ESC failure or something like?

[scro]

DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

What do you make of this? The drone was flying fine for the first part of the flight, then it suddenly tumbled out of the sky and hit the ground. Some of the motors were still active until impact. It looked and sounded like one of the motors stopped. Now the controller shows several error codes and will not take off. Camera, gimbal and transmission systems seem to all still be functioning. Kinda disappointing as this was my first real flight with it, other than a few test runs in the garden.

 

[Meta4]

What do you make of this?

Definitely a serious malfunction.
You were descending vertically when things started to go wrong at 1:47.6.
The drone started tumbling out of the sky.
It rolled and tilted at crazy angles.

The power stayed on to record the fall to the ground.
I'm not sure exactly what failed, but the way it was thrown around is different from the way a drone falls in a spiral if it loses one motor or prop.

 

[StantonZ]

Would be nice to know which drone you have (not even sure which DJI models have only 2 cells in the battery).
In any case, if this was really your "first real flight with it", I would say one (or more?) of the motors experienced what you call infant mortality...which should be covered under the product warranty.

 

[scro]

The drone is a mini 3 pro with the normal battery. From what I recall of the moments immediately following whatever serious error happened, the drone fell from its hover while rolling on a diagonal axis, to inverted and beyond. It sounded like the motors were revving up and down wildly as the onboard flight controller tried to correct the spin/roll/fall.

Interesting to note that the altitude reads -200m by the end. It hit the ground with a bit of a thud but didn't leave a huge 200m deep crater!

Now when I start up the drone/rc I get the following error messages. Definitely some serious hardware failure. Am in discussion with the supplier for a warranty claim.

 

[scro]

@Meta4 Your comment on drones falling in a spiral if losing a prop(my experience too, up to this point) inspired me to check where on the mini3 the CoG is relative to intersection of diagonal lines passing thru the motor pairs. I was quite surprised at just how far forward the CoG is compared to the intersection of diagonals. This makes it inherently unstable if one of the front motors fails, and diagonal forward pitching unavoidable. If one of the rear motors fails then the drone should be able to maintain level, but not heading.

This contrasts significantly to my mini1 which had its CoG pretty close to the intersection of the diagonals.

The blue dot in the photos is approximately where the CoG is.

 

[Meta4]

nteresting to note that the altitude reads -200m by the end. It hit the ground with a bit of a thud but didn't leave a huge 200m deep crater!

It's very common for the IMU to show crazy altitude numbers after a crash impact.