Unresponsive quad crashed

ArduCopter Copter 4.3
1

So today was very unfortunate for me. I was running some tests on my quad, which, from the feel of it, is flying pretty decent thanks to the help I have been receiving here.

I saw no oscillations so I started exercising the craft with some pretty dynamic flight and she was doing great. Very responsive and agile. She was passing tests that she couldn’t just the other day!

However, I started trying some rapid elevations and descends because before my tune the craft couldn’t handle rapid drops… I think because I was using some thin material props. I switched them to rigid and strong carbon reinforced, which made her much more responsive, and the first couple elevation/descends the craft was handling like a champ.

On the last one, though, she kept elevating and would not respond to my controller. It seemed like she was going to fly away so I cut the motors to try and catch her. Of course I didn’t, and she violently hit the ground (grass) and an arm snapped off.

Luckily, I think that that was the only injury, besides minor cracks to my anti-vibration plate guarding the RPi and Pixhawk 1. Can you help me investigate the log to see if we can find what happened please? It was really wierd and I never experienced nothing like it. At first, I thought maybe it was a GPS glitch because it was cloudy out today, and in fact, it started raining about 30 minutes after the crash.

But I don’t think it was the GPS because it has nothing to do with elevation, does it? Now, I’m thinking that maybe the range finder had something to do with it? Which is very concerning because I thought I had a good one (Leddar One). But again, he doesn’t have anything to do with my rx/tx, correct?

In any case, here is the log, hopefully we can figure out why she went rogue.

2

Despite some low battery voltages the motors and ESCs were all still working OK right up until you hit the Disarm switch.
What you thought was a fly-away was in fact an RTL, and the RTL altitude is set at 15m, so the copter was busy climbing from almost zero altitude to 15m.
You switched to Land mode, which probably would have worked but the copter had been rising rapidly for RTL and the new desired climb rate was reducing but needed time to work.
The rangefinder wasnt in play.

I use these:

RTL_ALT,4500  // trees
RTL_ALT_FINAL,0
RTL_CLIMB_MIN,200  // always climb at least 2m
RTL_CONE_SLOPE,2  //  allow for RTL closer to home without climbing so much

Yaapu telemetry, or even a conventional ground station, is worth it’s weight in gold!

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Oh man, I feel so dumb rn.

She felt really good flying too. Would you say that the logs reflect that?

4

Yaw was a bit unstable but pitch and roll were close to being quite good.

Get a transmitter and receiver that will handle Yaapu Telemetry - you will never go back!
In fact it’s dangerous because you’ll be setting up yaapu telemetry on the family car, the tractor, the kids bikes, the kids, the neighbours dog…

It will call out battery low and RTL, any events like that

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5

If I would’ve never crashed, my next auto tune was going to be yawD, fml.

Yeah, my rx/tx is pretty trash. I actually have a Taranis X9 Lite that I use with my tiny 5inch quad, but I wanted to try out the FlySky-i6X and never put it down. Now I see why it was so cheap.

This Yaapu sounds cool as heck… thanks for the plug on that! I’m switching back to Taranis and uploading this ASAP, just gotta order another reciever now. Any suggestions on the reciever? I am looking around and they have tons of them for the taranis x9 lite.

What do you think of this one?

6

If you can update the Taranis radio to ACCESS that would be OK, and then install latest OpenTX.

I’ve used R-XSR for short range stuff and X8R for longer range, but these days I only use the RFD900X (or UX) and a TXMOD in the transmitter.

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So why do some receivers also have the pwm channel outputs?

8

Those receivers with all the separate outputs are for planes (usually), where there may be no other electronics at all apart from an ESC and servos. They dont suit “intelligent” flight controllers, except where they also have an SBUS or PPM output that combines all the channels.

9

Icic.

So I am a bit confused as to how to wire the receiver, since it is not as simple as the FlySky FS-X6B receiver.

My Pixhawk 1 is considered an F4 based autopilot, correct? In the Connecting to FrSky Sport and Fport wiki, it says:

If the autopilot uses an F7 or H7 processor, then this can be done by appropriately configuring the UART port on the autopilot. However, most F4 based autopilots do not have this capability and required inverters externally. A few F4 autopilots have these on the boards themselves and label the port “FrSky Telem”, but most do not. Those require an added bi-directional inverter connected between the autopilot and the receiver’s SPort or FPort.

Which means that I will need an external inversion or I need to use the inverted Sport pad on the receiver (Which, I am pretty sure, is the tiny pad labeled -S on the back). Then, the wiki has a nice wire diagram from the receiver to a UART using either the Sport or Fport protocol. But I am wondering, does the wiring stop there? No rc connection to the MAIN rail, just +5v, inverted Fport, and GND?

I would still have S.Port and SBUS OUT on the receiver… would those remain unused?