I’m running into an issue when trying to use Auto mode through Mission Planner 1.3.82.
After arming and takeoff, the drone initially ascends, but then it starts to spiral down and completely loses control. I don’t see any recurrent warnings or errors in the Messages tab on Mission Planner during the event.
Interestingly, when I run the exact same mission using QGroundControl, the drone flies smoothly without any of these problems.
Has anyone experienced something similar, or do you have suggestions on what might be causing this? Could it be related to Mission Planner sending different parameters/commands compared to QGC?
Any help or troubleshooting tips would be greatly appreciated.
Very unlikely that MP has anything to do with the control loss in auto.
A log file from the vehicle (one from with MP and one from with QGC) would be helpful to analyze the issue.
Thanks for the quick response @Eosbandi
I also think it is unlikely, however, it looks this way in the moment lol!
I will obtain the logs as soon as we rebuild our vehicle, tomorrow much probably.
I actually don’t have many news on the log of the drone failing. However, we uploaded the mission (first QGC and on another flight MP). After that we took off the drone by the RC and turned to auto on the RC. Both missions worked perfectly!!
This leads me to think that possibly the issue is on my drone reaction to guided mode, or the shift from guided to auto on the MP. This idea came to mind because we were taking off on MP and then turning the drone to auto so it could start the mission (I believe this takeoff is guided).
It is Guided Mode. You will see that in the HUD when you select Takeoff. Why not just put a takeoff command in the Mission? Are you sure you didn’t switch to another mode before Auto when it crashed.
I’m new to MissionPlanner and was trying it out, after some time I figured that I can put a takeoff command on the mission lol. Although I’m not sure if it’s possible to take off all the drones with such command on a swarm mission (my current goal with MP).
As you said @dkemxr, the way I’m taking off causes the drone to start on guided. This is probably the cause of the crash. I’m not familiar with the control structure of the guided mode, but perhaps there are some calibrations that are not necessary for auto. Do this make sense? Perhaps this could explain the crash.
Just to wrap this up — thanks a lot for everyone’s help!
My team ended up switching to another approach for drone swarming that doesn’t rely on Mission Planner. We’ve been flying in GUIDED mode since then, and everything has been working smoothly.
Looking back, I believe there were three possible causes for the crash we experienced:
IMU issues with the flight controller;
Structural weakness or damage to the airframe;
Unexpected behavior in GUIDED mode.
Unfortunately, I don’t currently have the resources to reproduce the exact flight conditions or retrieve the logs to confirm the root cause.
