RC powered off mid flight

SRH · Apr 23, 2015

So I was flying tonight and all was well till suddenly my iPad lost contact and told me I was disconnected. RTH was activated and the aircraft landed safely thank goodness. Once on the ground I noticed the RC was powered off. It was fully charged and turned right back on and gave me no further issues. So I either inadvertently shut off the power which I find hard to believe considering the sequence necessary or the RC shut it self off. Anyone else experiencing this?

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

never, and I would be very worried about it.
maybe there is a lose battery connection inside? what was the temp like outside? hot cold ?

SRH · Apr 23, 2015

60's and windy... Latest firmware installed also.

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

so thats about 15 in english talk....... Id say that a LiPo would have no problems with that, so I would rule out temperature and I would open my handset and start checking for lose connections and possible shorts,

You could in theory turn it on and bash it from all angles to try make a lose connection get loser. I would be very careful about flying, if its a lose battery connection then worst case would be homing I guess, if there however is a short somewhere, that could in theory affect the control and not just shut it off completely.

Rafa · Apr 23, 2015

SRH said:
So I was flying tonight and all was well till suddenly my iPad lost contact and told me I was disconnected. RTH was activated and the aircraft landed safely thank goodness. Once on the ground I noticed the RC was powered off. It was fully charged and turned right back on and gave me no further issues. So I either inadvertently shut off the power which I find hard to believe considering the sequence necessary or the RC shut it self off. Anyone else experiencing this?

It happened to me as well. When my iPad went black I panicked and invoked RTH so it would just comeback, actually what I did was press the power button twice causing it to turn off. One of my operators did the same thing a couple of days ago thinking he was arresting RTH when our batteries got low and we were in a forest. There was no way that thing was gonna land without hitting a branch. Noob move both times, we now literally practice feeling the difference between the 2 buttons. I'm hoping with more experience we'll learn to keep our cool when things like that happen.
I did notice that after the latest app upgrade the sudden iPad crash no longer
has happened.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

SRH said:
RTH was activated and the aircraft landed safely thank goodness. Once on the ground I noticed the RC was powered off.

when you say RTH was activated, do you mean by yourself or automatically?

SRH · Apr 23, 2015

I know I did not activate the RTH function... I assume when the controller shut down the aircraft activated the RTH. App did not crash just said disconnected and no feed. I was filming a framer seeding a field. The tractor has a WIFI system to communicate with the seeder. Could that cause a RC to shut down?

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

doubtful, I would imagine that either you:
a) shut it off without realising
or
b) have a defective controller

The Editor · Apr 23, 2015

I have seen 1 other instance of this but no confirmation whether it was user error or hardware/firmware related.

If this was a major problem I think we would be seeing a lot of similar issues.

I will keep a look out........

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

If the user is sure that he didnt do it, then I would say it is a major problem. Did the new firmware update the controller also? can someone running the new firmware so an inactivity test or something to see if the RC shuts down instead of beep at you now? maybe some sort of bug like that has been introduced?

m00se · Apr 23, 2015

@ OP, can you leave your handset turned on until it starts the inactivity beep? just to confirm it does it ?

The Editor · Apr 23, 2015

m00se said:
@ OP, can you leave your handset turned on until it starts the inactivity beep? just to confirm it does it ?

It still beeps after 10 mins of inactivity/no control link.
Latest firmware was for both AC and RC.

54321-Inspire · May 2, 2015

Yes, I had the exact same thing happen today. I was hovering at about 80m high directly overhead. My iPhone 6 said connection lost, so I held the throttle down. After the quad landed I went to shut down the controller, in doing so I turned it back on! Therefore RTH must have been doing all the work during the landing.

InspiredOne · May 2, 2015

Boy am I glad I sat out on this update!

IrishSights · May 2, 2015

InspiredOne said:
Boy am I glad I sat out on this update!

So what makes you blame the firmware? It can be a great scapegoat but until you can come up with some evidence, how can it be the fault of the firmware?

The Editor · May 2, 2015

IrishSights said:
So what makes you blame the firmware? It can be a great scapegoat but until you can come up with some evidence, how can it be the fault of the firmware?

There has never been a report of self turning off remotes prior to the last update.
Hello David btw.... Long time no speak.

InspiredOne · May 2, 2015

IrishSights said:
So what makes you blame the firmware? It can be a great scapegoat but until you can come up with some evidence, how can it be the fault of the firmware?

Could it be because it hasn't happened prior to the latest FW update?

IrishSights · May 3, 2015

The Editor said:
There has never been a report of self turning off remotes prior to the last update.
Hello David btw.... Long time no speak.

Thanks. The questions has to be asked 'is it happening to everyone who updated?'. The firmware is the same for everyone. I think its more complicated than that. It needs one of ianwoods style specific info gathering efforts!

Jason Atwood · May 3, 2015

I have not experienced the RC turning off mid flight. However, I have noticed that since the update the Aircraft & RC do not always connect at start up. I always turn on the RC first and give it about 30 seconds then I turn on the AC. 98% of the time it connects right away. 2% of the time I have to power off the AC and turn it back on again fro the connection to take.

Fletcher · May 3, 2015

SRH said:
So I was flying tonight and all was well till suddenly my iPad lost contact and told me I was disconnected. RTH was activated and the aircraft landed safely thank goodness. Once on the ground I noticed the RC was powered off. It was fully charged and turned right back on and gave me no further issues. So I either inadvertently shut off the power which I find hard to believe considering the sequence necessary or the RC shut it self off. Anyone else experiencing this?