially I thought they must be the aircraft's fault (after all, how could I be wrong, sure I'm the best pilot in the world, am I not?) but post incident analysis by others (and by me) usually revealed that the pilot was the real reason for the crash.

What did you find out that caused the crashes in the sea? I watched a lot of your flights and you look a very confident pilot.

 

[AstronomyShed]

I live up in Northern Ontario Canada, I bought a very expensive P3Pro from a seller on Amazon Canada (biggest fail of my life) and mine took 2 tumbles from the sky in less than a month. Presently it's sitting in Carson California awaiting the payment status to roll onto repairs at a costly bill of 600US bucks ouch.
The first tumble was up in a remote bush where it entered ATTI.. Banked hard right and tumbled into the bush.... My dog and I scoured the bush and found it wow. Broken camera ribbon cable.
Second crash out on my farm way above power lines (DJI notes I hit power line) it entered ATTI mode beforehand and completely went off in various directions while I tried in vain to take control. It was in eyesight and me and others watched as it revved up streaking and turning on its own doing its own thing then fell into a pile of white plastic parts.
Now yes I'm new of course, I've read up and used Internet to learn of course... I'm listening with big wide ears ready to find out anything else to either sell it off for fear of rebuilding it again.

I'm open to give out logs so I can help others out but I need help to properly get and post them... Let's do this!

That sounds just like my episode, Mine was in GPS mode with about 20 sats, was doing a POI and all on it's own it went into atti mode and tipped to 45 degrees and flew itself straight into the ground! The motors started screaming and it reported horizontal speed in excess of 95mph on it's trip to the ground. I took 3 months of fighting with DJI to get them to sort it out. I had 2 dealers on my side and eventually had to resort to doing a youtube vid and sending them the link! I have no respect whatsoever for DJI europe, the long chain of emails, contradictions and excuses was a joke. Eventually they realised the error of their ways and sent out a new P3 Pro to me.

 

[RockinRog]

That sounds just like my episode, Mine was in GPS mode with about 20 sats, was doing a POI and all on it's own it went into atti mode and tipped to 45 degrees and flew itself straight into the ground! The motors started screaming and it reported horizontal speed in excess of 95mph on it's trip to the ground. I took 3 months of fighting with DJI to get them to sort it out. I had 2 dealers on my side and eventually had to resort to doing a youtube vid and sending them the link! I have no respect whatsoever for DJI europe, the long chain of emails, contradictions and excuses was a joke. Eventually they realised the error of their ways and sent out a new P3 Pro to me.

Mine to reports speeds of 90 MPH. WOW.

 

[RockinRog]

That sounds just like my episode, Mine was in GPS mode with about 20 sats, was doing a POI and all on it's own it went into atti mode and tipped to 45 degrees and flew itself straight into the ground! The motors started screaming and it reported horizontal speed in excess of 95mph on it's trip to the ground. I took 3 months of fighting with DJI to get them to sort it out. I had 2 dealers on my side and eventually had to resort to doing a youtube vid and sending them the link! I have no respect whatsoever for DJI europe, the long chain of emails, contradictions and excuses was a joke. Eventually they realised the error of their ways and sent out a new P3 Pro to me.

Hey AstronomyShed, you received a new Quad so do tell have you flown it! Are you scared to fly like I'll be and if flown how many times geez cause I'm really frightened to release mine from the soil after watching what became of my last flight! It was in a nutshell an object of destruction flailing luckily at no one or their property as it became nothing short of something similar to a hockey puck whizzing through the sky to ground ROGER! Grin.

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

 

[Mocho]

No doubt in my mind there is a GPS issue with my P3P. I have only run it with the latest firmware.
I'll be flying in a wide open space with a clear sky with the normal 18-19 sats connected. Next thing you know it's showing 12 sats and I get a yellow warning telling me it's not safe to fly in GPS mode. A second or two later all my sats are back.
I'm guessing but I think the only reason I've not gone into ATI mode is because even after dropping 6 sats I still have enough sats to fly safely.
I want to send my bird back to DJI to fix that and a tilted horizon once the season is over. But I don't really trust them to fix it

 

[Kirby Johnson]

Which FW is causing the dropping out of the sky issues? I'm still on 1.8.80 and was thinking of upgrading, not sure whether I should now?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

If there is one thing Microskunk Windoze taught us over the years is that "New, Better, Critical update, must have," as concerns software generally is not true and in most cases these critically important updates were critical for them, not us. If I have something that is almost bug free and working just fine, it will be a cold day in you know where when I update/upgrade for alleged improvements. Fool me once,shame on you, fool me twice....

 

[gosports1]

I only see more crashes on the Forum, every time someone upgrades the firmware. I haven't up graded since January 2016 ? P P 3 ( Lucky so far )

 

[gosports1]

If there is one thing Microskunk Windoze taught us over the years is that "New, Better, Critical update, must have," as concerns software generally is not true and in most cases these critically important updates were critical for them, not us. If I have something that is almost bug free and working just fine, it will be a cold day in you know where when I update/upgrade for alleged improvements. Fool me once,shame on you, fool me twice....

Hope someone reads your reply. and mine-gosports1

 

[F6Rider]

I am on the latest firmware with 15 flights and no issues yet, full sat's and signal out to 10,000'.(DBS Mod's antenna system) I do however have an intermittent 'blip' in the video feed that is bugging me, which I didn't have before. Tried changing channels and locking it down but the blip is still there. No determinable pattern, just a random blip that lasts a fraction of a second and is gone, several times a flight. Not sure if the radio is switching channels or what, same flight test area I always use. I have always maintained the latest firmware (post 2 weeks) without issue up to this point.

 

[RockinRog]

Good to hear actually.. I'm still hesitant to throw mine up in the air or if when then not far up and away.. I'm uploading a glitch crash video of the first crash glitch to YouTube and posting shortly with a log off my second crash.. I don't have my quad so hopefully the text log is good enough from my dji app on my phone..

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

[WLS350Z]

A very large portion of the accidents are pilot error. It's an rc flying machine. It is gonna come down at some point. I have been flying many many years and every now and then you drop your guard ect and have a near miss. Now a ton of people are always around you when your flying asking questions, they seem to be under the impression it's so easy.

 

[WetDog]

Hope someone reads your reply. and mine-gosports1

You guys are missing the denominator. The enormous number of people who ARE ugrading and whose Phantom has NOT crashed. We never really know what that number is.

That said, I don't change firmware unless I have a reason to. My reasons, not DJI's.

 

[RockinRog]

You guys are missing the denominator. The enormous number of people who ARE ugrading and whose Phantom has NOT crashed. We never really know what that number is.

That said, I don't change firmware unless I have a reason to. My reasons, not DJI's.

I have to read up more, firmware update that is cause my craft wouldn't fly until I updated so was that not the update? My controller beeped and was also useless until I updated it one day as well.. How do I bypass...

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

[happydays]

What did you find out that caused the crashes in the sea? I watched a lot of your flights and you look a very confident pilot.

Well the first one was due to me hitting a castle and not checking the damage properly. Sort of, get her back up in the air before anyone notices - however it threw a prop. I could clearly see it flying away as the phantom tumbled into the water. I got the GoPro back, so the video is available.That was with a P1.

The second was with a V+ which crashed into a reservoir. Magnetic interference caused by two things; the surrounding granite is notorious for making whacky compass readings, but also the dam from where I was attempting to take off is full of rebar.

The early phantoms hadn't got such sophisticated apps and there was no warning like you would get now.

 

[AstronomyShed]

Hey AstronomyShed, you received a new Quad so do tell have you flown it! Are you scared to fly like I'll be and if flown how many times geez cause I'm really frightened to release mine from the soil after watching what became of my last flight! It was in a nutshell an object of destruction flailing luckily at no one or their property as it became nothing short of something similar to a hockey puck whizzing through the sky to ground ROGER! Grin.

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

Flown it for about 5 minutes in my garden, mainly just been doing updates and imu calibration etc as for any new phantom, but not had the weather here in the UK for a proper test yet.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

I have to read up more, firmware update that is cause my craft wouldn't fly until I updated so was that not the update? My controller beeped and was also useless until I updated it one day as well.. How do I bypass...

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

Updates are optional, just ignore the update banner if you like. I haven't updated since last year.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

Since this thread was hijacked I made a new thread for crash diagnosis here - Crash Diagnosis Thread

 

[Vertigo]

I was just thinking the same...I'm curious if Yuneec Typhoons are having all these problems that Dji Phantoms are?

Short answer: yes. Well, in fairness, Im not sure about the typhoon, but I did look in to the Q500, as well as Xiro and other alternatives. None are immune to fly aways, inexplicable crashes, .. Its really hard to estimate failure rates, but if anything, they are probably relatively low for DJI.

What all these craft have in common, is way too many single points of failures. Single battery (and even though it has 4 cells, it will fall like a brick if a single cell fails), single flight controller, single GPS receiver, usually single compass, 4 motors and ESCs, but no control recovery algorithm that can handle single motor/prop/esc failure,.. there is almost nothing redundant in these quads.

Before buying a Phantom, I used to build my own, both fixed wing and multirotors using a pixhawk flight controller. While not exactly commercial aviation grade, at least it has redundancy in its power supply (both main battery and 5V), typically uses 2 compasses, can be configured to use 2 GPS receivers and you can build a hexa or octo that can survive single motor(/prop/esc) failures. It also has more advanced control algorithms that will recognize and can cope with complete GPS or compass failures, while still maintaining limited ability to navigate. Ive hardly ever seen an unexplained pixhawk flyaway.

There is a price to pay for that though, not just the money, but also the weight and thus flight times.

 

[Dronason]

Short answer: yes. Well, in fairness, Im not sure about the typhoon, but I did look in to the Q500, as well as Xiro and other alternatives. None are immune to fly aways, inexplicable crashes, .. Its really hard to estimate failure rates, but if anything, they are probably relatively low for DJI.

What all these craft have in common, is way too many single points of failures. Single battery, single flight controller, single GPS receiver, usually single compass, 4 motors and ESCs, but no control recovery algorithm that can handle single motor/prop/esc failure,.. there is almost nothing redundant in these quads.

Before buying a Phantom, I used to build my own, both fixed wing and multirotors using a pixhawk flight controller. While not exactly commercial aviation grade, at least it has redundancy in its power supply (both main battery and 5V), typically uses 2 compasses, can be configured to use 2 GPS receivers and you can build a hexa or octo that can survive single motor(/prop/esc) failures. It also has more advanced control algorithms that will recognize and can cope with complete GPS or compass failures, while still maintaining limited ability to navigate. Ive hardly ever seen an unexplained pixhawk flyaway.

There is a price to pay for that though, not just the money, but also the weight and thus flight times.

Phantom 4 has 2 IMU, Phantom 3 has 1 IMU.
Maybe DJI know what was the cause of most failure or it is just marketing.