Camera Gimble went limp during a flight...

OldManInWva · Mar 19, 2017

Was recording a POI and during the circling of the point the camera gimble control failed.. since it was in midair and circling a point the FPV on the iPad was showing an image that almost stopped my heart... wild movements of the camera gave the appearance of falling out of the sky. A quick line of sight visual confirmed that the POI was still flying as programmed so I cancelled out and flew the bird back to home point ... Landed normally and turned the bird off and then back on... Once it initialized the gimble came back to life and worked fine for the next flight... sweating finally stopped, heart finally calmed down to a normal rhythm ....

Has anybody else experienced this issue??

normr · Mar 19, 2017

Yes it's happened twice, I went ahead and recalibrated everything and it hasn't happened again, and yes that sudden change scares the hell out of you because it does make it look like you've lost a prop and it's spiraling out of control

Brockrock · Mar 19, 2017

I have had this happen twice as well, and it is a pretty big shock that first time!

Both times I was flying my batteries (4) down to ~50% for storage. One time it happened after my second battery swap, and the other time it was after the third swap. In each case, I had left the remote on for the swaps, with my iPad on as well running DJI Go. I swapped the batteries, turned on the copter, and after reconnecting, I took off when it was ready.

Since then, I shut everything down (with the exception of the iPad) when swapping batteries between flights. Once the fresh one is installed, I turn on the remote, turn on the copter, and then reopen DJI Go - treating every flight as if it's the only one. In my case, this has prevented the gimbal from disconnecting since. It's as if by taking the shortcut I was taking, even though everything appeared to be properly connected, in fact, it was not.

OldManInWva · Mar 19, 2017

And what you described is exactly what I did also... was on a 3rd battery, set the controller down and just turn off the bird and changed the battery on both changes. Previous flights I had actually dropped out of the Go app.
One other thing I did that "Could" have had an effect was Right before that event I had run a Litchi mission.... Turned the Litchi app off and switched to the GO app while the bird was still powered up.... Could have been something in that arrangement also.
I agree that future flights will have the controller at minimum shut down during a battery change.

Brockrock · Mar 20, 2017

OldManInWva said:
And what you described is exactly what I did also... was on a 3rd battery, set the controller down and just turn off the bird and changed the battery on both changes. Previous flights I had actually dropped out of the Go app.
One other thing I did that "Could" have had an effect was Right before that event I had run a Litchi mission.... Turned the Litchi app off and switched to the GO app while the bird was still powered up.... Could have been something in that arrangement also.
I agree that future flights will have the controller at minimum shut down during a battery change.

Thanks for the reply. This seems to imply that a possible cause of this failure could be related to this, and that was what I was hoping to confirm. There may be other reasons as well, but it does make sense that by not properly initializing the system, this disconnect could occur.

OldManInWva · Mar 20, 2017

And another thought about this I had today is that somebody in one of these threads mentioned having heard of this issue a LOT just in the past couple days.... Could be related to the updated Go-4 app too...

microlinux · Mar 20, 2017

I had this happen today while using Go, I tried just powering down the A/C, no change. I powered it down again, exited Go, then started everything up and was back to normal.

Like others, I was flying my batteries down - happened on my 2nd battery after a few minutes of flight. 1st and 3rd were fine.

One other note, I tried calibrating the gimbal in the limp state. Go went through the calibration process as normal, but nary a movement the entire time from the gimbal.

Brockrock · Mar 20, 2017

I'm gonna hot swap my batteries using Litchi next - which I use mostly - and see if it happens again.

ThommyBoy · Mar 21, 2017

Just had this happen to me today for the first time. I've got 160+ flights with never a problem until today. I had only been up for a few minutes with 75% battery and suddenly my image looked like I was out of control. The P4 was still in view so I could fly back and land with no problem, but I had a limp gimble.

When I got home I put in a charged battery and everything powered up fine, but it said I didn't have an SD card in, which I did. Put in a different card and everything looks normal, even when I put the other card back in.

I have no idea why this happened, but next time I won't have an anxiety attack.