Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 09:04
The fail safes do not work if the drone flies off on its own, this is what I am asking, plus, they are hardware, I am on about some code, if sticks = central stay blooming put

If it has flown off for some inexplicable reason, then it would most likely be caused by a glitch in the aircrafts firmware or a hardware failure. So unlikely they could programme a failsafe. If magnetic errors are detected then the system itself prompts the pilot to switch to ATTI mode (on the P4s). Which then puts it under pilots control. And if it drifts to loss of control signal then it will RTH but only if it has satellite reception.

One potential option for them might be to build in tracking option through a built in GPS tracker. But these wouldn't work if no cell reception available.
I think all we can do is try the best we can to make sure all is good before take off.

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 09:04
The fail safes do not work if the drone flies off on its own, this is what I am asking, plus, they are hardware, I am on about some code, if sticks = central stay blooming put

Bashy, my point is that this is a complex system of hardware and software and if the damn thing does something way-stupid, it could be a number of things in the control loop thats causing it.  

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 06:27
Please do download the CSV and see what you can make of it.  That day the wind was from the north west, the ac shot off to the west, so it couldnt have been the wind.....

What was your take off point, from the sunroof of car ?

I just wrote  frigging long reply  and lost it, cant be asked to write it all again,  already been through my issue on another thread i created, my issue is not the issue, the ac itself is the issue, im just using mine as a good example as to why a fail safe would be a good idea, you guys are getting bogged down in semantics.

Why cant a IFTTT be added, if compass error and if no stick input,  then  hover

If it has flown off for some inexplicable reason, then it would most likely be caused by a glitch in the aircrafts firmware or a hardware failure.  So unlikely they could programme a failsafe. If magnetic errors are detected then the system itself prompts the pilot to switch to ATTI mode (on the P4s).

You can see in my link above, it went in to atti on its own, you can see on the csv that it flew off on its own, it went to the left (westward), in atti mode, against the direction of the wind (coming from the north west) a failsafe in the coding would have prevented this because certain criteria could have been met, compass error, yaw error, motor speed without stick input etc surely it could be written in to tell it to hover insted of fly off. Hell, why cant it be told to stay put on a compass error alone cause the rest of the errors follow that.

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 20:53
I just wrote  frigging long reply  and lost it, cant be asked to write it all again,  already been through my issue on another thread i created, my issue is not the issue, the ac itself is the issue, im just using mine as a good example as to why a fail safe would be a good idea, you guys are getting bogged down in semantics.

Why cant a IFTTT be added, if compass error and if no stick input,  then  hover

It was trying to hover, so your suggested failsafe would make no difference.

The problem is that without the compass working correctly, it is not capable of hovering.

We do know from other aircraft that it is possible to hover without a compass, but the flight controller in the Phantom 4 appears not to be able to do so.

It shouldn't need the compass to hover, that's GPS....

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 23:15
It shouldn't need the compass to hover, that's GPS....

GPS told it that it was out of position by x amount NNE of the correct position, so it attempted to fly x amount SSW, however SSW on the compass was actually NW so flying that direction made things worse.

GPS does not give a compass direction, only a location, the Phantom 4 gets the direction from the compass.  It would be possible to get a compass direction from GPS by flying a small circle and watching how the location changes, then you could rely on the gyros to keep on target for a while, but most photographers wouldn't be very happy if their drones kept flying small circles before moving anywhere and those that do mapping wouldn't be happy if the gyros drifted slightly off target while flying a grid.

Given that around 99.9% of flights are successful, I think the use of the compass is maybe acceptable...

I suppose that if this has not happened to you then you don't see any issues the way things are, you would need to experience what I did to see what I mean and why a failsafe would be beneficial....

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-13 00:15
I suppose that if this has not happened to you then you don't see any issues the way things are, you would need to experience what I did to see what I mean and why a failsafe would be beneficial....

The failsafe is to drop into Atti mode, which in your case it has failed to do, maybe because it couldn't tell the difference between being off target due to a compass error and being off target due to strong wind.  It did give you a warning message so you could have activated Atti mode yourself and instantly regained control, assuming you were capable of flying Atti mode in whatever wind conditions you had.

I've never experienced a problem flying off a sunroof, mainly because I read both the manual and many posts in this forum to learn about the risks and common mistakes before I started flying the Phantom 4.

It was in atti mode, there was no strong winds, and again it flew into the wind, so the wind is not factor in my issue,





Hindsight is a glorious thing, but i took off from glass and i took off because it show NO errors, they only appeared a few feet in the air, by then it was too late

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-13 00:56
It was in atti mode, there was no strong winds, and again it flew into the wind, so the wind is not factor in my issue,

It was in Atti for half a second, then it went back to "GPS_Atti", which I assume is the normal P mode, although I don't often download the CSV files from that website so I might be wrong...

AH i see, yeah, youre right, that must be normal gps mode, the atti part threw me off...

Bashy Posted at 2018-7-12 01:00
It was the 1 and only time i took off from my sunroof

Thanks and handy to know.