I had a rather scary incident with our Inspire 2 today and I wondered if I could get DJI's thoughts on what happened as I was lucky this time and managed to rescue the situation but may not be so lucky in the future.
It was a ususal start to one of our jobs, I was working with a client supplied team working as observer and spotters. I fitted our X7 camera to the Inspire and after some inital photo setting changes and the ususal checks I took off to start the first shot. The landing gear went up as normal and all seemed fine until I tried to focus on the subject. The camera would not focus at all, when i clicked on the screen the focus mode would change back to MF. I then noticed the aperture was not changing either. I've seen this before and reseating the lens normally fixes it so I brought the Inspire back to land and reseat the lens.

I always use manual landing gear and on flicking the landing gear lever the app said "Landing Gear Lowering" but the actual gear did not move! I tried Atti mode and that was the same. I tried rebooting the crystalsky monitor and that made no fifference either so I eventually decided to try RTH. The Inspire stared it's auto landing proceedure as it should but it started to land with the gear still up and would have done so if I didnt override it a few meters from the ground.

I was starting to get quite concerned as it seemed the only option was to hand catch it and my team were not experienced at doing this so I couldnt ask them to attempt it, I had no choice but to try and catch it myself at the same time as powering it down with the remote. Luckily I managed to pull it off, I grabbed the base of the Inspire at the perfect balance point and pulled the throttle down and it shut off.

The landing gear was still up at this point so I pulled the batteries, restarted the Inspire and then the landing gear starting functioning again. I then reseated the lens and all was fine fr the rest of the day.

This is a really scary incident though and I would like to know what caused it and what I can do next time to recover the Inspire if it happens again.

Many thanks.

Paul

Mine did that. Had to send it to dji to get a $600 piece replaced. Thank god for warranties and dji care

Hello there. We sincerely apologize for what happened. Are there any error messages appeared in the app during that incident?

Hi Wanda.

The first part of the flight does not seem to have generated a flight record, I did do a reboot of the crystal sky mid flight so I'm not sure if that would explain the loss of file. I certainly did not read anything unusual. Once rebooted the flight log did continue and the errors / notifications were as follows....

007: Obstacle avoidance disabled
012: Landing gear function restored
016: Landing gear raising
031: Obstacle sensing will be disabled when aircraft is landing, fly with caution
034: Aircraft is too close to home point, initiating RTH will no longer trigger auto landing
035: Obstacle sensing will be disabled when aircraft is landing, fly with caution
035: Landing gear function restored
036: Landing gear lowering

As I say, throughout this the landing gear remained fully up. Prior to rebooting the crystalsky I tried many times to toggle the landing gear and every time the app reported the landing gear going up and down but the actual gear did not move.
I performed 9 more flights after this happened and all worked correctly. I will try to replicate the lens not connecting properly on the X7 and see if I can then reproduce the landing gear being effected.

Paul Joy Posted at 2018-7-17 05:16
Hi Wanda.

The first part of the flight does not seem to have generated a flight record, I did do a reboot of the crystal sky mid flight so I'm not sure if that would explain the loss of file. I certainly did not read anything unusual. Once rebooted the flight log did continue and the errors / notifications were as follows....

Alright. Please let us know if the problem still persists.

Hi Wanda, I thought I'd update this thread as the problem occurred again today. it wasn't related to any lens issues this time but exactly the same symptoms. First flight of the day and on landing the gear wouldn't come down so I had to hand catch it. Even after rebooting the inspire and the remote the gear still wouldn't come down and holding that thing in flight mode with the X7 attached is no easy thing!

After multiple reboots of the drone, the controller and the crystal-sky it eventually started working again and performed correctly for the rest of the day. I did have another landing gear related issue on a job last week when I couldn't get the Inspire 2 out of travel mode. The usual 5 presses on the power switch did nothing and pressing the ext travel mode option in the app also did nothing. I eventually found that attaching the camera before powering up did the trick and it came out of landing mode.

Do I need to get this machine fixed or are these likely firmware issues? (all the latest firmware).

Another day and it happened again on a job. It's getting really embarrassing now. First problem was once again when I pressed the power button five times to bring it out of travel mode it started moving for a moment then stopped. Multiple reboots didn't make any difference, but once again attaching the camera and rebooting both the aircraft and the controller then fixed it.

First flight I took off and tested gear up and down just after launch and it worked fine. I flew the mission and upon returning to land the gear once again wouldn't come down, I had to hand catch it. taking the camera off and then multiple reboots combined with lifting it away from the floor finally started it working again.

Is it just mine or is it this latest firmware?

DCarnahan Posted at 2018-7-16 16:02
Mine did that. Had to send it to dji to get a $600 piece replaced. Thank god for warranties and dji care

What did they replace?

Try cycling the gear a few times with the worm gear and add some dry lube to the worm gear. I used Frog Lube.