Various people are trying to claim all manner of issues but I had my drone do this *on the ground*. Had a decent flight, landed, props decreased speed as normal but didn't go all the way down to idle which was odd. As I was trying to figure out what was wrong, it just flipped itself over. Seems to have damaged stuff inside the motors in the process.

It wasn't flying and it wasn't being interacted with. It's just really buggy software, that's all. No weird winds, animals or hardware disintegrations.

adh1003 Posted at 1-7 01:04
Various people are trying to claim all manner of issues but I had my drone do this *on the ground*. Had a decent flight, landed, props decreased speed as normal but didn't go all the way down to idle which was odd. As I was trying to figure out what was wrong, it just flipped itself over. Seems to have damaged stuff inside the motors in the process.

It wasn't flying and it wasn't being interacted with. It's just really buggy software, that's all. No weird winds, animals or hardware disintegrations.

You neglected to tell us how you went about shutting the motors off.  

Please be specific.  

adh1003 Posted at 1-7 01:04
Various people are trying to claim all manner of issues but I had my drone do this *on the ground*. Had a decent flight, landed, props decreased speed as normal but didn't go all the way down to idle which was odd. As I was trying to figure out what was wrong, it just flipped itself over. Seems to have damaged stuff inside the motors in the process.

It wasn't flying and it wasn't being interacted with. It's just really buggy software, that's all. No weird winds, animals or hardware disintegrations.

That happened because the aircraft has no idea you are on the ground. There is no sensor for this, so it is still trying to maintain position as if it is still in the air. As soon as you set down you must pull the throttle stick fully down and hold it there until the motors stop. Do not leave it idling or it will do exactly what it did to you.

Mark The Droner / Geebax: Stick slightly down for drone to descend vertically until touchdown. Motor speed decreased but not to usual low level; a kind of mid rate idle, less than it'd need to hover, more than when first powered up or typically idle. Attempt same stick full down. No response. Have encountered this before; using the "auto land" feature via the connected iPhone/iPad then usually gets it to actually just turn off the engines. Release sticks. Still above idle. Look at phone and am about to swipe for auto-land, but drone then flips over.

No, I didn't graze the sticks. Besides, I've no idea how I'd get the drone on the ground in "partially idle" state to deliberately just flip completely head over heels - hell, I don't know how I'd even try to get it to do that in the air. Perhaps you could enlighten me about how it's the pilot's fault that the drone did something I don't believe it's actually even possible to intentionally provoke in flight anyway? Or am I missing something about the Phantom 3 that it does in fact include the ability to attempt to fly inverted? :-)

adh1003 Posted at 1-24 00:21
Mark The Droner / Geebax: Stick slightly down for drone to descend vertically until touchdown. Motor speed decreased but not to usual low level; a kind of mid rate idle, less than it'd need to hover, more than when first powered up or typically idle. Attempt same stick full down. No response. Have encountered this before; using the "auto land" feature via the connected iPhone/iPad then usually gets it to actually just turn off the engines. Release sticks. Still above idle. Look at phone and am about to swipe for auto-land, but drone then flips over.

No, I didn't graze the sticks. Besides, I've no idea how I'd get the drone on the ground in "partially idle" state to deliberately just flip completely head over heels - hell, I don't know how I'd even try to get it to do that in the air. Perhaps you could enlighten me about how it's the pilot's fault that the drone did something I don't believe it's actually even possible to intentionally provoke in flight anyway? Or am I missing something about the Phantom 3 that it does in fact include the ability to attempt to fly inverted? :-)

I really can't add anything to Geebax's response above, which is spot on, but I'll give it a go.  You were able to descend and land via the stick-down.  When it touches down, the motors are still spinning (at whatever level) and the aircraft still thinks it is in flight.  It is up to you to turn off the motors, otherwise you must consider the aircraft to still be in-flight.  Leaving an aircraft idling on the ground invariably results in an upset and a flip of some description.  Because it thinks it is in flight, any wobble or unsteadiness caused by the terrain or a breeze or rotor wash will cause the body to tilt.  The aircraft will spin up an opposing motor to counteract the disturbance (just as it would in flight) to remain stable.  Unfortunately corrections like this while it is touching the ground will result in an instability, which quickly gets out of control as one correction leads to a bigger counter-correction, which leads to yet another...  leading to a flip.  Once inverted, the aircraft will have a single purpose -- spin up a pair of motors as hard as it can and try to right itself.  It will do this to the exclusion of all other controls until it is the right way up.

The advice is not to leave an aircraft on the ground in idle.   Either lift off, or shut it down.  You stated you tried to stop it by the brief description: "Attempt same stick full down. No response."  How long did you hold it down?  The aircraft has to detect that it is not moving and has remained stable for a second or two (or longer), then it will respond to a left stick held fully down.  We don't know whether you satisfied all the conditions for long enough for it to respond.  The rest of us don't seem to have any problems holding it down long enough once landed to disarm the motors and turn it off, and can reproduce that behaviour without incident time and again.  If you truly got "no response", then you have something wrong with your aircraft or controller or technique.  Not "really buggy software".  In this case you took your eyes off the aircraft while it was on the ground to find a control on the screen, and that's when your troubles started.  The aircraft was still in flight and the corrections started compounding causing the flip.  This would be classified as a pilot error.  If you had been airborne a few centimeters or more in the air, then executed an auto landing from the screen, you would not have an issue.  Any "twitching" or attitude correction whilst airborne would not cause a flip over.  The aircraft and controller seem to have been working properly as designed ("had a decent flight" and descended to landing position through a stick-down command), and had not been the cause of the incident.

Lesson for the future, if you are landing manually, hold the stick fully down until the aircraft is steady and motionless, and the motors turn off.  Keep your hands on the sticks and treat it as though it is still in flight until it shuts down.  If it takes more than 5 or 10 seconds, you may have a problem.  If it doesn't turn off, lift off a few feet off the ground and perform an auto-landing from the screen.  Never leave an aircraft sit on the ground with the motors running.

You're right, lots of posts on these forums about bugs in DJI software are all wrong and their software is totally not buggy. I clearly just (1) didn't wait long enough for the aircraft to respond but also (2) waited too long so it flipped because it thought was in flight and, as we know, breezes in flight cause the aircraft to flip over.

Yeah. OK.

DJI will just keep shipping bad firmware (1.11.20 error requiring hidden 1.11.30 update debacle anyone?) and people will keep spending thousands of dollars on the kit without any quality improvement if the attitude is consistently "defend DJI to the death, it must be user error". It's Apple-esque levels of silliness IMHO and it doesn't help anyone.