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Crash in Tripod Mode - not sure what happened...

fabe13

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Hello everyone,

I finally crashed my Mavic today and I would like to at least find out how it happened.

I was flying slowly backwards in tripod mode with disabled obstacle avoidance when it suddenly started flying straight up into a tree. It didn't accept any controller input anymore, so no way for me to save it. It actually caught itself after flying into the first branch, but then just continued to rise into the next one which caused it to fall.

Unfortunately, the log seems to have cut out immediately before it happened, so did the video.
Here is the data from the log anyways:

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Any idea what could have happened?

Best regards,
Fabe
 
well I am new to drones to Fabe but I can see nothing on the flight log to help apart from fairly a short rapid voltage drop highlighted in yellow which may or may not be significant. did you trigger rth mode by mistake and were the front sensors definitely off? the way you describe the flight is going straight up which is what rth does first to gain height. otherwise interference, you are quite close to a built up area. Hopefully there will be someone on here soon who can help further. final thought when something is wrong for me its usually my fault, settings altered on software update and not checked!
 
Thanks! RTH was also my first thought, but wouldn't it state that in the log?

Unfortunately, I was too fixed on watching the Mavic to check my phone screen.
 
Unfortunately, the log seems to have cut out immediately before it happened
Right -- it does not show the crash.

Please upload your DAT flight log to dropbox.com and post a link back here. It'll contain additional details that'll explain what happened. If needed, you can find instructions for retrieving the DAT file here.
 
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Alright, it looks like the DAT file of this particular flight doesn't exist...

I used ExtractDJI to separate all FC files created today and it creates FLY015.DAT (the flight before the crash flight), FLY017.DAT (me turning it on to download DAT files), but no FLY016.DAT

The battery fell out on impact. Could that cause the missing DAT file?
 
Okay, it took me 5 tries until the Assistant managed to compress the file.

Here it is! Thanks for your patience!

Dropbox - FLY016.DAT

I briefly tried to look at it and it seems like it lost connection to the RC which caused the RTH?
I guess in that case there is nothing I could have done...
 
Last edited:
Okay, it took me 5 tries until the Assistant managed to compress the file.

Here it is! Thanks for your patience!

Dropbox - FLY016.DAT

I briefly tried to look at it and it seems like it lost connection to the RC which caused the RTH?
I guess in that case there is nothing I could have done...

Right - at 304.4 s the RC signal strength went from 100% to 10% and at 304.6 s the FC declared a RC disconnect and initiated RTH with an RTH altitude of 30 m.

304.603 : 17759 [L-RC]rc_connect:1=>0
304.603 : 17759 [L-RC]rc_func_disable @ [360201 ms]
304.605 : 17759 [L-SEND DATA]app connect changed:last(1) != current(0)
309.045 : 17981 [L-FMU/LED]action changed. rc completely lost: (0)
310.665 : 18062 [L-FLYMODE][Ctrl<6>] REQ_RC_LOST NAVI_GO_HOME ctrl_navi_go_home
315.123 : 18285 [L-RC]Emergency break. rc vib!
316.747 : 18366 [L-FDI][CTRL]: fault on , tilt_ctrl_fail
316.763 : 18367 [L-RC]craft ctrl failed!!!​

Unless the RC shutdown due to low battery that looks like some kind of hardware/software failure either in the RC or on the aircraft.
 
Nope, RC was fine and definitely not out of battery.

Thanks for the help!

Is there a chance DJI will pay for the repair?
 
Is there a chance DJI will pay for the repair?
You'd have to send your Mavic into them to find out if it's covered under warranty.
 
Nope, RC was fine and definitely not out of battery.

Thanks for the help!

Is there a chance DJI will pay for the repair?

Based on the data in the DAT file it seems quite clearly to have been equipment failure. DJI seems to be pretty good at covering those kinds of events, so it's definitely worth asking.
 
Okay, it took me 5 tries until the Assistant managed to compress the file.

Here it is! Thanks for your patience!

Dropbox - FLY016.DAT

I briefly tried to look at it and it seems like it lost connection to the RC which caused the RTH?
I guess in that case there is nothing I could have done...
Exactly this has happened to me on a couple of occasions. Repeated attempts ultimately produced the .DAT I was interested in. Do you have any idea what you did differently the time that it worked?
 
Do you have any idea what you did differently the time that it worked?

The "Vision" download kept failing at 69 %, but I kept trying to download different combinations of flights. After a couple of tries, I noticed that the file size of the desired flight in the Assistant changed from 177 MB to 134 MB. Then, after 2 more attempts of downloading just the flight I wanted, it miraculously worked.
 
Hello everyone,

I finally crashed my Mavic today and I would like to at least find out how it happened.

I was flying slowly backwards in tripod mode with disabled obstacle avoidance when it suddenly started flying straight up into a tree. It didn't accept any controller input anymore, so no way for me to save it. It actually caught itself after flying into the first branch, but then just continued to rise into the next one which caused it to fall.

Unfortunately, the log seems to have cut out immediately before it happened, so did the video.
Here is the data from the log anyways:

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Any idea what could have happened?

Best regards,
Fabe
From your description, I am assuming a RTH was initiated so the MP tried to ascend to 30m, loss of connection to the RC can initiate it, so you really need to adjust the RTH altitude/behavior for each flight. Hope your drone is OK.
 
The RC connection cannot get lost on weak battery or too much distance only but also by freezing remote firmware. Firmware can freeze caused by connection problems either with USB or GO4 and mobile performance. Usually this is early indicated by a lagging video stream or pixelated image. I have experienced this problem several times already by myself. The only thing you can do then is shutting down the remote and restarting it. As your Mavic will either hover on last position or go into RTH dependent on setting, this is usually no big problem, but you had just bad luck to be at a location where RTH has led into trees.
 
Firmware can freeze caused by connection problems either with USB or GO4 and mobile performance.

I did have problems with the app crashing or the phone freezing before, but I was always able to control the AC via controller and bring it back. The app seemed to be fine this time.
And yes, it was bad luck indeed.



Hope your drone is OK.

I'm not entirely sure how bad it is, yet. Gimbal and camera seem to be fine, but the battery doesn't fit anymore due to the damage, so I can't really check other functions.
 
I did have problems with the app crashing or the phone freezing before, but I was always able to control the AC via controller and bring it back.
That is usually the true. But to my experience in about 1 of 20 cases the remote will freeze, too.
 
Hello everyone,

I finally crashed my Mavic today and I would like to at least find out how it happened.

I was flying slowly backwards in tripod mode with disabled obstacle avoidance when it suddenly started flying straight up into a tree. It didn't accept any controller input anymore, so no way for me to save it. It actually caught itself after flying into the first branch, but then just continued to rise into the next one which caused it to fall.

Unfortunately, the log seems to have cut out immediately before it happened, so did the video.
Here is the data from the log anyways:

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

Any idea what could have happened?

Best regards,
Fabe
do you have leg extensions installed on the mavic?
 
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