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Thought I was going to crash

Jayfdee

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I was flying over familiar territory, when my screen appeared to show me in a death spiral down to ground.
It lasted a few seconds, and then recovered, and I flew home safely, it appears that the gimbal went into some malfunction, no warnings were posted. It was very scary.
Anyone got any ideas? I have hundreds of flights on this craft, and never crashed.
The craft was quite close, but I was looking at the screen at the time, and panicking , but the craft was actually holding position OK, I reviewed the flight on DJI and could see the screen slider display for the gimbal control bouncing around with no input from me.

I have 2 theories:-
1. The mode slider for sport had been pushed a small amount by the device holder which had an ipad mini4, and may not have been making good contact.

2. No evidence for this, but it was a different sd card.
 
gimbal reset, mid flight. Came after a fairly fast yawing to the left if I am seeing the video correctly. What you see on the video is the same as if you did a gimbal calibration with the drone on the ground. The gimbal recovered with a slightly tilted horizon, which is common with the MPP

I have have had this occur with MPP a couple of times. And I agree it's a strange thing when it happens, with no reasons.

I believe a bird strike would have brought you down. Your drone seemed to be flying in normal conditions, just had the gimbal scramble.

Paul C
 
gimbal reset, mid flight. Came after a fairly fast yawing to the left if I am seeing the video correctly. What you see on the video is the same as if you did a gimbal calibration with the drone on the ground. The gimbal recovered with a slightly tilted horizon, which is common with the MPP

I have have had this occur with MPP a couple of times. And I agree it's a strange thing when it happens, with no reasons.

I believe a bird strike would have brought you down. Your drone seemed to be flying in normal conditions, just had the gimbal scramble.

Paul C
Thanks, do you think it was the fast left yaw, how can I prevent it in future, should I do a gimbal recalibrate now on the ground.
I do not normally do fast yaws as no good for video, but I will go out now and test to see if I can reproduce this.
Good to know others have had this problem, and I agree it was not a bird strike.
Thanks.
 
I would do a gimbal calibration, just takes a minute or two. You have not noticed this before, so I would not worry to much. It happens to the M2 Pro, P4 Vr 2.0 etc. They all do it. Gimble scramble.

Yawing, fast tends to give the MPP a tilted horizon, which in.a video can be difficult to correct, not hard in a still. My MPP will usually re-align the horizon when it starts to tilt. But if I fly it fast or yaw it quickly for sure the horizon tilts. And it can take several seconds to get it back.

If you keep getting it, you might also try a full camera reset, although, not sure if that will have any effect on the gimbal controls.

Also, I am assuming this is a MP or MPP, if so, double check your gimbal mount and make sure all four corners of the gimbal plate are still under their respective rubber bands. and you can also make sure the main hook on the bottom center of the gimbal plate is still secured.

If one of those bands broke in flight, odds are it would cause this. The gimbal is the weak link on the MPP. If you are flying a M2 Pro, or zoom and this happened not much to check physically, but still would consider a calibration.

Paul C
 
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I would do a gimbal calibration, just takes a minute or two. You have not noticed this before, so I would not worry to much. It happens to the M2 Pro, P4 Vr 2.0 etc. They all do it. Gimble scramble.

Yawing, fast tends to give the MPP a tilted horizon, which in.a video can be difficult to correct, not hard in a still. My MPP will usually re-align the horizon when it starts to tilt. But if I fly it fast or yaw it quickly for sure the horizon tilts. And it can take several seconds to get it back.

If you keep getting it, you might also try a full camera reset, although, not sure if that will have any effect on the gimbal controls.

Also, I am assuming this is a MP or MPP, if so, double check your gimbal mount and make sure all four corners of the gimbal plate are still under their respective rubber bands. and you can also make sure the main hook on the bottom center of the gimbal plate is still secured.

If one of those bands broke in flight, odds are it would cause this. The gimbal is the weak link on the MPP. If you are flying a M2 Pro, or zoom and this happened not much to check physically, but still would consider a calibration.

Paul C
Paul, thanks.Yes it is Mavic pro. I have done all you suggest, but not camera reset, and have done IMU calibrate, and compass, I will go and test. Re assuring to know others have a Gimbal scramble.
Thinking back, I think I had this on my P4 once, but not as violent.
I will do a test run tonight.
 
I would do a gimbal calibration, just takes a minute or two. You have not noticed this before, so I would not worry to much. It happens to the M2 Pro, P4 Vr 2.0 etc. They all do it. Gimble scramble.

Yawing, fast tends to give the MPP a tilted horizon, which in.a video can be difficult to correct, not hard in a still. My MPP will usually re-align the horizon when it starts to tilt. But if I fly it fast or yaw it quickly for sure the horizon tilts. And it can take several seconds to get it back.

If you keep getting it, you might also try a full camera reset, although, not sure if that will have any effect on the gimbal controls.

Also, I am assuming this is a MP or MPP, if so, double check your gimbal mount and make sure all four corners of the gimbal plate are still under their respective rubber bands. and you can also make sure the main hook on the bottom center of the gimbal plate is still secured.

If one of those bands broke in flight, odds are it would cause this. The gimbal is the weak link on the MPP. If you are flying a M2 Pro, or zoom and this happened not much to check physically, but still would consider a calibration.

Paul C
Paul, thanks.Yes it is Mavic pro. I have done all you suggest, but not camera reset, and have done IMU calibrate, and compass, I will go and test. Re assuring to know others have a Gimbal scramble.
Thinking back, I think I had this on my P4 once, but not as violent.
I will do a test run tonight.
Bird attack ?
Went out to test calibrations, and the Swallows came out to play.swallow from mavic.jpg
 
Happened to me - I reformatted my 64 gb SD card and started using a new 90 degree cable and it went away. I am not sure whether it was all the crud in the mobile device port but there was a ton of lint in there that i cleaned out with forced air. From everything I have read I think it was something to do with the cache and the sd card - unfortunately I changed too many variables at once to be 100 percent sure. Also when this happens and you are recording, the recording stops doesn't it - hard to get it on video to post here as the camera is reset kinda.
 
Happened to me - I reformatted my 64 gb SD card and started using a new 90 degree cable and it went away. I am not sure whether it was all the crud in the mobile device port but there was a ton of lint in there that i cleaned out with forced air. From everything I have read I think it was something to do with the cache and the sd card - unfortunately I changed too many variables at once to be 100 percent sure. Also when this happens and you are recording, the recording stops doesn't it - hard to get it on video to post here as the camera is reset kinda.
Same here. I've never have been able to capture it on video. If it was a bird you'd see the movement on camera. I was using a cheaper 64 card so I replaced it with a higher quality 32 gig card and so far so good. Not a nice feeling especially over water.
 
It's definitely a gimbal reset. Historically for an MPP and MP, gimbal resets during flight were associated with the aspects of the SD card. I've experienced this several times with a 64 gb sd card. Went down to a 32 gb and never had the problem again in 400 or more flights. Now your problem could be related to some other issue, but that's my two cents...
 
You say you have hundreds of flight with no issue.?
I would replace the ribbon cable & little rubber bands on the corner’s of the camera mount ...As a Maintenance Item
And have with just over 40 flights
And did I fly my birds hard
And probably why I don’t have nice thing

..... and Incase the old guard is read this
The answer is
Yes
.

“. I’m still on fire”

M2P is still Amazing

...... cR
 
Thats a little RANDOM!!
 
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I had this happen to me yesterday! I had been flying for just over nine minutes, was almost back to home point, was on the last turn to come back home, and my gimbal reset. I thought for sure I had a bird strike, and it was about to fall into the river. However, there are a couple of other weird things, not sure if it is related: the file size for this video on the SD card was 3.995GB. It normally creates a new file before it reaches 4GB and continues the recording. But this time, it just stopped recording just before the gimbal reset, apparently due to the "event". So I can't even show you the video of the event. I checked the log on my iPad, and it shows it as a 13 minute flight, but the video time shows as "--:--". I can't figure out how to retrieve the local copy off the iPad, as I have never done that before. Here is my flight log: Note that the gimbal reset occurred about 9:35 into the flight. Ignore the sport mode at the end, that was after the event and had nothing to do with it.
Sorry to "hop onto" this thread, but the symptoms seem the same.
 
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It is re assuring to know that this is a common fault, I am sure it is connected with the sd card somehow.
I have had minor wobbles when I exceed the max file size, and sometimes a new file is not created, and filming stops. But the event in my original post was much more extreme.
 
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Maybe it was a raptor?
Here’s my friendly swallow!
 

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