Update:

Updating the propellers fixed the issue so far


What do you guys think?

https://app.airdata.com/share/WmxFBi

Update with more info includes files
https://app.airdata.com/share/Rgttzs


is it the propellers? how often do you guys change yours.
update: 2
https://app.airdata.com/share/KDsrQx
This is the actual video for the second test

You need to tick the Share box so that others can see the actual data.
Then we might be able to have an idea what happened.

Labroides Posted at 2-19 16:52
You need to tick the Share box so that others can see the actual data.
Then we might be able to have an idea what happened.

It works for me on an incognito browser. not sure why it wouldnt work for you

chileanbyone Posted at 2-19 17:00
It works for me on an incognito browser. not sure why it wouldnt work for you

Here's what yours looks like on the right.
I need to see something like what's on the right so I can see the actual data.
What's important is highlighted in red.

You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load and you should to try to go easy on the way back. Share the actual flight data file as Lab instructed above.

Guorium Posted at 2-19 17:52
You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load and you should to try to go easy on the way back. Share the actual flight data file as Lab instructed above.

You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load.
Does anyone ever see these Not Enough Force/ESC Error warnings on their screen?
Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?
They never show in the recorded flight data.
The motors and te ESCs are unlikely to be the problem.
The props attached to the motors are the most likely suspect.

Labroides Posted at 2-19 19:01
You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load.
Does anyone ever see these Not Enough Force/ESC Error warnings on their screen?
Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?

You shared a video before titled "Is this a fix?" which you were convinced with. The precursor of that video is from the same youtuber titled ". At 00:51, the error is shown as 'max power load reached'.  That is reported as "No enough force/ ESC error" in phantumhelp as shown in this thread.

So no people would see 'ESC error' on screen. Instead, they see 'max power load reached'. That message could represent any fault on the line beyond ESC which includes ESC, motor, and props. Props are the easiest fix one can try and probably the most effective solution from what people have reported online. Agreed.

Yes, I have seen the "max power load reached" message on the screen and that correlated with the ESC error message in the report file. I was flying with flotation pontoons attached and just hovering aside the wind without payload mode enabled.

Labroides Posted at 2-19 17:25
Here's what yours looks like on the right.
I need to see something like what's on the right so I can see the actual data.
What's important is highlighted in red.

try this one
https://app.airdata.com/share/Rgttzs

Labroides Posted at 2-19 19:01
You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load.
Does anyone ever see these Not Enough Force/ESC Error warnings on their screen?
Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?

I can't recall now that you mention it. BUt I believe I do.

Labroides Posted at 2-19 19:01
You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load.
Does anyone ever see these Not Enough Force/ESC Error warnings on their screen?
Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?

I've not seen this, except to see the odd warning reported here, but it seems to be riddled all over airdata logs .

chileanbyone Posted at 2-20 06:11
try this one
https://app.airdata.com/share/Rgttzs

Thanks .. here's what your flight data looks like:
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/APAA6JIW5140583NQYRE/

The first issue I see in the data is that you launched with a partially discharged battery showing XX%.
The % indicator will only give an accurate information if the battery was fully charged to start the flight.
Launching with a partially discharged battery can cause fall-from-the-sky problems with the cells draining much faster than you expect.

That wasn't the cause of your incident though, just something to keep in mind for future flights.

This flight went normally until 4:05.7 when the Mini started having difficulty holding altitude.
At 4:07.8 you gave it some gentle left stick input which made no difference.
After some full left stick input at 4:13.7 the descent stopped and the Mini was holding altitude again.
But shortly after, at 4:18.5 it was descending again and more left stick failed to stop it until 4:35.5 when the drone mysteriously started climbing even though the left stick was centred.

This was very strange and the cause is a complete mystery to me.
It climbed until it reached 84 ft at 4:48.8 when the uncommanded descent started again and was active through till you landed.

This is just another scary example of a Mini that can't hold altitude and is descending without any joystick input.ven worse, the uncommanded descending does not respond when you push the left stick upwards.

DJI hasn't shown any hint of recognising this problem yet.
The cause is mysterious but the best guess is that something about the props is changing over time.
If I was you I'd change the props before flying again and I'd be very careful about where I fly.
I'd also contact DJI support and file a claim because this flight behaviour has caused the loss of too many Minis and is unacceptable.

Labroides Posted at 2-20 13:24
Thanks .. here's what your flight data looks like:
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/APAA6JIW5140583NQYRE/

Thank you for your valuable input and feedback

Yes it was very scary to push the stick up and not seeing any signs of it going up

MISTERIOUSLY I did not panic and kind of hope for the best and eventually it stopped falling to regain altitude. Just very scary to see it go down that fast

Here is another example.

It actually touched ground.

I have video.

It was windy

Good hint: Fly sideways!!!

https://app.airdata.com/share/KDsrQx

ESC not enough force sometimes mean too thin air, or motors rotating too freely (due to flattened propellers) to correctly generating the lift required.

But that drop... despite the wind (which must have been very strong at height by MM standards) makes me think there's something else. It seems to happen flying against the wind.

I find it difficult to explain but it's like by using all the available rotational speed of the motors to move it kind of stalls the props (in case of forward motion, the rear)so the AC can move but no longer has the necessary lift to maintain altitude.

This is the actual video for the second test

For some reason this link doesn't work for me on my android, can't even copy it, shame really

chileanbyone Posted at 2-20 16:11
This is the actual video for the second test

https://youtu.be/J1ttZOZTLAU

That looks like you were flying below the threshold temp for flying the mini .

Labroides Posted at 2-19 19:01
You got the dreaded ESC error. It means your motors are under an uncomfortable level of load.
Does anyone ever see these Not Enough Force/ESC Error warnings on their screen?
Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?

"Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?"

Believe Phantom Help Log viewer is not detecting "Not Enough Force/ESC" error, thus not flagging it in Messaga column on webpage.

If you download verbose CSV file from Phantom Help's output for flight, and look at Column labeled "OSD.isNotEnoughForce" using Excel (or similar), you will see field normally is FALSE.  But around time AirData flags "Not Enough Force/ESC"; "OSD.isNotEnoughForce" Column in CSV file changes to TRUE.   

The times between "Not Enough Force/ESC" in AirData output and Phantom Help files verbose CSV file when "OSD.isNotEnoughForce" Column entry changes from FALSE to TRUE are off by roughly 1-second.   The AirData CSV and Phantom Help CSV differ at their respective start times (hh:mm:ss) for log entries.  

HedgeTrimmer Posted at 2-20 22:50
"Or are they just Airdata interpreting the data whenever the drone is sinking and failing to maintain altitude?"

Believe Phantom Help Log viewer is not detecting "Not Enough Force/ESC" error, thus not flagging it in Messaga column on webpage.

To quickly check Phantom Help verbose CSV file for Not Enough Force errors:

Search for "OSD.isNotEnoughForce", which should be found in Column "AT" of spread sheet.
Select Entire Column with heading of "OSD.isNotEnoughForce" (Column "AT").
Search for "TRUE"

In case of OP's second flight log, first "TRUE" will show up on Line #2226, Time Stamp ("CUSTOM.updateTime") of 49:18.9.

HedgeTrimmer Posted at 2-21 01:22
To quickly check Phantom Help verbose CSV file for Not Enough Force errors:

Search for "OSD.isNotEnoughForce", which should be found in Column "AT" of spread sheet.

One of the latest decrypter version does read the MM messages

In the log at 3m43.8 (ph help one) this message: " Aircraft max power load reached. Decrease altitude and fly with caution. If this issue persists, Land immediately"

24x times a NotEnoughPower logging.
Some fields are indeed written each second,
Most of the fields are written each 1/10 second.
Some fields are not written at all, so FALSE is always FALSE/TRUE even in actual setting dictates a TRUE/FALSE value. *
Some fields are only written when the next value is different than the old value. **

* i.e. the obstacle on/off setting
** i.e. VPS height value

cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 2-21 02:31
One of the latest decrypter version does read the MM messages

In the log at 3m43.8 (ph help one) this message: " Aircraft max power load reached. Decrease altitude and fly with caution. If this issue persists, Land immediately"

One quick & dirty way for command line bunch (Unicies)...

awk -F"," '/,/{if($46!="False")print $0}'  [name of verbose .csv file]
awk -F"," '/,/{if($46!="False")print $0}'  DJIFlightRecord_2020-02-19_[14-45-35]-TxtLogToCsv.csv

No ESC errors, and alll you should get back is single line of .csv files column headers.

HedgeTrimmer Posted at 2-21 08:45
One quick & dirty way for command line bunch (Unicies)...

awk -F"," '/,/{if($46!="False")print $0}'  [name of verbose .csv file]

yep, i do it in a different way....  thanks

m80116 Posted at 2-20 16:07
ESC not enough force sometimes mean too thin air, or motors rotating too freely (due to flattened propellers) to correctly generating the lift required.

But that drop... despite the wind (which must have been very strong at height by MM standards) makes me think there's something else. It seems to happen flying against the wind.

But that drop... despite the wind (which must have been very strong at height by MM standards) makes me think there's something else. It seems to happen flying against the wind.
You would think that because you are just guessing.
But the wind wasn't a problem at all.
If you actually look at the recorded flight data you can see that the wind was not a factor.
Go to 0:57.8 and you'll see that at 100 ft altitude and joysticks centred, the drone was hovering perfectly maintaining horizontal position and altitude.
Look again at 2:36, altitude 147 ft - it's still the same.

This post explains what really happened without any guessing:
https://forum.dji.com/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=209377&pid=2090704

Update:

Updating the propellers fixed the issue so far

chileanbyone Posted at 2-24 08:56
Update:

Updating the propellers fixed the issue so far

That’s great, hopefully it’s a result, first set of props you had on, did you put them on yourself or did they come with the drone ?

hallmark007 Posted at 2-24 09:03
That’s great, hopefully it’s a result, first set of props you had on, did you put them on yourself or did they come with the drone ?

They came with the Drone.

chileanbyone Posted at 2-24 09:06
They came with the Drone.

OK good luck .

chileanbyone Posted at 2-24 08:56
Update:

Updating the propellers fixed the issue so far

Updating?   Or simply replacing with stock props?

Is the material too soft, and the props deform under load after X number of flights?  That would account for a higher rpm to maintain flight altitude.......

Randy

rwynant V1 Posted at 2-25 11:35
Updating?   Or simply replacing with stock props?

Is the material too soft, and the props deform under load after X number of flights?  That would account for a higher rpm to maintain flight altitude.......

for sure i check my props often now, looks and feel.

And when my MM is nor flying, its never folded in my case. Only during transport its folded.
Have no idea if that is important, but feels better  :-)

cheers
JJB