Please Help- mysterious beeping from P3S

[Kabod]

Hello all,

I am a new drone pilot and as such I immediately crashed into a tree. Now I am hoping some of the more experienced and tech savvy pilots will have pity on me and help me figure out the issues that my Phantom 3 Standard is having. I have scoured the manual and forums and have found nothing to fix this so far.

Three strange things are happening:

1) When I turn on the drone, it starts beeping (the pattern is beep beep..... pause... beep beep)
2) The lights are blinking yellow green red continuously
3) I cannot calibrate the compass and the compass calibration keeps failing with the error that there is magnetic interference. (This is the only error that shows on the app)

I would be eternally grateful if anyone knows what these may be and if there is any easy way to fix them without having to ship the whole thing back.

Thanks,
Kabod

 

[sky cooter]

The Owner's Manual for my P4 has a table that explains audible and light signals.

 

[RodPad]

@Kabod

Welcome to the forum!

I'm glad your first post wasn't something like I crashed my drone.

Sorry, I know it sucks.

Your F/C ratio could be worse. You could crashed or broke it, before you flew it.
0/1

I don't know, what is the status light on the remote, and the status light on the bottom of the Phantom?

Pull out the SD card and try-it?

Nothing looks broke?

You have seen page #11 in the manual?

Rod

 

[Kabod]

@Kabod

Welcome to the forum!

I'm glad your first post wasn't something like I crashed my drone.

Sorry, I know it sucks.

Your F/C ratio could be worse. You could crashed or broke it, before you flew it.
0/1

I don't know, what is the status light on the remote, and the status light on the bottom of the Phantom?

Pull out the SD card and try-it?

Nothing looks broke?

You have seen page #11 in the manual?

Rod

Haha thanks, great forum wish I had a better question to ask...

I saw that but the manual just says "Turning on and self diagnosis test" so that isn't super clear as to how I get this thing back in the air...

Mainly am trying to figure out what the beeping means and how to get it to calibrate the compass

 

[Kabod]

The Owner's Manual for my P4 has a table that explains audible and light signals.

Thanks! I just looked through that manual but the signals have changed and it doesn't seem to match. Thanks for the reply though!

 

[DanMan32]

Can't find yellow green red but red green yellow is initializing.

 

[Kabod]

Can't find yellow green red but red green yellow is initializing.

So it initializes with the same color schedule then does 4 quick yellow flashes and then goes back to Green Red Yellow....

Also I just tried popping out the sd card and no change

 

[Kabod]

Could it be an IMU error?

 

[RodPad]

Don't think so, I doubt you could even run the test. If you can bring up the screen look at the values.

Rod

 

[Oso]

It's easiest to diagnose lights and sounds when a video is posted.

 

[Kabod]

@Oso Thanks for the suggestion - here is the video of the drone and the sounds

 

[Kabod]

Don't think so, I doubt you could even run the test. If you can bring up the screen look at the values.

Rod

Which values do you mean? I can bring everything up it just won't let me do anything with the drone without calibrating the compass first.

 

[jwmcgrath]

Have you tried moving your location to an area that you are certain doesn't have interference, to try calibrating the compass?

I was recently asked to try to find a used Phantom 3 for a friend, and the first one I found was acting identical. But, it had reportedly never had a crash...

All it took was time and patience. I let it complain with its beeping and it eventually after less than 10 min turned the typical yellow flash, then the compass allowed calibration, then green when GPS was established.

 

[DanMan32]

Looks more like green red.
The beeping sounds as if it was doing a firmware upgrade but gimbal LED is green and it already did the triple beep.
Red yellow is compass calibration needed.
Perhaps led is signalling green, then red yellow.
Perhaps it is warming up and needs compass calibration where status display on app has compass calibration override showing warm up.

 

[Kabod]

Have you tried moving your location to an area that you are certain doesn't have interference, to try calibrating the compass?

I was recently asked to try to find a used Phantom 3 for a friend, and the first one I found was acting identical. But, it had reportedly never had a crash...

All it took was time and patience. I let it complain with its beeping and it eventually after less than 10 min turned the typical yellow flash, then the compass allowed calibration, then green when GPS was established.

That is encouraging to hear. I will take it out tomorrow to a park and let it sit for awhile and see if I can do the compass calibration after that and make sure there is no interference. @DanMan32 - that could be the case, the flashing pattern didn't really seem to fit any of the ones in the manual.

 

[jwmcgrath]

That is encouraging to hear. I will take it out tomorrow to a park and let it sit for awhile and see if I can do the compass calibration after that and make sure there is no interference. @DanMan32 - that could be the case, the flashing pattern didn't really seem to fit any of the ones in the manual.

I strongly encourage exactly that (park, sit).

Unless and until it's flashing all red, or solid red, I think you're fine. At least that's been my experience with this exceptionally similar scenario.

I ended up buying that Phantom before I had it sorted out, confident that without "all red" it would be fine. And it was.

And this one was also not following any specific flash pattern shown in the manual.

All is well, I did a compass and IMU calibration and it's flying with no errors now as though there was never an issue.

 

[RodPad]

Which values do you mean? I can bring everything up it just won't let me do anything with the drone without calibrating the compass first.

If you can make it to the IMU settings, which I was thinking you probably can't. You can look at your compass numbers, and etc. If you can get to the section for sure do a IMU calibration as others have stated.

So far I like all of the suggestions.

Rod

 

[Kabod]

If you can make it to the IMU settings, which I was thinking you probably can't. You can look at your compass numbers, and etc. If you can get to the section for sure do a IMU calibration as others have stated.

So far I like all of the suggestions.

Rod

I can make it to those settings and I have already calibrated the IMU twice and that seems to be working. The compass is showing 0's across the board though. (Screenshots below)

 

[RodPad]

Yes, the zeros are the problem.

Rod

Added: compass calibration

 

[Kabod]

Yes, the zeros are the problem.

Rod

So I guess now the real question is this a hardware problem (i.e. broken compass) or does the drone always show 0's when uncalibrated and I just need to find a way to calibrate the compass somehow?