Litchi crashed my p4

[GeoffJ]

I haven't had any problems with Litchi.
That last pic shows it was doing over 70 km/h. It wouldn't do that in P mode, had you switched it over to S mode by then?

Also, did it really flip over or could that just be the gimbal moving erratically?

The flight data might be the answer.

 

[Peio64270]

Nobody here seem to have payed attention to this warning begining at 3min 18" : "IOC error : failed" (and repeated at 3min 21.6").
What can it be in a Phantom4 ?

In the video, there is also strange movements at .3min 11". Due to the gimbal ?

I agree that at 3min 54" on the video the drone behaves just like if the motors suddenly stoped. But nothing in the logs which, in turn, continue to indicate 1291 ft at this moment while the AC is obviously much lower.

 

[Skipholiday]

I use only Litchi for all my drones. P2, P2V+ P3pro and P4 and never an issue.
Could it be prop wash? And would that explain the ioc error?

 

[Peio64270]

I haven't had any problems with Litchi.
That last pic shows it was doing over 70 km/h. It wouldn't do that in P mode, had you switched it over to S mode by then?

Also, did it really flip over or could that just be the gimbal moving erratically?

The flight data might be the answer.

Even moving erratically, the gimbal can not shoot an image upside/down.

If you have a look at Phantom Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com nothing seem working in this Ph4.

At 3m 57, it is finally set in "go home" mode but the altitude data shows that it continues to climb till the end of the recording (from 1,291 ft to 1,513 ft at 5m 7.8. Following the log, it continues to climb while in "auto-landing" mode !

Further, between these two moments, the speed is not zero but the distance to home does not change (roughly 147 ft between 3m 37" and 4m 30"with a mean speed of about 4.5 mph). In those 20" it should have fly at least 125 ft at this speed. And why this strange speed for a RTH ?

To me, the whole thing ressemble to a major failure of the CPU resulting in a complete shut-off at 5m 7.8 while the drone is still at high altitude. At east one thing appears certain : Litchi has nothing to do with this accident.

 

[PhanFran]

Today was the last day, at least for a while, that i flew my p4. Just a month old and now already dead How? I did some new test out today with the litchi app on a new spot to fly some waypoints. 9 waypoints total. All waypoints were set on 10m altitude and tripple checked all setting. Length of the flight 715m and the duration of the flight 3 min. It went fine to the first waypoint. But on the way to the second waypoint is went up in the air like crazy till around 400m high. No way to stop it. The pause button didn't work while it was going up so pressed the return to home button. then it came down slowly. Then the horror happened. It just flipped ver and crashed down on the ground. Housing cracked open, gimbal bended and damaged, props gone and some more damage.. any idea why this happened and what went wrong? I have the flight logs and video if that would make things more clear..
thanks guys!

Here the screenshot from after the crash. -411m? Im forever done with this app. It just dont do what it supposed to do.. [file]litchi crash p4|none[/file]

Here are the flight logs..
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

and here is the video..

Looking at the Healthydrones logs you pushed the RTH button so many times RTH was engaged then disengaged again then engaged again etc.... Probably during one of these frantic pushes you inadvertently put the left stick in the lower right position which -now- is a CSC and stops the motors.

 

[sar104]

Looking at the Healthydrones logs you pushed the RTH button so many times RTH was engaged then disengaged again then engaged again etc.... Probably during one of these frantic pushes you inadvertently put the left stick in the lower right position which -now- is a CSC and stops the motors.

No - a CSC would be in the flight log. There was no CSC. There almost certainly was motor shut down - probably because the aircraft was attempting to autoland but its interpretation of the sensor data was that it was not descending. Three seconds of an apparent lack of descent would be enough to trigger motor shut down.

 

[PhanFran]

No - a CSC would be in the flight log. There was no CSC. There almost certainly was motor shut down - probably because the aircraft was attempting to autoland but its interpretation of the sensor data was that it was not descending. Three seconds of an apparent lack of descent would be enough to trigger motor shut down.

"Three seconds of apparent lack of descent would be enough to trigger motor shut down " ?????
Where do you get that from. That would be completely ridiculous.

1) I have loads of flights where the barometer reading doesn't change a bit while the craft is descending and never the motors stopped working. If that were the case hundreds of P4's would crash that way. The VPS prevents this.

2) I just tried the described CSC while holding the AC still in my hands while RTH (and so not descending either): the motors did not stop even after 1 minute but did stop immediately with the CSC AND the CSC was NOT marked in the logs.

 

[jmkreege]

"Three seconds of apparent lack of descent would be enough to trigger motor shut down " ?????
Where do you get that from. That would be completely ridiculous.

If the left stick was down for three seconds and there was no descent, same way you can shut the motors down when landed

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

 

[msinger]

If the left stick was down for three seconds and there was no descent, same way you can shut the motors down when landed

I've never heard of a Phantom dropping out of the sky like this. While it sounds reasonable on paper, I don't think it has ever happened.

 

[sar104]

"Three seconds of apparent lack of descent would be enough to trigger motor shut down " ?????
Where do you get that from. That would be completely ridiculous.

1) I have loads of flights where the barometer reading doesn't change a bit while the craft is descending and never the motors stopped working. If that were the case hundreds of P4's would crash that way. The VPS prevents this.

2) I just tried the described CSC while holding the AC still in my hands while RTH (and so not descending either): the motors did not stop even after 1 minute but did stop immediately with the CSC AND the CSC was NOT marked in the logs.

No - as mentioned above - the usual motor shut down method is that the throttle is at minimum and the aircraft detects no descent for 3 seconds. It was that way before VPS even existed.

However - looks like you are correct on the log issue. If a CSC is performed then it is recorded in the DJI Go app (stick and button inputs), and visible when the log is replayed in the app, but is not shown in the notifications list. So you are right - on that basis it could have been a CSC. The OP should be able to see that in the app flight log though.

 

[sar104]

I've never heard of a Phantom dropping out of the sky like this. While it sounds reasonable on paper, I don't think it has ever happened.

I've certainly never heard of it, but then the kind of sensor failure required for it to happen is also likely to be very uncommon.

 

[Peio64270]

I've never heard of a Phantom dropping out of the sky like this. While it sounds reasonable on paper, I don't think it has ever happened.

If you are a fellow member of the "Phantom filmschool" group on FB, have a look at what happened recently to a guy who owned a Phantom 4 : he lost his drone over the sea. The AC stopped suddenly functionning with half-charged batteries and at short distance from home point. From one second to an other, the drone disappeared from the radar screens

HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

DJI said they are going to replace the AC. The guy was flying with DJI-Go app.

 

[msinger]

If you are a fellow member of the "Phantom filmschool" group on FB, have a look at what happened recently to a guy who owned a Phantom 4 : he lost his drone over the sea. The AC stopped suddenly functionning with half-charged batteries and at short distance from home point.

Healthy Drones shows the AC flew out of range and does not indicate what happened after that point. I don't think this incident is related to what you quoted me on above.

 

[Peio64270]

Healthy Drones shows the AC flew out of range and does not indicate what happened after that point. I don't think this incident is related to what you quoted me on above.

Healthy drones does not show this : it shows that the connection is lost between 138m and... 65m from the home point. Very short distance for a P4. After what, no news from the drone which was supposed, at least, to hover in place. But the most iimportant thing is that DJI is going to replace this AC without any discution.

 

[msinger]

Healthy drones does not show this : it shows that the connection is lost between 138m and... 65m from the home point. Very short distance for a P4. After what, no news from the drone which was supposed, at least, to hover in place. But the most iimportant thing is that DJI is going to replace this AC without any discution.

What does this have to do with the motors shutting off after holding the throttle in the down position? The downlink does not drop when that occurs.

 

[joeruby]

Today was the last day, at least for a while, that i flew my p4. Just a month old and now already dead How? I did some new test out today with the litchi app on a new spot to fly some waypoints. 9 waypoints total. All waypoints were set on 10m altitude and tripple checked all setting. Length of the flight 715m and the duration of the flight 3 min. It went fine to the first waypoint. But on the way to the second waypoint is went up in the air like crazy till around 400m high. No way to stop it. The pause button didn't work while it was going up so pressed the return to home button. then it came down slowly. Then the horror happened. It just flipped ver and crashed down on the ground. Housing cracked open, gimbal bended and damaged, props gone and some more damage.. any idea why this happened and what went wrong? I have the flight logs and video if that would make things more clear..
thanks guys!

Here the screenshot from after the crash. -411m? Im forever done with this app. It just dont do what it supposed to do.. [file]litchi crash p4|none[/file]

Here are the flight logs..
HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters

and here is the video..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lesly, I am sorry for your accident. Glad it wasn't over a populated area. I have flown 153. miles using Litchi with my Phantom 3 Pro. I have had no problems at all with Litchi. As long as I program it correctly. It has always gone where I told it to go. A large portion of that 153 miles of flight was way-point missions using Litchi. See the attached jpg.

 

[chris digata]

just came across this post and after flicking through all the non post subject junk get to the end.
This is how i see it, the litchi app cant be blamed until everything is seen, we have not seen the mission layout data of the waypoint height settings as it might have just been doing what it was told to do, for one the phantom would not go that high unless the pilot had set that height in the max height settings or it would just use the height setting that the go app set last.
seems to me that the op went into pannic and did all the wrong things going from one to the next and yes I think the motors were shut off by the pilot while still in a tizzy.
Why a new pilot wants to try other app or missions is beyond me.. you have to learn to walk before you can run nevermind fly.
Switching modes cancels any misions but if the app was causing errors I would have unpluged it from the controller and then if the preloaded mision in the phantom still affecting things switching to atti mode would clear the phantoms data bank of any app mision data and flown it home.
Yes its a shame when things like this happen and i can feel for the op but DJI wont even entertain a claim on this as third party app was used at the owners risk and they will say anything could have been set in the litchi mision by the user but wont look at the litchi app.
DJI work on 98% pilot error until info is seen that points to hardware error. any software error (go app) when the pilot had time to take control would still point to pilot error.. Litchi wont even come in to it.

 

[Ibmftw]

@chris digata Are you saying DJI wont entertain a claim whilst using 3rd party app, because if you are you are very wrong.

 

[28wins]

uhh, why prompted you to use this app (never heard of it)?

 

[darkangel]

I think that it was not the app. I could have been the votex affect. The prop wash as it is descending will cause turbulence and will flip it over. It is better to glide it in for a safe landing.