DJI - WHERE ARE YOU?

[Jammer]

With all the posted firmware problems many seem to be having I can't work out why DJI have not jumped in here and told us what they intend to do.
Two firmware upgrades ago, I had a total airframe loss while on a commercial survey at a Class C airport with an unlock licence.
During the normal GS Pro mission (I had already flown 5 that day) the aircraft decided to power into the ground from 150ft. DJI repaired the extensively damaged aircraft at their cost and confirmed it was not pilot error but would not disclose why the aircraft crashed.
Oh yes, you read that right. I had an uncontrolled aircraft crash inside Class C airspace.
So when I think about "rolling back" firmware, I starting to think I am going to roll back to a Pixhawk Quad!!!!

 

[B25J]

I hear you loud and clear Jammer. They may manufacture some of the best UAV's for the money, but they surely do not make any visible attempt to own up to releasing beta level (and that's complimentary) firmware to it's customers AND THEN offering guidance and corrected firmware in an expedited manner; at least on our side of the Pacific.

 

[MarcusKeeler]

With all the posted firmware problems many seem to be having I can't work out why DJI have not jumped in here and told us what they intend to do.
Two firmware upgrades ago, I had a total airframe loss while on a commercial survey at a Class C airport with an unlock licence.
During the normal GS Pro mission (I had already flown 5 that day) the aircraft decided to power into the ground from 150ft. DJI repaired the extensively damaged aircraft at their cost and confirmed it was not pilot error but would not disclose why the aircraft crashed.
Oh yes, you read that right. I had an uncontrolled aircraft crash inside Class C airspace.
So when I think about "rolling back" firmware, I starting to think I am going to roll back to a Pixhawk Quad!!!!

What makes me laugh is when people jump up and down and profess that a firmware is generically faulted.
It reminds me of idiots who have a bad experience with a dodge/Ford/Chevy [or whatever] and then whine on ad-nauseum for the rest of their lives to all an sundry about that car manufacturer building nothing but crap.
The assertion that a firmware caused the failure would only hold water if ALL the birds on the planet using that firmware crashed from the sky. Do they? No.

The OP said he had 5 previous good flights prior to the crash. OK, so HOW can it be the firmware???

The truth is that sometimes 'stuff happens'. I had an iPhone crap out on me. Are ALL iPhones trash? Of course not, sometimes, 'stuff happens'.

If you want to find a reason for the trend of crashed birds following FW updates then blame a failure to correctly go through the recommended steps like IMU/Compass/gimbal calibration etc because that's often the cause. Is that a pilot error? Yes and no. "No" because the flight logs will show a nominal pilot response to poor IMU/Compass performance but "Yes" because the Pilot failed to run through sufficient calibrations following the update.

Every time there's a FW update people will cry that it's a bad one.

 

[Jammer]

What makes me laugh is when people jump up and down and profess that a firmware is generically faulted.
It reminds me of idiots who have a bad experience with a dodge/Ford/Chevy [or whatever] and then whine on ad-nauseum for the rest of their lives to all an sundry about that car manufacturer building nothing but crap.
The assertion that a firmware caused the failure would only hold water if ALL the birds on the planet using that firmware crashed from the sky. Do they? No.

The OP said he had 5 previous good flights prior to the crash. OK, so HOW can it be the firmware???

The truth is that sometimes 'stuff happens'. I had an iPhone crap out on me. Are ALL iPhones trash? Of course not, sometimes, 'stuff happens'.

If you want to find a reason for the trend of crashed birds following FW updates then blame a failure to correctly go through the recommended steps like IMU/Compass/gimbal calibration etc because that's often the cause. Is that a pilot error? Yes and no. "No" because the flight logs will show a nominal pilot response to poor IMU/Compass performance but "Yes" because the Pilot failed to run through sufficient calibrations following the update.

Every time there's a FW update people will cry that it's a bad one.

So when I roll back to a previous stable firmware and everything works properly, is there any room here to suggest that it might be the firmware...


In commercial aviation most people refrain from using the term "stuff happens"
The passengers just don't seem to like it.
"Fate is the Hunter"
;-)

 

[B25J]

[emoji106][emoji106]

 

[MarcusKeeler]

So when I roll back to a previous stable firmware and everything works properly, is there any room here to suggest that it might be the firmware...


In commercial aviation most people refrain from using the term "stuff happens"
The passengers just don't seem to like it.
"Fate is the Hunter"
;-)

I thought you said it went to DJI for a rebuild/replacement. You said nothing about retrieving it from a 150ft power dive, reinstalling the old FW and flying again.................

As I said, unless ALL the birds fall out the sky, it is not the firmware. If you have 5 good flights then dump it in the weeds, it's not an inherent firmware problem - that is simple logic.

Rolling back firmware is as good as reinstalling the current one. If you goofed post update calibrations, then reinstalling any another FW and going through said calibrations again will reset-to-zero any potential inaccuracies from the first one.

And YES> Stuff happens. It's nice to say it doesn't but also wholly unrealistic.

 

[B25J]

Your argument, MarcusKeeler, is basically that if electronic avionics work once, they're good for life and just don't ever fail. And if there is a fault, it's human error. That just makes little to no common sense at all.
Everything has a point of failure, or just simply, an end point. And, everything that has an effect on those things either hastens or delays that failure.

 

[MarcusKeeler]

Your argument, MarcusKeeler, is basically that if electronic avionics work once, they're good for life and just don't ever fail. And if there is a fault, it's human error. That just makes little to no common sense at all.
Everything has a point of failure, or just simply, an end point. And, everything that has an effect on those things either hastens or delays that failure.

LOL You are absolutely reinforcing MY point ! The contention that is being expressed is that the firmware is faulty, bad, poorly programmed - I do NOT agree with that at all.

I say that whatever happened to the OP's bird was either an accumulated IMU or Compass error or simply a FAULT which spontaneously developed, NOT a fault or bug that existed all the time inside the Firmware and which was waiting for a chance to pounce, as is being suggested.

 

[B25J]

If that were true, then be so good as to explain just how this FAULT 'spontaneously developed', LOL
Firmware tells the avionics how to think. Remove it and what are you left with? One dumb little machine. Load it with firmware that is faulted and you have a drone that does dumb things

 

[Duchunter]

Im just going to throw this out they're, im just stating a fact. Most engineering failures occur at or near transition periods, or in other words, when or near the time something within that system changed from the norm. Chernobyl melted down and exploded when they were running a reactor test. A series of unforeseen failures, none of which would have been catastrophic by themselves but combined led to a meltdown. Im have no opinion as to the firmware as ive not used it.

 

[wa5tef]

Jammer, you noted that it did a power dive from 150 feet. Did it fly straight into the ground at an angle, or fly straight down at a 90 degree angle, or flip to inverted and fly upside down into the ground? I had a similar crash and just wondered if we may have had the same problem?
Thanks,
Jim
WA5TEF

 

[MarcusKeeler]

If that were true, then be so good as to explain just how this FAULT 'spontaneously developed', LOL
Firmware tells the avionics how to think. Remove it and what are you left with? One dumb little machine. Load it with firmware that is faulted and you have a drone that does dumb things

I don't know why you're being so obtuse? Either you're doing it for fun or you're unbelievably stupid.

How does ANY fault develop? Why did your PC fail last week? Why did my Lawnmower stop working? Who the F knows?

Have you ever even heard of a hardware failure, or in your world does nothing ever go wrong and you never had to replace or fix something that used to work but then, weirdly, stopped working? because you know, that's a spontaneous failure, a .... f a u l t.

I wish I could write with Crayon for you but I'll try to dumb it down.... he flew 5 times perfectly fine, then did the SAME thing for a 6th time but managed to bury it in the dirt. So, if there was a fault in the FW, why didn't it go down on flight 1? These things are logic driven, they make the same decisions for the same inputs. Something changed..... a f a u l t developed.

Couple that with the fact that Thousands of people manage to fly perfectly well with this firmware without eating dirt.

 

[Turbomania]

What makes me laugh is when people jump up and down and profess that a firmware is generically faulted.
It reminds me of idiots who have a bad experience with a dodge/Ford/Chevy [or whatever] and then whine on ad-nauseum for the rest of their lives to all an sundry about that car manufacturer building nothing but crap.
The assertion that a firmware caused the failure would only hold water if ALL the birds on the planet using that firmware crashed from the sky. Do they? No.

The OP said he had 5 previous good flights prior to the crash. OK, so HOW can it be the firmware???

The truth is that sometimes 'stuff happens'. I had an iPhone crap out on me. Are ALL iPhones trash? Of course not, sometimes, 'stuff happens'.

If you want to find a reason for the trend of crashed birds following FW updates then blame a failure to correctly go through the recommended steps like IMU/Compass/gimbal calibration etc because that's often the cause. Is that a pilot error? Yes and no. "No" because the flight logs will show a nominal pilot response to poor IMU/Compass performance but "Yes" because the Pilot failed to run through sufficient calibrations following the update.

Every time there's a FW update people will cry that it's a bad one.

I almost lost a bird to a bad gimbal calibration... I'm still shook up... lmao

Don't take this personal, you couldn't buy a clue my friend !!!

 

[RémyHeli]

I'm also interested to know more about the 'dive down'. Speed, angle, etc.

 

[B25J]

Crayons. Most children like crayons; even those who are tantrum prone. Try doing some coloring in a quiet room.

 

[N017RW]

All my r/c aircraft have been flown to fault (elec., mech., pilot) or retired to the shelf for eternal static display.

Now that there's code involved we can add logic, algorithm, and sensor failures to potential fault causes as well.

Theses are amazing products in terms of bang-for-buck but as a whole are less $ than top-line FCs alone.

 

[Jammer]

It's time to jump in again and clarify a few things. Firstly an IMU, compass and gimbal calibration is part of a DAILY INSPECTION when I operate in controlled airspace. Firmware upgrades are firstly done on the company "B" machines. They must have two thorough test flights using the SDK before the "A" machines are upgraded.
A complete calibration was done and logged on the day of the accident. All three firmware packets being used were also listed in the maintenance log (aircraft firmware, controller firmware and device firmware) and signed off.

The aircraft firmware works on a number of levels to manage control of the aircraft. At the base level it manages the data flow between CPU, SENORS and other components. At another level it records and manages GEO coordinates, atmospheric data and other "variables" on a given day.
At the control level is a sophisticated portal which can interact with a "flight director" . This "director" can be human or it can be SDK software or both. This is also a variable layer.

As you can imagine, there are many variables in play here and to say that "all aircraft would fall from the sky" using the same firmware because one of them did might not be correct even if you wrote it in crayon.
J;-)

 

[B25J]

I'd say you had all bases covered, Jammer. Thanks for adding some very well penned clarity to this thread
B25J Out

 

[RémyHeli]

I'm still interested to know more about ´power into the ground'. Seems to be key event of the crash and I have not seen any details but rather discussing other things, or I missed something?

Did the craft just descend vertically? Abnormal speed? No response in Atti mode? Do you recon some form of fly away? Did you notice any particular warning/error message in the app before or while flying?

Knowing more can be useful to others. Ie seing specific warning/error message or behavior could tell to immediatly land as precaution.

Thanks in advance for sharing experience.

 

[Jammer]

Details of the uncontrolled descent are....

After pre flight checks completed normally and GPS lock and home point established and locked.
GS Pro flight plan loaded before departure and ready to engage plan.

Aircraft take off and normal climb to 50m under manual control. Whilst preparing to start the flight plan the aircraft began drifting as if in ATTI mode.
GPS mode was still showing on app and switch confirmed in P position.

I then toggled the flight mode switch which is standard reset procedure.

Aircraft then descended vertically to the ground in vortex ring state with hi RPM and excessive rate of descent.
Impact with ground in a gully 15m below the level of the home point.

Heavy damage to camera, gimbal, gear and underbody..