I've lost my P3 ADV and I don't know why

[Aldo962]

No i mean last recorded because you, imo wrongly, decided to use dynamic home point and my opinion is that the phantom could have come back to the wrong place...that is a possibility

Hello StevenQX, it's true that I had the dynamic home point feature active, but is also true that we didn't move from the take off point till we decided to go for rescue, ant this happened about two minutes after the signal loss. So the Home point on my tablet and also in the HealtyDrones log remained where my Phantom originally took off. Also we went straight to the last known point so if the copter should have returned we had to see and ear it in front of us. We were three people looking at the sky, and none saw it.

 

[StevenQX]

Hello StevenQX, it's true that I had the dynamic home point feature active, but is also true that we didn't move from the take off point till we decided to go for rescue, ant this happened about two minutes after the signal loss. So the Home point on my tablet and also in the HealtyDrones log remained where my Phantom originally took off. Also we went straight to the last known point so if the copter should have returned we had to see and ear it in front of us. We were three people looking at the sky, and none saw it.

I know that you didn't move from the take off point but dynamic home point work with your phone/tablet positioning system. If for example your device has positioning issues for a while it send wrong data to the phantom and then if the phantom loose signal it will go lost...imo the mistake is there. I advise to use dynamic home point only if you're really moving and flying in los.

You also use an external peripheral to have lte connection. Using android you've to be sure that your phone or tablet is using GPS only positioning system. By default android when using maximum accuracy use also the mobile signal to set the position and in my experience it makes positioning errors.

 

[Mark The Droner]

...
I know about RTH Kicked in as the RC started beeping and also, just in case, after about a minute I stopped and restarted it by clicking the RTH button myself.
...

So on a P3A, when RTH is pushed on the controller, the controller will send an RTH command to the AC, the AC will acknowledge the command and send the acknowledgment to the controller, and the controller, after having received the acknowledgment from the AC, will then begin beeping to tell you that the AC is now confirmed to be in RTH.

OTOH, if you send an RTH to the AC and the AC is under water, the controller won't beep.

Is that right? I confess I don't have a P3A.

 

[Oso]

I know about RTH Kicked in as the RC started beeping and also, just in case, after about a minute I stopped and restarted it by clicking the RTH button myself.

Ciao Aldo. Do I understand correctly? When you lost the video signal, you were still connected to the AC. You could hear it was in RTH mode, and even after a minute you could still disable RTH (which stopped the beeping) and then start RTH once again. Once you started the RTH again, you then left the home point as the AC was heading to that same home point? Is this correct?

Did you have the green or red LED on your RC? Maybe you weren't disabling and enabling RTH as you thought. What was the RTH height setting? When you decided to leave the home point, was Litchi's dynamic home point still enabled? Was the Litchi app locked up and not resetting the home point anymore as you moved location? Did you follow a straight line from the home point to the last known location or did you follow the shoreline? If you followed the shoreline, the AC could have been at it's RTH height and past you some distance to your right, yes? Likely very hard to see and easy to miss, yes?

These are just a couple of thoughts to perhaps help with understanding what happened. Once the Litchi log you posted is read by someone who knows how to do that, we will have more data to help. Ciao sir.

 

[Aldo962]

So on a P3A, when RTH is pushed on the controller, the controller will send an RTH command to the AC, the AC will acknowledge the command and send the acknowledgment to the controller, and the controller, after having received the acknowledgment from the AC, will then begin beeping to tell you that the AC is now confirmed to be in RTH.

OTOH, if you send an RTH to the AC and the AC is under water, the controller won't beep.

Is that right? I confess I don't have a P3A.

Yes

I know that you didn't move from the take off point but dynamic home point work with your phone/tablet positioning system. If for example your device has positioning issues for a while it send wrong data to the phantom and then if the phantom loose signal it will go lost...imo the mistake is there. I advise to use dynamic home point only if you're really moving and flying in los.

You also use an external peripheral to have lte connection. Using android you've to be sure that your phone or tablet is using GPS only positioning system. By default android when using maximum accuracy use also the mobile signal to set the position and in my experience it makes positioning errors.

I use a Nvidia Shield k1 tablet and the GPS is very precise. Even with no Internet connection. The Router was used only to download google maps in real time which Litchi uses on his map screen. Anyway I understand and appreciate your thoughts and I cannot exclude that you are right. Therefore I need for my peace of mind to have a concrete proof, from telemetry data or whatever, just to make me sleep thinking i'm not directly responsible of what happened.

 

[Aldo962]

So on a P3A, when RTH is pushed on the controller, the controller will send an RTH command to the AC, the AC will acknowledge the command and send the acknowledgment to the controller, and the controller, after having received the acknowledgment from the AC, will then begin beeping to tell you that the AC is now confirmed to be in RTH.

OTOH, if you send an RTH to the AC and the AC is under water, the controller won't beep.

Is that right? I confess I don't have a P3A.

Yes it's right.

 

[Aldo962]

Ciao Aldo. Do I understand correctly? When you lost the video signal, you were still connected to the AC. You could hear it was in RTH mode, and even after a minute you could still disable RTH (which stopped the beeping) and then start RTH once again. Once you started the RTH again, you then left the home point as the AC was heading to that same home point? Is this correct?

Did you have the green or red LED on your RC? Maybe you weren't disabling and enabling RTH as you thought. What was the RTH height setting? When you decided to leave the home point, was Litchi's dynamic home point still enabled? Was the Litchi app locked up and not resetting the home point anymore as you moved location? Did you follow a straight line from the home point to the last known location or did you follow the shoreline? If you followed the shoreline, the AC could have been at it's RTH height and past you some distance to your right, yes? Likely very hard to see and easy to miss, yes?

These are just a couple of thoughts to perhaps help with understanding what happened. Once the Litchi log you posted is read by someone who knows how to do that, we will have more data to help. Ciao sir.

Ciao OSO, yes you understand correctly, the lights on the controller seemed to me all green, but for the stress situation and also because I was under direct sunlight, maybe I missed the red one. Yes the dynamic home point feature was still on when we left the take off point. Litchi was working as i could switch back and forth from the map and the video freezed image, also i could see the blue circle showing the RC position moving towards the last known AC position, and we went there in a straight line over the lake. The RTH height was set to 55 meters, but the AC was at 70 so as I've already experienced it should have come back at the current height. We were three people on the boat all looking at the sky to the supposed AC position and around, it was clear and sunny with sun on our back and also i can assure you that in the same environment condition I can hear its noise from 300 meters far. We didn't see/hear nothing. Again the most probable conclusion is that it started the return home and suddenly hit a bird which concluded the story with a sink in the lake. .

 

[Oso]

Ciao OSO, yes you understand correctly, the lights on the controller seemed to me all green, but for the stress situation and also because I was under direct sunlight, maybe I missed the red one. Yes the dynamic home point feature was still on when we left the take off point. Litchi was working as i could switch back and forth from the map and the video freezed image, also i could see the blue circle showing the RC position moving towards the last known AC position, and we went there in a straight line over the lake. The RTH height was set to 55 meters, but the AC was at 70 so as I've already experienced it should have come back at the current height. We were three people on the boat all looking at the sky to the supposed AC position and around, it was clear and sunny with sun on our back and also i can assure you that in the same environment condition I can hear its noise from 300 meters far. We didn't see/hear nothing. Again the most probable conclusion is that it started the return home and suddenly hit a bird which concluded the story with a sink in the lake. .

Understood. It sounds like you are very experienced and know well how to fly your Phantom. It must be so frustrating for you to not have the answers yet.

BTW, I am envious of your flying location. It is very beautiful. I was there in that general area about 5 years ago when I drove up from Milan through Como on to Bellagio. Fantastic scenery and of course fantastic food. I really love Italy.

 

[SnoozeDoggyDog]

Dying to see the reply from Msinger re the log files .....

 

[Aldo962]

Aldo962, please attach your Litchi log here.

Hello msinger, did you discover anything useful in my litchi log ?

 

[mapwd1702]

Hello fastfed, yes i had strong and stable internet connection from a portable 4g router.
If something hit it, a bird or lost a prop this should have not stop the image feed and I should have seen the fall. It seemed to me a complete hardware failure that stopped the transmission instantly. Also we started to go to the last known location in straight line in about two minutes from the lost signal, and I had 76% of battery when it happened, so about 15 minutes of flight time left. We got there in less than five minutes. So if still flying there we should have been still on time to see it. I have two thoughts: a complete fly away, or a sudden electric failure from the battery or the drone core

Bermuda triangle?

 

[Kima kim]

Dying to see the reply from Msinger re the log files .....

Would like very much to see his reply.

 

[Vexed]

Hi all, 3 days ago I've lost my drone a P3 ADV and really don't know what happened. I was flying from a boat on a lake, the sky was completely clear and I was in direct LOS with no obstacles at all, 70 meters high and 1.7 km away (some of the previous flights had been 2 to 3 times further on the sea). I was about to get it back when I got the Signal Lost message from Litchi. I was using Litchi 3.6.8. The RTH function kicked in automatically, but my drone didn't came back. I was at 76% battery 4' and 27" after take off and I had the dynamic home point feature active, even if the boat was not moving from the Take Off point. After a couple of minutes with no signal we went with the boat directly to the last position we had on the map, but we couldn't see the drone in the air, nor in the water. On the tablet I had no warnings of any problem, simply the last frame freezed and the signal lost message. The image didn't show any fall and the flight was going well till that moment. It seemed a complete electric/electronic failure from the battery or from the core of the drone. Can anyone help me to understand ? I've done more than 500 flights with this and another P3 STD drone for more than 60 hours in flight and more than 1000 km of total distance in about 9 months, and I had no issues like this.My P3 ADV was around 700 km of total flights. Everytime I happened to loose signal the RTH function bringed my drones back, but not this time The only two differences were the dynamic home point feature that was active even if we where not moving, and the Take Off from the boat. I remained about 30 second up in the air over the boat before flying away to ensure there were no issues with props or compass and everything was fine.
Here is the link of the flight and the status of my drone from healty drones: HealthyDrones.com - Innovative flight data analysis that matters
I will really appreciate if anyone can help me to understand. Please help me.
I've posted this message also on the litchi group on Google.

Use the go app and you won't have a problem in future

 

[Vexed]

All these people using third party apps, batteries and probs and wonder why they loose their UAVS

 

[FantomFlier]

All these people using third party apps....

You don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Mark J Colbert]

If you were flying away from you for 4:27 faster than 10ms (the RTH speed) you probably should have waited longer than 2 minutes before you headed off to search. Chances are the AC landed near where you took off from.

When my P3A was new, I once lost the the signal and made the mistake of not waiting at the takeoff point long enough for the RTH to engage and bring it home. I looked everywhere for it and finally gave up - resolved to have lost my new toy. When I returned home, there it was - sitting in the middle of my yard with is lights flashing.

 

[Tracerfire]

On reading the whole thread, my first thought was you didn't wait long enough at your home point, headed off in the direction your bird was last, and you missed it flying overhead, It then landed in the drink. Just my opinion obviously, but you have opened it up for debate.

 

[Aldo962]

On reading the whole thread, my first thought was you didn't wait long enough at your home point, headed off in the direction your bird was last, and you missed it flying overhead, It then landed in the drink. Just my opinion obviously, but you have opened it up for debate.

Maybe you are right, therefore we were 3 people looking at the sky searching the A/C and we went straight to te last known position, so as the RTH procedure does the same to return in straight line to the home point, it should have buzzed over our heads when returning. Unfortunately this was not the case. I cannont exclude to have not seen it, but we were 3 and sky was sunny and completely clear, also if returning I should have regained telemetry and display from the camera as soon we got near, but again this didn't happened. Definetly I'm not lucky.