Hi Guys,

Was flying my P3S yesterday when it randomly started autolanding.

Im trying to understand why it engaged so it doesnt happen again. It ended up landing in a marsh in a quarry surrounded by 10 foot high barbed wire fence. Luckily i got it back thanks to the GPS. Only ripped my shirt and a few minor cuts lol.

Basically i was flying, wind picked up, flew with the wind for a bit and thought "Gee 80km/h is pretty cool!" I then lost video feed and RC signal. It ALWAYS returns home when this happens. Not this time. It was a fair way out, then all of a sudden i regained video feed and realised it was landing! I tried multiple times to disengage the autoland but it wouldnt respond.

There was plenty of battery left, plenty of satellites. Im pretty sure i didnt accidently press autoland. Ive never used it before although its a possibility but im 80% sure i didnt touch it.

HERE is my flight log. It would be great if somebody could tell me what i did wrong. Im paranoid of flying again till i can work out what happened lol.

Unfortunately the flight log is not much use in that form. Try going to Phantomhelp.com and follow the instructions there to upload your fliight log, then come back and post a link to it here.

Wow, that's too bad. Sorry to hear about that landing in the marsh, hope it didn't get too wet.

Certain that you will get it figured out, once you post the info from PhantomHelp of your flight LOG records.

RedHotPoker

Geebax Posted at 2017-1-12 17:03
Unfortunately the flight log is not much use in that form. Try going to Phantomhelp.com and follow the instructions there to upload your fliight log, then come back and post a link to it here.

Oh sorry, i thought you could download it and upload it to http://healthydrones.com/?

Luke R Posted at 2017-1-12 17:15
Oh sorry, i thought you could download it and upload it to http://healthydrones.com/?

No, you have to do that with your own log in. ;-)


RedHotPoker

I had my p3A start autolanding for no apparent reason a few times.. my guess is that for some reason the battery was too cold and voltage was not up to snuff?  How soon after take off? U can turn on when voltage is displayed in the app, so u can monitor. Usually it will start lo if the battery is cold (below 50f) and then u will see the voltage go up as the battery warms up. Then u r ok.

http://healthydrones.com/main?share=rRodIM

i pulled your log into my account on healthy drones.. snoop around, i will check later.. 1st thought, u lost signal, and your app is set to throttle down on lost signal, as opposed to rth or hover? Check that! I will look closer later.

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 17:24
http://healthydrones.com/main?share=rRodIM

i pulled your log into my account on healthy drones.. snoop around, i will check later.. 1st thought, u lost signal, and your app is set to throttle down on lost signal, as opposed to rth or hover? Check that! I will look closer later.

Cool, thanks for that

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 17:24
http://healthydrones.com/main?share=rRodIM

i pulled your log into my account on healthy drones.. snoop around, i will check later.. 1st thought, u lost signal, and your app is set to throttle down on lost signal, as opposed to rth or hover? Check that! I will look closer later.

Good point but its set to RTH.

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 17:20
I had my p3A start autolanding for no apparent reason a few times.. my guess is that for some reason the battery was too cold and voltage was not up to snuff?  How soon after take off? U can turn on when voltage is displayed in the app, so u can monitor. Usually it will start lo if the battery is cold (below 50f) and then u will see the voltage go up as the battery warms up. Then u r ok.

It was a hot day yesterday. 35deg C. Battery was fine in the flight logs.

Luke R Posted at 2017-1-12 17:30
Cool, thanks for that

Healthydrones is next to useless for investigating flight incidents.
It only gives a very basic summary of some values.
To see what really happened, go to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/
Follow the instructions to upload your flight record.

Yeah, phantomhelp log viewer can be more helpful, and may shed broader light on this failure.


RedHotPoker

Labroides Posted at 2017-1-12 17:50
Healthydrones is next to useless for investigating flight incidents.
It only gives a very basic summary of some values.
To see what really happened, go to http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Ah ok. Just did that and it shows all the same info as healthydrones except the fact that its updated every 10th of a second. Still doesnt explain why it switched into autoland.

Luke R Posted at 2017-1-12 18:13
Ah ok. Just did that and it shows all the same info as healthydrones except the fact that its updated every 10th of a second. Still doesnt explain why it switched into autoland.

Fine, how about putting a link up here so others can view the log?

Geebax Posted at 2017-1-12 18:22
Fine, how about putting a link up here so others can view the log?

Yes, please let's have a wee peek inside that flight LOG file. ;-)


RedHotPoker

Hope this works

Link

yes, it works, whether healthydrones on phantomhelp helps.. but let's see what helps.. i see it beginning to rth again and again, i do not see autolanding engaging... that's weird! Now, some info may not be in the log, if it happened while there was no communication with the radio.. interesting....

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 19:40
yes, it works, whether healthydrones on phantomhelp helps.. but let's see what helps.. i see it beginning to rth again and again, i do not see autolanding engaging... that's weird! Now, some info may not be in the log, if it happened while there was no communication with the radio.. interesting....

It says its autolanding at 4m 6.4s, hovers for a while then takes off at 50mph ( Which i did while in control) then begins to land.

I dont understand lol.

it does ;) sorry not sure why i did not see these....
so it is.. the question is why.. is it near home position?
It will only land if it's 20meters or less from home position....Now, i guess it would autoland in such a caase, but why did u keep losing signal all the time?
Well, Other users here do better than me in reading logs, let's see what they say ;)

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 20:03
it does ;) sorry not sure why i did not see these....
so it is.. the question is why.. is it near home position?
It will only land if it's 20meters or less from home position....

It was a good 300m from its home point. Weird huh.

look around 4min+ all the autolands seem to be within feet of where it thinks home is... unless i am reading the logs wrong...   but then it still wants to autoland further from the home position, and battery is around 50%. yes, this is sure puzzling....Also, take off battery below 70%? Not that I never flew on a battery not at 100%, but, it is not recommended as the battery % calc may be wrong....

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 20:11
look around 4min+ all the autolands seem to be within feet of where it thinks home is... unless i am reading the logs wrong...   but then it still wants to autoland further from the home position, and battery is around 50%. yes, this is sure puzzling....Also, take off battery below 70%? Not that I never flew on a battery not at 100%, but, it is not recommended as the battery % calc may be wrong....

Yes, also the fact that im trying to cancel autoland but it wont.

I flew for about 5mins from a full charge about 1/2hr earlier. Thats why the 70%.

ok, in the future do not do that.. if u fly, land, take off it's ok, but if u fly, rest 10-15 min, do not fly on that battery anywhere far - drones are known to fall out of the sky in such cases... when i just want to burn up the battery i really just do that.. fly near, just to deplete... read too many horror stories about flying on partially depleted battery....
So... the first autolandings, u think they did start while u were within 60 ft from the home position? (that's 20 meters). If so, why the heck were you losing signal so much?
I am very puzzled why one of the forum's sherlocks did not take it upon himself to dissect your log on phantomhelp.. but perhaps he's busy with another thread ;) There are a few here who do really good detective work.. I think DJI should give them free things or good coupons ;)

Might have a point there. Seems autolanding starts at 13 feet from home. Like i said, i havent used autoland before so im not sure of its function.

Is it possible that you can still fly the drone normally while in autoland mode? If so, that makes sense as to what happened.

I lost sight of it in the distance, let go of the controls to try and visually see where it was. Next thing i know i get a little video feedback and relaise its a few meters off the ground!

So, if it was in autoland and its still flyable while in autoland, when i let go of the controls to try and get a visual it was landing where i let go of the controls???

Just to clarify, how far away from the home point was the aircraft?

I think DJI is onbe of not many that still lets you have full control while autolanding or RTHing... U can push left up to ascend, or at least keep from descending, and yes, u pretty much have full control otherwise...  if u let go and have gps it just lands where it is (or continues to RTH if further than 20 meters from home).... if it does not have GPS, then depending on settings it does various things.. but usually would either try to hover the best it can, or autoland the best it can.... in your case, when u released controls it just kept landing. I would have to look, but i think it had gps, so it would have landed just fine where it was, as opposed to drifting off..
Still puzzling why it was landing when u got back out away from the home point.... I do not think the battery was that low.. but....

DJI-Jamie Posted at 2017-1-12 21:50
Just to clarify, how far away from the home point was the aircraft?

It landed 860ft from the home position.

Phantomski Posted at 2017-1-12 21:50
I think DJI is onbe of not many that still lets you have full control while autolanding or RTHing... U can push left up to ascend, or at least keep from descending, and yes, u pretty much have full control otherwise...  if u let go and have gps it just lands where it is (or continues to RTH if further than 20 meters from home).... if it does not have GPS, then depending on settings it does various things.. but usually would either try to hover the best it can, or autoland the best it can.... in your case, when u released controls it just kept landing. I would have to look, but i think it had gps, so it would have landed just fine where it was, as opposed to drifting off..
Still puzzling why it was landing when u got back out away from the home point.... I do not think the battery was that low.. but....

Yes it had 9 satellites at the point of landing.

It makes sense if you can still control the aircraft whilst in autoland and continues to land once the controls arent in use.

BUT, what i want to know is, why did it engage autoland in the first place? It should have been RTH.

Luke R Posted at 2017-1-12 21:58
Yes it had 9 satellites at the point of landing.

It makes sense if you can still control the aircraft whilst in autoland and continues to land once the controls arent in use.

Are you certain that your RTH settings were not set to landing at that time?

DJI-Jamie Posted at 2017-1-12 22:21
Are you certain that your RTH settings were not set to landing at that time?

Absolutely positive. It was the first thing i checked when i retrieved the drone. I flew it 1/2hr before hand and it returned without a problem. No settings were changed. Just powered everything off when i was done.

DJI-Jamie Posted at 2017-1-12 22:21
Are you certain that your RTH settings were not set to landing at that time?

I dont understand why after i cancelled autoland multiple times and told it to return home, it kept going back to autoland mode?

Luke R Posted at 2017-1-12 23:17
I dont understand why after i cancelled autoland multiple times and told it to return home, it kept going back to autoland mode?

It keeps nagging at me that the autoland thing is also associated with what happens when you fly into a NFZ, but the Geo system is not supposed to be implemented for Australia at this time, and in any event, AFAIK there is no airport or such near where you were flying. The closest is Richmond, about 10 miles away.

I could be wrong but it seems to be doing what it is supposed to do. It lost signal at 400ft away & at an altitude of 1000ft, RTH kicked in, it got to within 12ft of the home position & then started to auto land. I'm pretty sure that when a RTH has kicked in on mine it comes back & then tries to land & I usually just cancel. You managed to cancel auto land when it was overhead at 600ft but then auto land kicked in again & it took off at speed with strong interference message....very odd.

Geebax Posted at 2017-1-13 02:10
It keeps nagging at me that the autoland thing is also associated with what happens when you fly into a NFZ, but the Geo system is not supposed to be implemented for Australia at this time, and in any event, AFAIK there is no airport or such near where you were flying. The closest is Richmond, about 10 miles away.

Thats exactly what i was looking at today. Definatly not a NFZ.

taurus35 Posted at 2017-1-13 03:00
I could be wrong but it seems to be doing what it is supposed to do. It lost signal at 400ft away & at an altitude of 1000ft, RTH kicked in, it got to within 12ft of the home position & then started to auto land. I'm pretty sure that when a RTH has kicked in on mine it comes back & then tries to land & I usually just cancel. You managed to cancel auto land when it was overhead at 600ft but then auto land kicked in again & it took off at speed with strong interference message....very odd.

Makes sense but why would it land in the middle of nowhere?

What I see is RTH was triggered. When it was overhead it began Auto Landing.  Auto Landing was canceled three times before it actually canceled. Then it lost signal and and began to RTH again. Since it was within the 65 foot circle when RTH was triggered, it just began Auto Landing again. Then it seems you began flying it using the sticks without canceling RTH/AutoLanding so it was descending the whole time. By the time you noticed it was almost down you canceled Auto Landing again but it seems it did not react just like the first two times.
Notes:
1. Apparent pilot error in that you were flying around while it was in Auto Landing without noticing/taking action.
2. Unknown why you had to cancel Auto Land so many times before it 'took' it.
3. Signal was lost when you were directly overhead but at a pretty high altitude, perhaps due to antenna orientation.

KM5RG-Robert Posted at 2017-1-13 17:50
What I see is RTH was triggered. When it was overhead it began Auto Landing.  Auto Landing was canceled three times before it actually canceled. Then it lost signal and and began to RTH again. Since it was within the 65 foot circle when RTH was triggered, it just began Auto Landing again. Then it seems you began flying it using the sticks without canceling RTH/AutoLanding so it was descending the whole time. By the time you noticed it was almost down you canceled Auto Landing again but it seems it did not react just like the first two times.
Notes:
1. Apparent pilot error in that you were flying around while it was in Auto Landing without noticing/taking action.

The answer i was looking for! I always knew it was something i'd done, but i just needed to know what i actually did wrong!