Drone suddenly failing midair | Drone Community | Page 1

odd bronze May 29, 2023, 10:10 PM

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If anyone remembers, I’m the person who’s making a drone that acts as an automatic seed dispenser while it flies over a forest. We’ve had our prototype (5” H frame) flying successfully for a couple months and we’ve just been modifying the dispensing mechanism and computer vision.

However, yesterday my teammate was flying it and it suddenly gave out. The props stopped, it crashed, started beeping a couple times. He tried flying it again at a lower height and it happened again after a minute or two of good flying. The radio transmitter didn’t give the alert of losing connection, and there don’t seem to be any loose connections. There were also no warnings on the OSD besides RSSI. Any idea as to what’s happening/how to fix this?

earnest fog May 30, 2023, 5:06 PM

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https://oscarliang.com/fix-esc-desync/

Oscar Liang

Oscar

How to Fix ESC Desync? - Oscar Liang

I will show you how to fix ESC desync. When your quad falls out of the sky unexpectedly, it might be caused by ESC Desync.

odd bronze Jun 2, 2023, 2:38 AM

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earnest fog https://oscarliang.com/fix-esc-desync/

thank you! do you know if there is a way to check for overheating in betaflight?

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we just tried taking the cover we made for the drone off and it flies perfectly fine

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in fact, the problem only started when we left the cover on/added our seed storage on top

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the drone doesn't flip over so we don't think its an esc desync, the motors just all cut out at the same time and it crashes

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this is a picture of our drone (ignore the messy box lmao)

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with the cover on

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its flown perfectly fine without the black body cover and with the round dispensers on the side

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as it did again when we took that cover off earlier today

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i feel like now that it's summer, the black pla is absorbing too much heat and even with the longer sides being half open, there isn't enough circulation inside

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would that cause a motor failure like what we're dealing with?

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because even with the cover + two seed storage triangles on, the drone flies fine for 2-3 minutes before suddenly coming down

heavy schooner Jun 2, 2023, 9:46 PM

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excuse my ignorance, and sorry if this is insulting, but could it just be a fail safe?
i’ve never fail safed (ELRS ftw) so i don’t know how it looks like but it sounds like it?

boreal mauve Jun 2, 2023, 10:30 PM

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odd bronze thank you! do you know if there is a way to check for overheating in betaflight?

You can add temp sensors to your osd. I'm going off what I know about computers here but the fc could be slowing it's self down to prevent damage to a point where it can't send signal to the esc.

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Again I don't know what happens to an fc when they overheat Google just says how to fix.

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Oh, I just realized the black box is the drone, ah it very likely that fc is overheating, maybe just adding a 90mm fan to the fc will fix it

earnest fog Jun 3, 2023, 12:17 AM

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If you think it's a temperature problem, try adding the temperature value to the OSD. But I'm not sure if this will tell you much

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Maybe compare the temps of a successful flight to that of a few crashed ones

odd bronze Jun 4, 2023, 4:13 AM

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boreal mauve Oh, I just realized the black box is the drone, ah it very likely that fc is ove...

yep it was the fc! we added a heatsink and poked holes in our cover (the cover itself was a project requirement for some reason but we still made the interior electronics untouchable via mesh)

#Drone suddenly failing midair