My Mini 2 decided it was a SpaceX rocket!

[Jackh]

I just returned from the park to get in a few practice runs since I haven't flown for a few weeks.

I did a pre-flight exam, took off, and let it hover while I went through the usual checks. WInd was at 10 mph and since I was going no higher than about 20 ft to practice some maneuvers, I was not too concerned. If I was doing a mission, I would have scrubbed it for the day.

So I ran it up to 27ft and hovered while I got lined up to do a manual circle. All of a sudden it shot straight up like a rocket. I had zero stick control and RTH did nothing. I tried all the tricks, switching modes, cancel button, RTH. My mini had only 1 mode, straight up at full power.
By now it was crossing the 1000 ft altitude and I started getting warnings. Motors are at max rpm. Motors are overloaded. Land immediately. At 1500 ft I closed the DJI app and re opened it. It did connect and now my height is 1850 ft. "I am in violation of FAA rules. Land immediately." DUH

1890 ft and all of a sudden I'm reading 1870, 1845, 1810, 1770....... I had the cam pointing straight down and it was right overhead. I never drifted the whole time. Finally got it down to the ground, did a few zig zags and verified I had complete control again, like nothing ever happened.

I came home and did a IMU calibration and called it a day.

Thoughts anyone??

 

[Phantomrain.org]

I would love to see that video, did you record, ?

The only thing I have seen close to this was on the Mini when the sensors were covered the drone started flying straight up . Nothing like this has shown on the Mini 2

watching :

Phantomrain.org
Gear to fly in the Rain. Land on the Water

 

[Meta4]

Thoughts anyone??

The incident described is a mystery without any clues to suggest a cause.
The obvious first thing to do is have the recorded flight data analysed, to see if there is something there to solve the mystery.

Go to DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
That will give you a detailed report of the flight.
Come back and post a link to the report it gives you.
Or .. just post the txt file here.

I came home and did a IMU calibration and called it a day.

Why?
The best course is always to find out what caused a flight incident and address that, rather than guessing and doing random things.

 

[EyesWideShut]

@Jackh. That flight explains the way you look in your great avatar photo!! Hope you can post your flight log.

 

[Yogi053]

After that flight, buy a lottery ticket!

 

[spsphotos]

Sounds more like the app glitched and got stuck thinking you were pushing up on the left stick. Killing the app and restarting kinda shows that. But on the plus side you know how high the drone can go. LOL. Glad nothing disastrous happened.

 

[spsphotos]

BTW, 10mph winds is nothing...Mini can handle that with aplumb.

 

[Dbez1]

Any chance of a very strong updraft? If it was that though, you’d think there would be some lateral movement. I’ll be interested in the results of the flight log records.

 

[Meta4]

Any chance of a very strong updraft?

No
If such a wind was encountered (as has never been reported in this forum), it would have been obvious to the op and he's have mentioned it.

 

[Jackh]

I used an Samsung S21 Ultra. There is no FlightRecord file in there. Android\data\dji.go.v5\files\FlightRecord

I don't have video either. I turned it on, but the mini didn't respond to the command.

I have Airdata account that should have auto uploaded after the flight, but nothing there as well.
Maybe on the mini SD card? Possible?

 

[Jackh]

Sounds more like the app glitched and got stuck thinking you were pushing up on the left stick. Killing the app and restarting kinda shows that. But on the plus side you know how high the drone can go. LOL. Glad nothing disastrous happened.

It was more than that. I was in normal mode when it took off like a bullet, faster than sport mode. 1000' plus my screen was giveing me Motor RPM over maximum and to stop immediately.

 

[Jam0ne]

Firmware version ?

Latest update ?

i have grounded my Mini 2, until DJI issues a new update from current firmware 1.04
I am very concerned about a fly away due to the current buggy firmware
last few flights received "RC not connected..." some words to that effect...

 

[Meta4]

I used an Samsung S21 Ultra. There is no FlightRecord file in there. Android\data\dji.go.v5\files\FlightRecord

I have Airdata account that should have auto uploaded after the flight, but nothing there as well.
Maybe on the mini SD card? Possible?

It's not possible that the flight data would be on the SD card ... it is always recorded to the phone or tablet.
And it would be most unlikely that the flight data was not recorded ... I've never heard of that happening before.

Do you see a record of the flight in the Flight Data Centre on your app?
If you do, the .txt file is definitely in the phone.

I have Airdata account that should have auto uploaded after the flight, but nothing there as well.

Airdata accesses the data from DJI.
DJI only have the data if it has been synched to DJI servers.
You could manually synch the flight data.

 

[Jackh]

HA! I found them Probably 2 files since I rebooted the app during the flight. It is all garbage looking at it in notebook. Hopefully you guys can run them through some software to read them.

 

[Meta4]

HA! I found them Probably 2 files since I rebooted the app during the flight. It is all garbage looking at it in notebook. Hopefully you guys can run them through some software to read them.

Those files look good.
It will take a little while to work through what's in them.

 

[Jackh]

It's not possible that the flight data would be on the SD card ... it is always recorded to the phone or tablet.
And it would be most unlikely that the flight data was not recorded ... I've never heard of that happening before.

Do you see a record of the flight in the Flight Data Centre on your app?
If you do, the .txt file is definitely in the phone.

Airdata accesses the data from DJI.
DJI only have the data if it has been synched to DJI servers.
You could manually synch the flight data.

Yes I found 1 part of it, but it shows it going straight up with error "Motors rotating too fast" and warning I exceeded 400'. Then it shows it went to 380 meters and also showed it descending back to land. My phone readout was in feet and at it's peak it was over 1800 feet.

 

[Jackh]

Those files look good.
It will take a little while to work through what's in them.

Good luck. I hope they can show something.

 

[Meta4]

HA! I found them Probably 2 files since I rebooted the app during the flight. It is all garbage looking at it in notebook. Hopefully you guys can run them through some software to read them.

It's a very interesting incident.
I can't get those files to load into Phantomhelp log viewer, so I've used Airdata to see what happened.

Data from the two flights runs on with the time in the second continuing from the first one.
The first flght ends with a small crash at 2 mph at 3:09.2, when you pushed the right stick forward when landing.

In the second flight, things seemed normal for about two minutes.
But at 5:06.6 it looks like there's a problem with the altitude sensing.
The indicated altitude increases from 22ft to 28 ft without corresponding joystick input.
At the same time the VPS sensor shows the height increasing by 3 ft and then decreasing by 5 ft.

Then at 5:09 the indicated height starts to fall, going from 28 ft to -61 ft, then commencing to increase to low numbers a little above and below zero, with the VPS sensor showing a steady 20 feet.

It was not possible that the drone descended to -60 feet on a flat playing field, so we can tell that there was a problem with the barometric altitude sensor.
Maybe (?) related to the small crash at the end of the first flight.

At 5:32.8 with the drone about 150 ft away, you initiated RTH and the indicated height started to increase, reaching 150 ft.
VPS height was still indicating 20 ft.

Around 5:42 indicated height starts to go down, but the Max Power Reached and Not Enough Power warnings indicate that the motors are revving at full speed.
A little later the indicated height started increasing, reaching 1238 ft.
It looks like you initiated an autolanding at 6:41.1, cancelled it after 12 seconds and landed manually.

The problem was initiating RTH when the drone's height was malfunctioning.
The height sensing can be affected by a crash impact.
Recalibrating the IMU might have been the correct action to fix this, but I'd do several careful testing flights in a safe environment to confirm whether the height sensing is working properly.

 

[Jackh]

Thanks for the data briefing. I did do an IMU calibration and took another test flight. It appears to be working normally now.

I'll keep testing to be sure.

Thanks!

 

[Brojon]

I used an Samsung S21 Ultra. There is no FlightRecord file in there. Android\data\dji.go.v5\files\FlightRecord

I don't have video either. I turned it on, but the mini didn't respond to the command.

I have Airdata account that should have auto uploaded after the flight, but nothing there as well.
Maybe on the mini SD card? Possible?

I thought it was Litchi that could upload to Airdata. Does Fly have that capability now?