I’ve flown my IRIS a few times now and haven’t had any problems. However today when I took her out to fly that all changed. I waited for GPS lock, armed the motors, then went to take off and things went downhill. As soon as it got a foot or so off the ground it flipped backwards onto its top.
I got it back ready to fly, and the exact thing happened. On the third attempt I got the IRIS off the ground however it kept pulling back horribly strong. Even with the stick pushed forward all the way it kept pulling back, ultimately flying into the branches of a tree and tumbling down about 30 feet. The end result was a snapped off blue leg and two of the other motors “loose” from their mounts. Only one of the four motors has both screws fixed to hold the motor into the arm. The other three motors now only have no screws or one screw.
It looks quite a bit ow work to get it back into flying shape again.
Can anyone help me out with the logs and possibly see what went wrong? How do I pull the logs and once I do can someone help me decipher them?
@krisbucket,
You need to attach tlogs or dataflash logs if available to help troubleshoot your issue.
Go to the Flight Data window and below the HUD there are some tabs. One of those tabs says “Data Flash Logs”, click that tab. A window will open that says “Download Data Flash Logs”, click that button. Another window will open showing you all of the data flash logs available for downloading. Since you have probably never erased your data flash logs, there will be quite a few. So scroll down near the bottom of the list and select the ones with the date of your crash. Then click the button that says “Down load these files”.
After the download is finished, you can go to C: Program File(x86)\ Mission Planner\logs\Quadcopter\1 and recover the Fligtht logs and the binary files. Use 7-z to zip the files to a manageable size.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
TCIII GM
When I open APM2 on my MacBook Air and go to the Flight Data window the only tabs I see are “quick”, “actions”, “status”, and “messages”. I do not see the “Data Flash Logs” tab.
Looking through my folders I did find a few files under the folder “apmplanner2” then “tlogs”. One of those files is attached. Is this the correct file?
ROTFL! (the upside down HUF image)freaking hilarious(really sorry about the OP’s crash however!) and I am GUILTY of that exact same behavior…(upside down arming or vertical arming) as the tight overstretched LED cable makes one tend to favor orientations where it is NOT stretched.
Hilarious and thanx SO much for that heads up… fortunately came in while I am grounded awaiting shipment on a GPS swapout for my IRIS(today yay!) so I had NOT run into this yet.
I will airbrush “THIS SIDE UP WHEN ARMING” arrows and text on the side in fluorescent pink to try and make sure its not overlooked.
I am thinking about starting a checklist for the PILOT to complete prior to flying in andropilot
although I am sure making part of the arming procedure while safer would only cause endless support calls of its NOT arming(as in the GPS high HDOP),
so UNFORTUNATELY a laminated checklist for grease pencil will be ignored by all except the pilots trained on fullsized aircraft where such checklists are mandatory, particularly on older birds like DC-3(land of 100’s of overhead switches).
@IPvFletch: Don’t know. Haven’t heard back. Could be either.
To my knowledge IRIS will perform an initialization right after the batteries are inserted - visible by the blue and red lights flashing. During that initialization the sensors are calibrated. If IRIS is upside down or even not leveled at this point, you will get garbage results during flying.
This initialization seems to be different that arming. Although sometimes IRIS appears to re-run the initialization (blue and red lights flashing) at arming. Sometimes it doesn’t. Haven’t figured out the patter here yet.
That’s also one of the reasons why I’m not very happy with the status LED on the back door: I usually keep the door opened while IRIS runs through the initialization sequence and don’t touch her at all.
But while doing so, it’s not easy to see the LED with the battery door open.