Well that was terrifying.. Controller disconnected and crashed into a kayak!

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

Haven't flown it a ton, but have flown enough to know when somethings not right.

Today, flying on vacation, put the mavic up and almost immediately screen on the tablet goes black/white and it said disconnected, but this wasn't just an app crashing, I had ZERO control over the mavic and it was blinking yellow.. it slowly came down and luckily we had a couple kayaks out back.. even though I have pontoons for it, I figured a crash into a kayak would be better vs risking getting salt water in the motors/camera..

I've since changed the settings so that it will hover in place if disconnected. And I'll be inflating a tube for a landing pad instead of a kayak.

So the question is WTF happened here?

I only was going to be at this location once, so I reset everything and took it back up, which it then flew for 9 minutes with no problem. HOWEVER after getting it back on the boat, and putting it on a table, again it disconnected!! This time I took my time.. restarting tablet/reconnecting tablet did nothing, restarting the drone did not do anything, it was only till I restarted the remote control that it reconnected.

I then left it on the boat connected for a 15 min ride home, just sitting on the deck.. didn't lose connection once! This is some scary $#*@

Video of first incident, trouble starts at 1:30:

Photo is of the second time it disconnected.. LED is again blinking.

Luckily no damage at all..

Ping^Spike · Jul 20, 2017

Brilliant save mate!

Is telling it to hover if disconnect a wise idea? What happens if you can't reconnect it? It might be 500m out to sea at 120ft high... or disconnect while flying over a building...

My first thoughts would be a dodgy USB cable.

KiterTodd · Jul 20, 2017

I'm confused on your save here...

...did it try to come home and you were able to maneuver kayaks under it as it was landing? In any case, nice save!

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

Ping^Spike said:
Brilliant save mate!

Is telling it to hover if disconnect a wise idea? What happens if you can't reconnect it? It might be 500m out to sea at 120ft high... or disconnect while flying over a building...

My first thoughts would be a dodgy USB cable.

Yeah, I thought it wasnt a good idea to hover in place either, till it lost connection and wouldn't respond and started descending into the water on its own!!

Would a dodgy usb cable cause the RC to stop controlling the mavic? I thought no matter what the tablet/phone is doing you should still be able to fly it.. which I am capable of, but it wasn't responding to anything.. now I realize I should have quickly powered down the control and powered it back up... at the time when it started it's decent I was just pondering if I was going to jump into the water and try and save it and looking for other options.

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

KiterTodd said:
I'm confused on your save here...

...did it try to come home and you were able to maneuver kayaks under it as it was landing? In any case, nice save!

I put it up in the air, 90 seconds in the tablet screen is black and white and says disconnected, the remote control says "connecting" and as I'm scrambling around the boat for my hat and sunglasses so I can locate it, I find them both, locate the drone, grab the control because I'm assuming it's just hovering, I realize I'm wrong and that it's descending to it's home point, so wondering what I should do, thinking about jumping in, or not, looking for other options, notice the yellow blinking led... and I just pushed the kayak under it, thankfully it flipped into the kayak.. and when it was upsidown it shut off on its own.

I'd love to pass on some log files to anyone who can read them..

Mavic_Pete · Jul 20, 2017

What I learned here... dont launch your drone from Kayaks as a homepoint. And if you are planing on doing it put drone on Hover if disconnected and not return home. Got it! On a side note WOW what a save!

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

yeah, ha ha, actually it launched from the swim platform of the boat.. but like most boats..it moved!!

Mavic_Pete · Jul 20, 2017

J3ffrey said:
yeah, ha ha, actually it launched from the swim platform of the boat.. but like most boats..it moved!!

Haha watched it like 4 times. At first i thought you had it floating in the water next to the kayaks! makes sense it was on the boat platform.. still cant believe the save! Hopefully you figure out what went wrong. I would have $h*t my pants lol

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

I've been reading tons about people who have problems with the tablet/phone disconnecting from the remote, which in my case is perfectly fine because every other drone I've flown I fly by line of sight, so bringing it in manually with no video from the drone would have been okay. Imagine my surprise when I grab the remote look up, as I'm pressing forward to bring it more into my sight (blocked by the top of the boat for a few seconds as it was swinging..) and see that it's doing this weird yellow blinky thing and not taking any commands from the remote!!

Mavic_Pete · Jul 20, 2017

J3ffrey said:
I've been reading tons about people who have problems with the tablet/phone disconnecting from the remote, which in my case is perfectly fine because every other drone I've flown I fly by line of sight, so bringing it in manually with no video from the drone would have been okay. Imagine my surprise when I grab the remote look up, as I'm pressing forward to bring it more into my sight (blocked by the top of the boat for a few seconds as it was swinging..) and see that it's doing this weird yellow blinky thing and not taking any commands from the remote!!

Yeah all of my previous drones did not have video and were flow by line of sight as well. So if that ever happens again is the next best thing to power down the controller as fast as possible and turn it back on?

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

Mavic_Pete said:
Yeah all of my previous drones did not have video and were flow by line of sight as well. So if that ever happens again is the next best thing to power down the controller as fast as possible and turn it back on?

I think so... hoping some of the pros will chime in!

J3ffrey · Jul 20, 2017

Geeze, 265 views and no one else has had the drone disconnect from the controller mid flight??

Robbyg · Jul 20, 2017

Upload the DAT file from the mavic using the instructions that are in the link in my signature. I will take a look. PM me when they are uploaded.

Rob

logge · Jul 21, 2017

J3ffrey said:
Geeze, 265 views and no one else has had the drone disconnect from the controller mid flight??

It happened to me several times the last few weeks. The first time it was only a few meters in front of me, first it lost video, then the controller disconnected as well. Was pretty scary since it went straight up, then started to move away on its own so at first I thought it was going to fly away somehow. Fortunately it turned and came back to land, and I also regained the connection when it was nearly landed.

After that I had problems with the video feed disconnecting many times. I tried a different USB cable, but didn't really help. Killing and restarting the GO 4 app has been getting the feed back every time though so I really think the issue is with the app.

Kilrah · Jul 21, 2017

I would suggest your controller is probably faulty if rebooting it is the solution.

Also hover in place may not really be appropriate. RTH is much better - BUT you've got to be wise in choosing your home point, especially with understanding of the "will land in place if closer than X of the home point".

J. Kotikangas · Jul 21, 2017

Hi,
I've had same thing happen to me. First I only lost mobile from the unit, but on another flight I completely lost connection and the unit was only few meters away from me at that time. Thank god for RTH as unit was above water. However RTH it worked perfectly at that time.
I've read somewhere that clearing cache from your mobile and removing & reinstalling app would help and it seemed to help. I've had some glitches after reinstalling the app,
but I've always got connection back and those disconnections / interferences might have been caused by bad positioning of unit ( was straight above me ).

GerdS · Jul 21, 2017

I have experienced that already for several times. Connection loss was caused by USB connection problems between controller and mobile device, e..g. if the GO4 app begins lagging of because of cable problems, especially with the short cables for the left side of the controller.
If this happens the best thing you can do is disconnecting the mobile device, powering off the controller and then powering on again. In all cases I regained control and was able to cancel the RTH which usually has started meanwhile because of the signal loss.

Brojon · Jul 21, 2017

Whew! Great save!
Now nobody flame me but I see an awful lot of "disconnected" posts that are of Mavics with skins.
Wonder if something in the materials might be contributing to the problem since your MP was obviously in range and not obstructed.