DJI,

  
  

While flying my P3A today it banked to the right and then crashed! I had no control at all. Please help me figure this out…..such a sad day. :-(

  
  

You can get my email from email address from ticket 302758.

  
  

Looking at the flight list on my iPad I flew for 11:13 then the screen shows "No GPS Signal", then a warning to fly with caution, then an obstruction warning (by this time it a tree and the ground). I had no control at all.

  
  

The video on the SD is not playable. There is no file in the LOG directory.

EDIT: Here is the video from my iPadhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/2baq38 ... 6_11_20_52.mp4?dl=0  
  

The Camera bracket and cable broke and there is damage to the body all over. I am not sure if there is anything else wrong with it.

  
  

Here is the healthy drone data

  
  

https://healthydrones.com/main?flight=c1d3508fe239737036455cd9fe46cadb&page_id=GENERAL

  
  

What do I need to do now?

Hi!

I'm sorry for your crash, about the video I think that you can have a look here, Phantom video repair. I think that it is corrupted because the camera couldn't close the file.

Nicola90s Posted at 2016-6-7 01:51
Hi!

I'm sorry for your crash, about the video I think that you can have a look here, Phantom video ...

Thanks...I was able to get the video from my iPad and updated my original post with the link.

I will read your flight log in a bit. BUT from the footage, to me it looks like something hit it.
I see something black pop up in the video. Nothing is black on on the Phantom unless you have aftermarket props.

Hi Rob.
@007-008 seconds, if you pause it, you will see a black head,2 eyes and a beak in the very top left of the screen.Its a bird strike.
Sorry for your loss.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-6-7 02:33
I will read your flight log in a bit. BUT from the footage, to me it looks like something hit it.
I  ...

I did not hit anything as I could clearly see the drone as it was about 70 feet from me. As for the black thing that is the quick release prop guard connector. The prop guards were not on at the time.

I have link with a picture for my drone. If you need more pictures please let me know.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdkdlf22mrr2gxb/IMG_0185.JPG?dl=0

Hawks100 Posted at 2016-6-7 02:57
Hi Rob.
@007-008 seconds, if you pause it, you will see a black head,2 eyes and a beak in the very t ...

It was not a bird as I was looking right at it about 70 feet away and there was no change in sound. It just dove to the right and crashed.

Pause the video at 007 seconds,then pause frame by frame. between 007-008 something hits your drone and you can see a black birds head,eyes and beak. (a crow or jackdaw)

ok,i was only trying to help.
Good luck pal...

Hawks100 Posted at 2016-6-7 03:16
ok,i was only trying to help.
Good luck pal...

Thanks....I don't see a bird even if I go frame by frame. I was able to fix the last video on the SD card and it stops just before the drone banks to the right....so the iPad video is all I have.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 03:11
It was not a bird as I was looking right at it about 70 feet away and there was no change in sound ...

Honestly, I cannot see anything from the video. It had 16 satellites, then the crash then the satellite count went to 6. You still had power going to the aircraft.
Since you cannot get the DAT files, you need to send it in and have the flight controller analyzed to see exactly what happened.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 03:00
I did not hit anything as I could clearly see the drone as it was about 70 feet from me. As for th ...

Another thing, a lot of aftermarket prop guards have caused crashed from the screws being too long and touching the inside of the motor.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-6-7 03:27
Honestly, I cannot see anything from the video. It had 16 satellites, then the crash then the sate ...

Yes it was still powered on and upside down after the crash that's why the satellites showed up with such a low number.

How do I get the DAT file are? Are you talking about the FLYxxx.DAT file?

Two more things. I noticed the video stopped recording to the SD just before it banked to the right. As for the iPad video I looked frame by frame and it looks like the landing gear around 7 seconds in. It was a VERY sharp dive to the right so I would guess was so angled that the landing gear showed up.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-6-7 03:37
Another thing, a lot of aftermarket prop guards have caused crashed from the screws being too long ...

As for the prop guards I was very careful not to over tighten them when I put the m on back in December.

Here are the one I purchased with great reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/Summitlink ... _detailpage_o05_s00

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 04:11
As for the prop guards I was very careful not to over tighten them when I put the m on back in Dec ...

OK, if they've been installed for a while then that was not it.
Again, I think the only solution is to send it in.

DJI-Ken Posted at 2016-6-7 04:22
OK, if they've been installed for a while then that was not it.
Again, I think the only solution i ...

Yes I am going to send it in. I talked to the help desk and they are going to send me a shipping label soon.

Thanks for your help!

I now have the FLYxx.DAT file, do you still want it?

Can't tell if it's a bird BUT I'm gonna have to agree with Hawks......something appears in the upper left corner of the video at the 7 second mark.  Not sure what it is but it looks like something hit the front left prop/motor/arm, because it dives an instant after that.  And that would cause a motor obstruction warning.
Good luck on getting it resolved.

Tmygun Posted at 2016-6-7 04:48
Can't tell if it's a bird BUT I'm gonna have to agree with Hawks......something appears in the upper ...

The motor obstruction did not occur until it was on the ground. As for what you are seeing are you sure it's not the landing gear? I saw noting hit it, no sound of impact, the props looks good.  
EDIT: Also the thing that concerns me more and more is the video on the SD card stop just before it banked to the right.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 06:54
The motor obstruction did not occur until it was on the ground. As for what you are seeing are you  ...

Where the video appears to stop is not where the camera stopped recording.
When you stop recording properly, the camera closes off the file.
When the power is cut before the file can be closed, you lose several seconds of video.

labroides@yahoo Posted at 2016-6-7 06:10
Where the video appears to stop is not where the camera stopped recording.
When you stop recording ...

The recording on the SD just stopped. An earlier flight I was getting random video stops, along with the beep, even though I did not touch the record button. So I would start it again and 30 seconds or so it stopped. It did this only on the previous flight. With the crash flight there were no issues until just before the it banked hard right which was 11 min or so.

I used to have a lot of flying critters interested in my P3P as a white bird. I painted the P3P red so I can see it better as it flies. Since the new color it seems to have stopped the interest as prey or a quick bungle in the jungle and presented itself more as a threat. I think I'll paint a set of JAWS on it and it should take care of land animals too!

When I try to view that video, the resolution must be something like 640 because it's horrible,    Not sure what you guys are seeing but what i see is too blurry to make out much of anything.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 04:32
Yes I am going to send it in. I talked to the help desk and they are going to send me a shipping l ...

If you post your FLYxx.DAT file to Dropbox and we can take a look at it if you want...

Cessna172 Posted at 2016-6-7 06:39
When I try to view that video, the resolution must be something like 640 because it's horrible,    N ...

I even looked around for a bird on the ground and there was nothing.  I should also state on the previous flight I did have a "weak transmission" error along with the few times the video stopped recording a few times.

Here's the frames the folks here mentioned. I snagged this from Premier .. in the top left, I can see something but its not good enough to identify as a bird IMO. You can also see, after it starts to spin there is a black thing visible. I dont think this is the mounts on the motor, as the black ones are on the rear of the phantom, the orange ones are on the front. This Looks like something foreign to me though.







Edit: Here's his crashed drone, you can see black motor mounts on back, orange in front.

digdat0 Posted at 2016-6-7 07:46
Here's the frames the folks here mentioned. I snagged this from Premier .. in the top left, I can se ...

That looks like shadows to me and I asked my artist daughter and she agrees that that it just shadows.
Edit: the black thing looks more like the landing gear then the prop gard clamp. Keep in mind this was a very hard right.

datincan Posted at 2016-6-7 08:11
Have to agree, there is something flying away from your bird, you can see it in 3 frames, sorry too  ...

I see what you are pointing too and maybe 50 times looked the video and I don't think I hit anything. This video is way to low res to make anything out for sure. It would have been better to have the video from the SD card but the drone stopped recording on it's own just before it banked right. I plan to post the Fly.dat file soon.

Here are the FLYxxx.DAT files. I am not sure which one is the correct one as I tried to decode FLY266 with DatConverter and it did not work. It did decode FLY265. They both had the same timestamp.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6rbwuhyrc55cmbp/FLY265.DAT?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7rlkd3cut28r3t/FLY266.DAT?dl=0

Thanks everybody so much for helping!

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 01:23
I see what you are pointing too and maybe 50 times looked the video and I don't think I hit anythi ...

I just deleted my post, I looked again and again, and I am sure now I was chasing shadows ) the black item on the other frames, its hard to see how this could be a bird, it stays relative to the same position on your bird in all frames. If anything it could be something that got knocked out of position from the camera/gimbal unit and is actually tiny? I've no idea, but I do see too many reports of unknown reasons for crashes, I guess there are so many links in the chain to keep these machines up in the air  with little or no backup sys that any one failure its a total failure. Good luck in a resolution.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-6 14:17
Thanks...I was able to get the video from my iPad and updated my original post with the link.

How do you get flight videos from your ipad? Mine never has videoes, just a picture on SOME flights.

The item in question in the top left is most definitely the landing gear and the black blob is the soft foam on the landing gear. Its possible something hit the right side out of view if you werent watching it like a hawk.

You have to connect through iTunes then click on what's on your device, scroll down to Dji go app click on it and you will see what looks like a file system. Click on the video cache folder then click the save button. You may have to scroll a lot to see these different options. There is a video on  healthy drones.com that shows how to copy your flight data all you have to do is pick the video cache folder. Instead.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 02:13
You have to connect through iTunes then click on what's on your device, scroll down to Dji go app cl ...

Your gimbal/ camera does not look a new base plate and some refining of wiring maybe, and the phantom it's self looks even better. I sent a very messed up, i.e bent gimbal motor shafts to Jeremy, us drone repair and he did a super job getting it fully functioning again, just like new. Very reasonable costs too. If dji want to stick a big bill to you, it's maybe not a bad idea to have an alternative price to compare it to )

The object on the video is definitely a straight edge and it is the bottom of the landing gear, the black piece is the foam rubber block at the base.
It is quite common to see views of the legs when the aircraft has a violent fall.  The first time I watched this I thought it was a birdstrike from the rear.  Try as I might, I could not make out any birds or beaks etc.

What I did find interesting was that after it was hit at 11:15, the altitude goes into severe negative values, ending up at almost -85 meters below the ground.  The rest of the flight altitudes seem normal.

datincan Posted at 2016-6-7 11:06
Your gimbal/ camera does not look a new base plate and some refining of wiring maybe, and the phant ...

Thanks! The body has lots of damage where the two halves come together both in the front and back. I am not sure if anything is damaged inside the drone but it does turn on as I was able to get the FLY.DAT files.

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-7 23:59
Thanks! The body has lots of damage where the two halves come together both in the front and back. ...

The damage looks confined to the gimbal mount and wires, and upper and lower body shell, and a new set of props.  Not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

BTW, was this in a no fly zone?  I'm not sure of your local exclusion zones or whether Mill Rose Farm RLA Airport is considered an "airport".

endotherm Posted at 2016-6-7 21:49
The object on the video is definitely a straight edge and it is the bottom of the landing gear, the  ...

I also find it strange with the severe negative values and it was still on when I found it! Also the map does show were it really crashed so some how the GPS was working but saying it was not.

While watching the flight list on my iPad I can even see when I found it and picked it up doing an inspection as the direction and satellite counts was jump up and down! It regained GPS signal then kept blinking out say Weak GPS signal.

I sure hope DJI can tell me what the cause was. To me it appears to be hardware related perhaps a bad "controller" board.

endotherm Posted at 2016-6-7 22:08
The damage looks confined to the gimbal mount and wires, and upper and lower body shell, and a new ...

Not it's not...that's a restaurant. Strange that is showing up named that!

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-8 00:19
Not it's not...that's a restaurant. Strange that is showing up named that!

A lot of places like that have a dirt or grass airstrip for private aircraft, but they strangely call it an airport!

rreindl Posted at 2016-6-8 00:16
I also find it strange with the severe negative values and it was still on when I found it! Also t ...

The GPS dropping out is completely normal, where it was amongst the trees and falling, the sky would have been completely obscured from view of the GPS receiver by trees.  It would be completely expected for 10 satellites to drop off, and they would probably be the weaker ones low in the sky at the horizon rather than those overhead.  The receive-count will jump up and down as you move it around and it reacquires satellites.