I took the 3" gecko out again after replacing the RX. It had seemed fine in the garden, but then did this in the fieldā¦
There was loads of RX Loss.
Could it be the Soft Serial Iād used in an attempt to free up a UART?
Could it be the receiver position on top of the flight controller?
Could I have snagged the wiring with the battery straps?
Could the receiver antenna position be bad?
Well Iāve removed Soft Serial and repositioned the receiver.
As before it works just fine in the houseā¦ it remains to be seen what happens in the fieldā¦ That test is for tomorrow eveningā¦
Flying back across the playing field the drone suddenly made an uncommanded nosedive into a tree.
Telemetry from the DJI Goggles shows RC signal strength dropping rapidly to zero, though video signal strength remained OK, and sound from the GoPro indicates the motors just wound down.
This was approx 80m from where I was standing, with the drone heading back towards me, and Iād previously flown over the same area albeit in the other direction - so very puzzling
Video also includes the recovery by poking it with a stick
Certainly looks like a failsafe, have you checked your antennas etc? I started getting worse signal performance in previously good places and realised one of my antennas had broken so I got full signal in one direction and half on the other side.
The antennae seem fine - though Iām not particularly happy with the way they are arranged on the DC5 ( see pic below ) so Iām currently 3D printing a new mount to relocate them
Weird. Only thing I can really think is due to orientation having both blocked by the carbon of the frame and the battery was possibly to do with itā¦but even DJI gear should be fine at that range.
In that case the fact that you lost control and not video implies its a separate issue.
In other news, Iāve traced the cause of another āincidentā involving my X220S ( began wobbling then just as I was making a precautionary landing started tumbling ) to a loose connector between ESC and FC which stopped the front left motor
I did a bit of googling and quite a few people seem to have had the sameā¦no fixes or explanations to go with it however so not useful. New layout looks a bit less likely to be blocked at least, maybe give it some proper range tests if you can.
Flew the same route today - video started going blocky at around 700m ( with quite a few trees in the way ) but RC signal remained a solid 4. I was rather tentative when approaching the area ( 90m away ) where signal was lost last time out but again it stayed at 4
