Oddest Thing

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Feb 17, 2016
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Location
Central CA
I've been flying a P3S for over a year and am afraid my drone days have come to an end.
I was flying out of my back yard last week when I suddenly received a message on my Android stating, "Critically Low Power, the aircraft will land immediately" or something to that effect. The problem was that my power indicator showed my battery strength to be 48%. By the time I could get into a position where I could see where the drone was (in relation to my house), it had come down. The drone was less than 300 yards away and less than 250 feet up. I've looked everywhere; including the back yards of my neighbors, in trees, bushes and on top of the houses - still nothing. I fear one of the kids in the neighborhood saw it come down and grabbed it or that it came down on or near the street and a car going by picked it up. I've downloaded my last log, but do not know how to view it. Would someone please help me?
 

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Someone,(not me) will be along soon to help analyse your flight, there are some very clever forensic flight log experts on here who have found many a lost drone, good luck
 
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Did you change your settings for battery notifications?
Do you have Healthy Drones?
It will help you look at the batteries and maybe indicate what happened at the point it landed.
And maybe a mod will move this from classifieds so you get better replies.:)
 
Hopefully in your case it's stuck in a tree somewhere and if you had your name, FAA # and contact # on it maybe someone will return it to you?
 
I'm not sure on the standard,
but if you get Healthy Drones and are able to view your flight, it will show your video and help you find it
 
Someone,(not me) will be along soon to help analyse your flight, there are some very clever forensic flight log experts on here who have found many a lost drone, good luck

Thank you all very much. No, I have not heard of Healthy Drones. I'm retired, and obviously don't follow things like that as well as most of you. Do I download Healthy Drones onto my Samsung Galaxy phone? Would it do me any good at this point?

I had my registration number written in permanent black ink on both the drone and the battery. I did not have my name and contact information though.
 
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Healthy Drones will show all your flight data and the flight path you took.
Download it on your phone and your laptop for easier viewing.
It will give you a token number that you can use anywhere
Turn on your controller and then do the auto sync
The flight logs will be on the left and you can navigate through your entire flight
 
You guys are a Godsend. I downloaded the program, viewed the last flight, found out exactly where the drone landed - and where it was carried to from there. I went down to the house, knocked on their door, and asked for my drone. The kids in the house have no idea what I was talking about and, even after looking a the picture I printed from the computer, their dad was no help. I offered them $100 for my drone back. I'll see where that takes us.
 
The data cuts off before it landed. The bird was still up in the air ~271 feet. Take a look at the path in Google Earth. Based on the trajectory I would widen your search area to the neighborhood behind. Also you were getting some strange errors that someone else can comment on. 4 messages "Cannot Takeoff in a No Fly Zone". (you are pretty close to that airport..) 5 messages "Propulsion output is limited to ensure the health of the battery." and 1 "Critically Low Voltage. Aircraft will land"

Hope you find it!

Capture.PNG


Capture2.PNG
 
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I see a couple things wrong
You shouldn't take off without a fully charged battery. You were at 60%. I've read that the time left isn't calculated properly.
You also had 12.1 deviations on one battery cell. It doesn't show it on the map but if a cell drops to 3.0v then the battery shuts down. You had a decent amp draw just before you lost it and low voltage readings throughout the flight
Your battery was also fairly cold to start. 62*
 
The battery was fully charged when I began flying. I'd flown my drone several times just prior to this flight (the one in which the drone disappeared). This was obviously the last one. I thank you very much for pointing out that my drone could have kept going. Even though one of the last messages said it was landing, it could have gone as far as the mobile home park? I do not know anything about the deviations on my battery cell. Would you please explain what that means and why it's important? Was the battery worn out? It was cold that day; should I not have been flying it in 62 degree weather? I thought the critically low battery warning was odd given that my battery was still over 60%. What does "Propulsion output is limited to ensure the health of the battery" mean? I was flying it normally.
 
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Yes, I would definitely be looking in the mobile home park. Starting with the smaller red circle in my pic above. The last message was "Landing" but the craft was still at 271 feet.
 
You guys are a Godsend. I downloaded the program, viewed the last flight, found out exactly where the drone landed - and where it was carried to from there. I went down to the house, knocked on their door, and asked for my drone. The kids in the house have no idea what I was talking about and, even after looking a the picture I printed from the computer, their dad was no help. I offered them $100 for my drone back. I'll see where that takes us.
Perhaps you could also go back to where you visited before and explain how the mistake happened and apologise profusely to them too... Some sort of small gift might be in order as well...

Some people worry a lot about being accused of something they haven't done. For all you know the whole family might be expecting the police to knock on their door at any moment....
 
The battery was fully charged when I began flying. I'd flown my drone several times just prior to this flight (the one in which the drone disappeared). This was obviously the last one. I thank you very much for pointing out that my drone could have kept going. Even though one of the last messages said it was landing, it could have gone as far as the mobile home park? I do not know anything about the deviations on my battery cell. Would you please explain what that means and why it's important? Was the battery worn out? It was cold that day; should I not have been flying it in 62 degree weather? I thought the critically low battery warning was odd given that my battery was still over 60%. What does "Propulsion output is limited to ensure the health of the battery" mean? I was flying it normally.
A bad battery cell will shut down the entire battery and your drone falls from the sky.
You were climbing just before all this happened and may have triggered a bad cell due to the higher load. Your entire flight was going on low voltage.
You can fly in 62* weather but I think your battery was 62* and should be warmer. I believe 25c/77f is minimum temp for the battery. 15c/59f and it won't send data.
Maybe someone can verify that for me.
You can fly with 60% battery if you land and don't shut the motors off. It's the starting and stopping.
Propulsion output may have been limited due to the 60% and low battery temp.
That's my educated guess.
 

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