Several failures please help

IndyChristian · Apr 3, 2016

I'm somewhat new.

I had several failures.

I'm listing the video of what happened.

Most everything is in the description.

Which is as follows

I checked uavweather.com all good

I put 3/4 charged tb48 in Dji Warner for a couple minutes then put in bird. I calibrated compass, believe I had 13-14 sats.

I planned on taking off, hovering, then up 60 meters to clear some lines then straight forward 100-150 meters.

All we r good till around 1:30.

I lost all sats, was verbally told to go to atti mode, which I resisted, I immediately got a gimbal warning and then a propulsion warning.

I pulled straight back thinking the bird would come straight to me but instead it went off course.

It began fighting me and I had no instrumentation. It proceeded to fly away until I unpanicked and hit the rth button.

If you watch the video you will see that it is very grainy and bad. ?

You will also see several pans.. I NEVER TOUCHED THE CAMERA. All the pans were done by bird itself.

If you watch towards end of video I got another verbal gimbal overheated and the **** thing went completely limp.

I had a spotter and I realize there were lines near by but I don't think that to be a factor or at least the sole factor.

It was around 45-50 degrees outside with 10-15 gust winds.

I don't know what caused any of this.

A couple months ago I had two spotters but then I got cocky and I used one of them as a subject to chase.. I had walked the area I intended to fly, a park, but she went right instead of left and my dumbass tried to correct when my line of sight was near a foot ball field away.. About 65 yards or so.. I clipped a tree 30 feet up and damaged the gimbal and one of the rear landing arms.

The arm was fixed here locally, the gimbal was sent into Dji. They said they just replaced the burnt out gimbal motor but when I got my gimbal back, I don't believe it was the one I sent them. (My original was painted black and the one they returned was normal white). I didn't take issue with it as I just thought they gave me a whole new gimbal-camera.

I haven't had any issues with it until today.

If any of you smart guys, like the editor could tell me what i did wrong, it would help.

I'm still learning.
I'm pissed that I didn't stay as calm as I should have when all this **** was happening at once..

Thanks

Canuck32 · Apr 4, 2016

Sounds like classic TBE (toilet bowl effect) caused by bad or out of calibration compass along with other issues. Errors as I see it in no particular order:
1) partially charged battery - always fully charge batteries before flight because the "smart" batteries aren't as smart as DJI would lead you to believe.
2) battery warmer . Not needed in those conditions.
3) IMU mod values? I'm guessing by your post that you did not check them. Always check them to ensure your craft is indeed safe to fly. Gyro mod 0.00, acceleration .99-1.02, compass 1450-1550. Compass does not to be calibrated before every flight but sensor values need to be checked to see if cal is needed.
4) get comfortable in attitude mode. If you had switched to atti the craft would have stabilized and you could have manually flown and safely landed. Basically I'm betting your compass was out of cal and the compass was causing the craft to not know weather the GPS or the compass was correct. Switching to atti mode removes compass error from Flight controller and stops TBE. The fact that RTH worked tells me you still had good GPS signal and your lucky that worked and it didn't get worse.

IndyChristian · Apr 4, 2016

Ok I will work and check on everyone.
Thanks Brother

slim.slamma · Apr 4, 2016

Stop doing a compass calibration every flight 1 and done.
Those power lines you're pretty close. I do some long range flights and whenever I loose connection 9 times out of 10 I'm near power lines, cell phone towers.
Besides all that your camera and gimbal seemed to freak out. Curious to what caused that.
Do you own a digital scale try using it with a cell phone near now try calling the phone. Scale freaks out!
Stop the all day everyday CC and be mindful of power lines, cell phone towers. I've definitely noticed interference

IndyChristian · Apr 4, 2016

slim.slamma said:
Stop doing a compass calibration every flight 1 and done.
Those power lines you're pretty close. I do some long range flights and whenever I loose connection 9 times out of 10 I'm near power lines, cell phone towers.
Besides all that your camera and gimbal seemed to freak out. Curious to what caused that.
Do you own a digital scale try using it with a cell phone near now try calling the phone. Scale freaks out!
Stop the all day everyday CC and be mindful of power lines, cell phone towers. I've definitely noticed interference

Ok

IndyChristian · Apr 4, 2016

Ok will do

The Editor · Apr 4, 2016

IndyChristian said:
I'm somewhat new.

I had several failures.

I'm listing the video of what happened.

Most everything is in the description.

Which is as follows

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

I checked uavweather.com all good

I put 3/4 charged tb48 in Dji Warner for a couple minutes then put in bird. I calibrated compass, believe I had 13-14 sats.

I planned on taking off, hovering, then up 60 meters to clear some lines then straight forward 100-150 meters.

All we r good till around 1:30.

I lost all sats, was verbally told to go to atti mode, which I resisted, I immediately got a gimbal warning and then a propulsion warning.

I pulled straight back thinking the bird would come straight to me but instead it went off course.

It began fighting me and I had no instrumentation. It proceeded to fly away until I unpanicked and hit the rth button.

If you watch the video you will see that it is very grainy and bad. ?

You will also see several pans.. I NEVER TOUCHED THE CAMERA. All the pans were done by bird itself.

If you watch towards end of video I got another verbal gimbal overheated and the **** thing went completely limp.

I had a spotter and I realize there were lines near by but I don't think that to be a factor or at least the sole factor.

It was around 45-50 degrees outside with 10-15 gust winds.

I don't know what caused any of this.

A couple months ago I had two spotters but then I got cocky and I used one of them as a subject to chase.. I had walked the area I intended to fly, a park, but she went right instead of left and my dumbass tried to correct when my line of sight was near a foot ball field away.. About 65 yards or so.. I clipped a tree 30 feet up and damaged the gimbal and one of the rear landing arms.

The arm was fixed here locally, the gimbal was sent into Dji. They said they just replaced the burnt out gimbal motor but when I got my gimbal back, I don't believe it was the one I sent them. (My original was painted black and the one they returned was normal white). I didn't take issue with it as I just thought they gave me a whole new gimbal-camera.

I haven't had any issues with it until today.

If any of you smart guys, like the editor could tell me what i did wrong, it would help.

I'm still learning.
I'm pissed that I didn't stay as calm as I should have when all this **** was happening at once..

Thanks

Glad you got it back in one piece.

Yup, all of the advice above really. I think your biggest problem is where you were standing for take off - a car park.
Those things are covered in rebar. Doing a compass calibration standing in the middle of a car park like that is asking for trouble and I could almost guarantee your compass calibration would have been skewed (but the Inspire would never have known this).
Coupled with all the things mentioned by other posters above, this was a cocktail of problems.
Get yourself a good compass calibration away from all metal influences and stick with it. Then, as advised, always, ALWAYS check your mod values before every single take off. Compass will always fluctuate but anything between 1400 - 1600 is acceptable but if it is around the limits of those ranges keep a careful eye on your aircraft looking for any strange behaviour.
You should be fine then.

IndyChristian · Apr 4, 2016

Thanks again will do.
I'm still confused as to why the video is so bad, perhaps it goes hand in foot with everything else mentioned.

If you watch the end of the video the whole thing just goes limp...it gave me an audible gimbal motor overheated...

On that part I'm thinking I will contact Dji since they just replaced it and see if they can watch the video and my library inputs and perhaps send it back to be looked at.

Regardless everything was my fault, it's just makes it easier to take ownership of it.

I want to personally thank each of you that responded for your time and advice, words can't begin to describe how much that means to me.

I'll keep pegging away at it.

If any one of you come through Indy, for work for any reason, please send me a private message.

I used to be a Indianapolis city cop but gor hit by a drunk driver going to a 911 call and subsequently got medically retired from it due to a back injury in 2006.

I didn't like sitting at home all day so I applied to a contractor company (Blackwater) and. Went over seas just to get hurt again lol. I just turned 40 (my wife would say mentally im ten so I think that makes me still in my 20's) and picking up a camera and the inspire relieves my PTSD and physical pain from everything.. That and my kids and animals, but I'm retired and always have time on my hands.. So wether it's questions about Indiana (we have roads, corn and basketball) or site locations searches or just a place to rest your head for a few hours.

Mi casa su casa

Thanks again for everyone's help.

Christian

Canuck32 · Apr 4, 2016

The gimbal probably got overheated motor from trying to keep stabilized while the craft was oscillating around. Because the gear was up you would not see it in the video at first and then finally the IMU hit a safety trigger point. Try doing a gimbal cal and see what it does. Also don't forget a RC stick cal and as Editor said do a compass cal away from metal in a field.

You can use iPhone compass to see if your in a good area for a cal by see how the iPhone compass is reading.