Our team is new to ardupilot but we’ve had a couple of successful flights where we have taken off using the data tab, made the quadcopter fly to waypoints and then clicked on RTL which made the drone return to the lauch position and land. Today, for the first time ever, we tried to use the plan tab to create a mission for the drone, uploaded it, and the drone excetude the whole mission perfectly and returned to the launch position but suddenly killed the motors while it was 15 meters high. We are unsure as to why this happened. Any suggestion would help. Here are the pictures of the mission setup, and the RTL parameters. We are running ardupilot V4.5.7
We would need to see the .bin log file
Here’s a link to the .bin file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KrLJ7DNKBwPHCSKXUGu04I4jTUG1WEAo/view?usp=sharing
What might help is if you had battery logging. The log ends abruptly indicating a power loss.
It’s not a good idea to run an Auto Mission on an untuned craft with only the initial tune parameters set.
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No battery monitor, so no cigar.
- Rule 1 - set up the battery monitor for accurate voltage and current monitoring
- Rule 2 - see rule 1
Setting the failsafe actions is essential.
BATT_FS_CRT_ACT,1
BATT_FS_LOW_ACT,2
I’m betting it’s a battery voltage issue, or at least a serious connection problem because:
- Vcc had gone from around 5.3volts down to 4.9volts at times
- Motor outputs where just starting to be commanded up, probably to maximum, indicating loss of thrust (ESCs shut down for low voltage?)
- Logging just stopped mid-air, like the flight controller lost power supply
We’ve found you need to have functioning battery monitoring because the pilot cannot manually monitor battery voltages in real time - there are distractions and mishaps, it’s a fact of life. The copter needs to be allowed to save itself when this happens - batteries can have a bad day, or maybe your charger is poor, you probably wont know until the copter does a battery failsafe.
Thanks for the suggestions! I will look into setting up a battery monitor soon. I was wondering if the mission plan setup was fine? Because from what I read after the crash, the RTL command doesn’t make the drone land. Instead, it goes back to the coordinates of the launch location and then terminates the mission after a certain time. I was wondering if our drone crashed since it did not have any land command in the mission plan.
Also, I understand that there could have been a power loss mid-flight that caused the drone to crash but, after the drone fell to the ground, all the electronics still had power and the motors had disarmed and started beeping. I have a video of the crash. Here is a link to it if that helps-
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1swAUGYBwVAoGShpP3s5LIeGdR3UK6M55/view?usp=sharing
No it doesn’t it Lands by default. There is an RTL_ALT_FINAL parameter that is default 0, meaning it will Land. You had a power loss.
Understood. That helps a lot. Thank you! I will now look into setting up the battery monitor.
In the video (and in the log) the copter falls before it has reached the RTL point. Like Dave says your mission RTL entry is correct and RTL will land anyway.
Even if you had set RTL to hover (Loiter) at some altitude a correctly configured battery monitor would allow the copter to land when the battery depleted anyway.
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A correctly configured vehicle not only lands safety, but olso operates safely even in windy conditions.
Take some time to learn how to configure tune and operate your vehicle correctly.
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