Im testing a new pixracer case. I believe shocks trasmitted to the board were the cause of my woes. Ill have something available by the end of march if im correct.
it was my fault, i got a connection between 12v and telem2 
5th pixracer just bricked on me. In its stock case and isolated with 8 pieces of zeal tape between the top and bottom. It suffered a 20 foot fall that didnt even cause a prop to be damaged
Heres the inside of the case im designing so far
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9egjsa9aEXWRzBCMmY5ZlpnTWM/view?usp=drivesdk
Iām using the standard case on 250 size quad. Did a face plant the other day while playing around with it. Broke two arms and two props but the Pixracer still works like a charm.
Mike
here is the vibrations from a 100% throttle stab with reverse mounted props with the stock case mounted on zeal tape
and here is my new case, mounted on zeal tape. The vibeZ is less than half of what it was previously
I have too a Pixracer dead after his first crash , it crashed from 3 meters height in the grass, since some power cables to the esc were cut I thought they were shorten but i was surprised how much i was unlucky, first crash, dead board, never happened before.
I think the delicacy of the board coupled with the free play inside the case was causing me to go through so many pixracers. The new case i designed, mounted on zeal tape, survived a 50ft fall into the grass when my battery ran low during an autotune.
My pixracer suffer a crash with a rc airplane and them to the grass and no damage without case, now I waiting one with a case to protect better but Iām going to take care of this post and see if use the case is better or not 
thankās for comments
thia is BSā¦i have had 2 dead of them already and not even crashing themā¦wth is going on with these things?? am not buying a single one anymoreā¦same problem as everyone else, solid green light, no USB , gets hot as heckā¦
Yep. I have 6 dead ones. If youāre looking to build a racer youāre 100% better off running betaflight until we get a better solution for ardupilot
Shame to hear this, with no response from the vendor. I fried my pixracer but I think it was my fault (short), still that only happened due to bad design (open metal on the safety switch goes straight inside the main cpu).
I wonder if the clones suffer from the same sensitivities?
https://www.unmannedtechshop.co.uk/px4-pixracer-autopilot/
You should ask to Jordi Munoz from Mrobotics , co-founder of 3DR, that makes quality boards, both Pixhawk and Pixracers - https://store.mrobotics.io/category-s/112.htm
The PixRacer is a nice little piece of hardware, its not perfect but there is no evidence of a design flaw or incompatible components within this unit.
I fly the original and the Chinese knockoff with no difference. Have to admit that the metallic enclosure is a little unconventional and having the board moving within it is not a good feeling , so I stick the board with a piece of doubled sided foam tape on the bottom of it == make sure that you dont cover the baro. I put a foam tape under the ESP WIFI board as well so it does not touch the top of case , when plugged-in.
Maybe one important note here: I use Flysky PPM receiver that is conflicting with WIFI, for long distance I use the 900 Mhz SIK radio and remove the ESP8266 board, so I dont get erratic PPM signal.
The rest is just good construction technique, having a good vibration control, have a single source of power supply to the controller (no BEC from ESC connected) and never use USB except for downloading the new releases with the batteries disconnected.
@ppoirier My pixracer behaved itself until I turned it into a smoke grenade, but that doesnāt mean that there isnāt a fault in it. There are enough reports in this thread alone that points to a problem somewhere that I donāt think we should just discount all these accounts as bad practice. I feel bad for the guys here who have lost a fair bit of money. Certainly these reports have influenced my decision not to buy another oneā¦
I would have liked to see some investigation from the vendor and a statement, similar to the way @proficnc does - he is very open and straight forward and it gives a lot of confidence in their products. It has been noted on numerous occasions that the communications from auav is quite poor.
Agree
I have made enough magic smoke to know how bad it feel, fortunately I never experienced repeated occurrences. The problem is how you can demonstrate the failure.
We have one specific recurring issue here, we need more information to prove that this has a root cause directly related to the PixRacer. In order to demonstrate we have to eliminate all the other sources, so we need to know how the Quadcopter is constructed and used: Pictures, connection schematic, Bill Of Material, bench test procedures and flight procedures. With this on hand, we might find the cause of the problem, otherwise it will remain discussions and speculations.
This has occurred on several different builds. Itās reasonable to say this is a pixracer issue.
I suspect that even light jarring of the board is causing internal failure. I commanded a motor e stop from about 2 feet onto the grass and bricked one in its original case mounted on zeal tape. This is totally unacceptable. F3 boards are normally hard mounted on quad racing frames without ill effects from hard crashes. I created a custom case with rubber internals that prevented any free play of the board and have had success but I havenāt had the nerve to hard mount the pixracer.
Can try mount barebone
If it is a genuine problem with the pixracer (unproven) then yes itās unacceptable. You should be able to hard mount the boards, in fact itās recommended by quite a few of the core developers.