Help - What Happened??

[CamCorp]

Hey everyone,

Had a issue today and was hoping for some insite.

Problem
I am traveling around Asia with my MPP and it has been so far for the most part fine. Other than some small learning issues on my part, the drone itself always seemed fine. Untill today with this flight.

Flying across a valley to check out a small waterfall. At around 9:10 flight time, 1325m distance from me, and 66% Battery with nothing in between me and the drone (was on other side of valley) all of a sudden the camera started shaking and flashed went blury.

I thought I was being attacked by an eagle, tried to stay calm and not **** myself as I turned the drone and got out of there praying it would make it home. The camera bounced like the drone was being hit a couple more times then blurred out and then came back normal. Got the drone back, landed with no problem. Checked, no visible damage, thought the eagles in the area could have easily destroyed this thing anyway.

So looked at the footage, weirdly the footage on the drones SD stopped a few seconds before the incident occurred, the cache on my phone continued through the incident untill after and then stopped a few seconds past. Indid calibrate the IMU and restart the drone and RC (do this every time I have moved to a new area) , then calibrated the compass also (do this the first flight of every day) .

I was panning the camera up at the time of the incident I believe, so thinking maybe my gimbal went crazy. But would love a more qualified opinion, I really don't know if it was something I did or and issue with the drone. Have grounded it till I can get more info.


Was unit in a crash: No


What have you tried so far?
Nothing and I'm all outta ideas.. Well actually, I tried calibrating the gimble and checking if it would take video while grounded and if the gimble would function as normal. All checked out.

What device are you using ( iphone , ipad, Samsung , etc)?
Samsung S7 Edge

What firmware are you running ( aircraft, remote controller)?

Aircraft and RC : 01.04.0300

What Go app version are you using? 4.2.12

Any modification? (if so what)
None

Did you change anything or install any apps?(if so what)
Nothing changed.

Do you have a video or pictures of the problem? (if so post link)

Logs - First time posting these so hope I did it right (DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com)

Video - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting - Last part of my cached video showing the issue. Hope that worked doing this all from my phone with a very bad internet connection. Also if anyone has a better site to share temporary videos please let me know.

Thanks,
CC

 

[CamCorp]

Updated video link : Drone Issue Trim.m4v

Sorry I think that works

 

[4wd]

It looks possible the gimbal rebooted itself, does it recover and behave normally after the wonky part?

Doing all those calibrations is more likely to do harm than good.
IMU rarely needs doing at all (app will tell you) though you might go through it if you thought it got bumped.
Similarly Compass won't need doing unless you travel hundreds of miles.
Calibrating in a position where their might be some unknown magnetic oddity could upset your previous good calibration.

None of that is relevant to the unusual camera behaviour though.
The gimbal and camera will occasionally glitch, not necessarily a major worry unless it is happening more frequently.
For example if it hits the stops due to wind gust or sudden braking the motors can need a reboot to establish level again.

 

[CamCorp]

It looks possible the gimbal rebooted itself, does it recover and behave normally after the wonky part?

Doing all those calibrations is more likely to do harm than good.
IMU rarely needs doing at all (app will tell you) though you might go through it if you thought it got bumped.
Similarly Compass won't need doing unless you travel hundreds of miles.
Calibrating in a position where their might be some unknown magnetic oddity could upset your previous good calibration.

None of that is relevant to the unusual camera behaviour though.
The gimbal and camera will occasionally glitch, not necessarily a major worry unless it is happening more frequently.
For example if it hits the stops due to wind gust or sudden braking the motors can need a reboot to establish level again.

So if I was panning the camera up it could have had an issue and just rebooted the gimble and camera? Is that normal, it's the first time it happened to me in 87 flights. It stopped recording (didn't notice was just trying to get home) so that is the end of the recorded video. But I could see fine on my phone to fly home.

Have recorded with the drone landed and it worked fine, as well as the gimble calibration and panning up and down. Have not flown it again.

I am traveling hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometres between flights so that is why I always calibrated the IMU and compass. Should I stop doing the IMU and just do the compass?

 

[MavicCF]

So if I was panning the camera up it could have had an issue and just rebooted the gimble and camera? Is that normal, it's the first time it happened to me in 87 flights. It stopped recording (didn't notice was just trying to get home) so that is the end of the recorded video. But I could see fine on my phone to fly home.

Have recorded with the drone landed and it worked fine, as well as the gimble calibration and panning up and down. Have not flown it again.

I am traveling hundreds, sometimes thousands of kilometres between flights so that is why I always calibrated the IMU and compass. Should I stop doing the IMU and just do the compass?

It is a fairly documented problem, the gimbal randomly reboots mid-flight. Some people think it might be SD card related. Super scary when it happens though!

 

[Jordak]

My Platinum camera will do it sometimes when I zoom the camera too fast. It then recalibrates and all is good.

 

[CamCorp]

Oh ok, thanks everyone for reassuring me. Yea super scarey is a understatement. It of course happened when at the worst time, it's like it knows.