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Mavic 3 Scary Glitch

Eagle Eye 62

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So, I was doing some flying for a project I am working on and I was by the river and saw a Tugboat pushing a barge upriver. I thought I would fly out closer to it and I stopped recording so I could use Spotlight mode. What happened next was truly terrifying since I was over water at the time. All of a sudden, the gimbal moved to looking straight down at the water. Then I lost complete control of the drone even though I had full signal strength. In a total panic (I only had about 28% battery left) I pressed the RTH button on the RC Pro Controller. Thankfully, the drone responded and started heading back to me and I was able to regain manual control and bring her home. My initial thought was it was either a software bug, or a memory error or something like that. Anyway, I thought I would share and see if anyone else has experienced something similar. I think i will file a ticket with DJI support to see what they say.
 
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If you go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help you will see instructions concerning how retrieve the flight log.
Down load the log to a computer etc. and either upload the log to that site and then copy and paste the resulting URL here or upload the log to here. The former would be better that the latter.
 
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I would like to know the result
 
I use an RC PRo. Is there any way to get the logs from it?
PC\DJI RC Pro\Internal shared storage\Android\data\dji.go.v5\files\FlightRecord
 
Thanks, my next question is how do I transfer the log to my computer?
You connect the phone or tablet to the computer with a cable.
If you have found the .txt file ... just post it here

Or you can upload it to Phantomhelp (link is in post #5) and when it gives you a summary report, you post a link to that report here.
 
What happened next was truly terrifying since I was over water at the time. All of a sudden, the gimbal moved to looking straight down at the water. Then I lost complete control of the drone even though I had full signal strength. In a total panic (I only had about 28% battery left) I pressed the RTH button on the RC Pro Controller.
Looking at your data, I can't see anywhere that the camera was pointing straight down.
The maximum gimbal pitch recorded during the flight was -36.7°.
I also can't see anywhere in the flight where your drone wasn't responding properly to joystick inputs.
I'm tempted to put this incident down to disorientation.
 
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Looking at your data, I can't see anywhere that the camera was pointing straight down.
The maximum gimbal pitch recorded during the flight was -36.7°.
I also can't see anywhere in the flight where your drone wasn't responding properly to joystick inputs.
I'm tempted to put this incident down to disorientation.
here is the correct log file..
 

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  • DJIFlightRecord_2022-05-13_[08-54-10].txt
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here is the correct log file..

That data looks like this: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com

At 14:44.3, while in active track the data shows the gimbal swinging down to -90°.
The drone's speed had been zero for 20 seconds before this.

At 14:58.2 you gave some throttle input and the drone followed, first descending and then climbing.
At 15:06.6 you gave some positive rudder input which the drone followed, rotating clockwise.
When you released the joystick, the drone continued rotating, making just over 4 full rotations before you initiated RTH.
During all of this the drone was hovering and maintaining altitude.


When you initiated RTH, the drone exited Active Track and behaved normally.
It just looks like the drone lost the subject it was following and you left it in Active Track but were disoriented when it didn't respond as it would if you had cancelled the Active Track.
It performed normally after RTH had cancelled Active Track.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to analyze this.

I guess it leaves me with a couple of questions /concerns though.

First of all, is the RTH button a failsafe in case of a lock up or did I just get lucky?

Secondly, why did the M3 react the way it did? My guess was a system overload since I went pretty quickly from fly/record to stop and then active track.

Can this be prevented in the future by just not switching modes so quickly?

I have sent my logs to DJI, it will be interesting to see what they say.

I will keep you posted.
 
First of all, is the RTH button a failsafe in case of a lock up or did I just get lucky?
The Active Track was cancelled when the flight mode changed to RTH ... you might have been able to do that by changing the flight mode
Secondly, why did the M3 react the way it did? My guess was a system overload since I went pretty quickly from fly/record to stop and then active track.

Can this be prevented in the future by just not switching modes so quickly?
Did you do anything to cancel the active track?
Often, switching the flight mode out of Normal to Sport and back again will cancel an automated flight mode.
 
The Active Track was cancelled when the flight mode changed to RTH ... you might have been able to do that by changing the flight mode

Did you do anything to cancel the active track?
Often, switching the flight mode out of Normal to Sport and back again will cancel an automated flight mode.
No, I was pretty freaked out so I tried RTH becasue all the other buttons, stick, etc. Did nothing. Is changing the flight mode a "failsafe" method?
 
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