ESC Fail

[Geek]

Brand new drone guy with his first drone and first post. Literally the first MA flight of the second day of flying and messing around with the drone. The drone and controller linked up just fine and had a good GPS lock. Took off into a hover about 3 feet up and all was great. Stable hover and then a normal response to the different control inputs. (New drone pilot but old aircraft pilot who always does control checks). Input a vertical climb and at about 50 feet up, the drone started to move laterally so I stopped the climb. You can see in the video it moves around a bit and then......well I'm glad the trees were there so I didn't have to go far to recover the drone. Controller says I have an ESC 3 and 4 fail. So it's back to DJI. Is this kind of a "normal" fail point? Just wondering.

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[Former Member]

You need to make the video public.

Problem doesnt sound like normal for a MA.

 

[Geek]

You need to make the video public.

Problem doesnt sound like normal for a MA.

Thanks. Should work now.

 

[Former Member]

Looks like the "toilet bowl effect" the way it was circling. Was your compass calibrated?

 

[Geek]

Looks like the "toilet bowl effect" the way it was circling. Was your compass calibrated?

Yup. When I looked at the General Menu before I took off it was all Normal.

 

[Former Member]

Before you send it back to DJI, who will probably blame you for the crash, you should have some ammunition ready for them. Upload your flight logs so we can see what happened mechanically.

 

[Geek]

Before you send it back to DJI, who will probably blame you for the crash, you should have some ammunition ready for them. Upload your flight logs so we can see what happened mechanically.

Great idea but the drone and controller are already on its way to DJI. Should have thought of that given the number of years I had dealing with the FAA.

 

[MavicCF]

Great idea but the drone and controller are already on its way to DJI. Should have thought of that given the number of years I had dealing with the FAA.

You should be able to upload the logs from you mobile device or whatever you were flying with. I'll go try to find a link on how.

 

[MavicCF]

If you are an Apple guy, you should be able to plug your phone into a Mac and view it's files in ITunes. I believe it would be in a file titled DJI. Windows is probably similar. Then you just have to find the txt. file with the correct date and post it here! -CF

 

[Geek]

If you are an Apple guy, you should be able to plug your phone into a Mac and view it's files in ITunes. I believe it would be in a file titled DJI. Windows is probably similar. Then you just have to find the txt. file with the correct date and post it here! -CF

Got that and found the .txt file but it is total junk as in looks encrypted. I attached it. If you can read it let me know how that works.

Thanks to all for the help here. Learning curve.

G

 

[MavicCF]

Did it get stuck in a tree and was the battery connected when you retrieved it?

 

[MavicCF]

I'm going to call @sar104 on because he has more experience reading these and can hopefully teach me a little about esc failure.

 

[MavicCF]

It for sure doesn't appear to be responding to your control inputs correctly and to be making up a lot of moves itself. I just don't know enough to %100 verify a failed esc. It certainly doesn't appear to be pilot error!

 

[Geek]

Did it get stuck in a tree and was the battery connected when you retrieved it?

Nope. Hit the trees and sawed its way all the way to the ground. Two props are much shorter than they used to be and one is cracked (even with the guards installed). Battery was still connected and the drone was still running. Would not respond to any control inputs (like shut down so I could safely pick it up). Luckily I had the prop guards on since I am still such a newbie so I could carefully lift it on one side and hold the other with my boot. The 90 degrees of roll shut it down. Other than the props, the drone appeared to have taken this pretty well. Here's screen shot of the drone right after.

Appreciate the read out on the flight file. It shows just what I did which was let go of the sticks when it went wonkie so I was not a willing participant in that flight.

G

 

[MavicCF]

Nope. Hit the trees and sawed its way all the way to the ground. Two props are much shorter than they used to be and one is cracked (even with the guards installed). Battery was still connected and the drone was still running. Would not respond to any control inputs (like shut down so I could safely pick it up). Luckily I had the prop guards on since I am still such a newbie so I could carefully lift it on one side and hold the other with my boot. The 90 degrees of roll shut it down. Other than the props, the drone appeared to have taken this pretty well. Here's screen shot of the drone right after.

Appreciate the read out on the flight file. It shows just what I did which was let go of the sticks when it went wonkie so I was not a willing participant in that flight.

G
View attachment 33719

That looks pretty good for that kind of a crash! You handled it all well and I hope DJI eats the bill for this one (they certainly should). We'll see if sar104 agrees with my reading. -CF

 

[Geek]

That looks pretty good for that kind of a crash! You handled it all well and I hope DJI eats the bill for this one (they certainly should). We'll see if sar104 agrees with my reading. -CF

Thanks. We'll just have to wait and see. Can you tell me what you used to get that graph from the flight log?

 

[MavicCF]

Thanks. We'll just have to wait and see. Can you tell me what you used to get that graph from the flight log?

There are a couple of ones, the most user friendly one was created by @BudWalker and is called CsvView it generates the graphs and you can pick through the various flight signals stored in the log (like pitch roll etc) and layer them however you want. Budwalker also created DatCon, which goes perfectly with CsvView (same link) because CsvView can't read the DAT files stored onboard the AC. The DAT files store way more information than the Csv. files stored on your phone so with DatCon you generate a Csv from the DAT files and plug it into CsvView to analize them. They are a great combo and I highly recommend them.-CF

 

[Geek]

There are a couple of ones, the most user friendly one was created by @BudWalker and is called CsvView it generates the graphs and you can pick through the various flight signals stored in the log (like pitch roll etc) and layer them however you want. Budwalker also created DatCon, which goes perfectly with CsvView (same link) because CsvView can't read the DAT files stored onboard the AC. The DAT files store way more information than the Csv. files stored on your phone so with DatCon you generate a Csv from the DAT files and plug it into CsvView to analize them. They are a great combo and I highly recommend them.-CF

Perfect. Thank you

 

[BudWalker]

There are a couple of ones, the most user friendly one was created by @BudWalker and is called CsvView it generates the graphs and you can pick through the various flight signals stored in the log (like pitch roll etc) and layer them however you want. Budwalker also created DatCon, which goes perfectly with CsvView (same link) because CsvView can't read the DAT files stored onboard the AC. The DAT files store way more information than the Csv. files stored on your phone so with DatCon you generate a Csv from the DAT files and plug it into CsvView to analize them. They are a great combo and I highly recommend them.-CF

Except that CsvView can accept .DAT files. It then uses DatCon internally to convert the .DAT file to a .csv which it stores locally. In a few cases it makes sense to use DatCon separately to create a .csv first.

 

[MavicCF]

Except that CsvView can accept .DAT files. It then uses DatCon internally to convert the .DAT file to a .csv which it stores locally. In a few cases it makes sense to use DatCon separately to create a .csv first.

I didn't know that! Cool!