Well I feel justified at least in that I couldnt see any changes made after reset.
The main reason for this is I paid $60 including shipping for a drone that was supposed to be in a fully working state on Ebay. It actually arrived with 2 day shipping and in the carry case. Nothing else was promised and I knew that beforehand which is fine and was pleasantly surprised to get the hard case as I see someone selling it for $20 on own. I'm almost 100% sure this unit was a Walmart return item especially as there were some initial videos and pics from what I'm assuming was the original owner and the latest was a pic that looked exactly like the inside back bay of a Walmart. I know this as I've been in at least 10 different Walmarts repairing refrigeration equipment and the shot is a perfect match although it is very blurry.
Upon opening the case the first thing I noticed was the bottom sensor cover was not clipped in on the one end and at least 2 of the motors didnt free spin as well as my new ones. Also noticed that all of the blades were WAY tighter too. What I mean is my new ones spin like nothing on their shafts and with this one you could position the blades anywhere within their range of motion and they would stay in place quite strongly. I believe they were just loose enough that when up to speed they would still reach their proper position.
Upon app start it hooked up fine with no firmware update required and I performed the calibration using the DOOM'S method of paying attention to north. The name that it originally came up in my wifi was Tom which I just mention because at first I thought it wasnt showing up.
Calibration went normal and I had 17 sats like usual, set all the settings to minimum position and renamed it Scratch3 (you can guess what the others are named which has to do with the name of my cat).
After calibration I went back inside to test as there was no way I was going to take the chance of it flying off on me if something went wrong.
Started app, hooked up wifi fine with no weird lights or sounds and hooked up the G3 controller. I have 2 controllers from the 2 I bought new and they have always worked with no glitches even at a quick 268' height test. I have not tried any kind of longitude distance test yet on either one and that altitude test was done with the longitude set to the shortest distance.
So, started the countdown (gps) off and it did take off and hover but it was louder than it should have been and had a see-able vibration and not holding position quite as well.
After about 30 seconds had a motor stall and it came down from as low as you can get it to fly. Knew which motor it was and it was hot but not super hot. I should mention that all the blades looked OK.
I didnt originally check the unit over in a way that would involve removing covers but now I really looked over things closely.
That motors 3 screws were not in properly as in the looked to have been over tightened (2 of the 3 screws) which out it slightly off position. Ended up having to use tiny washers to fix it after smoothing out the plastic on both sides of the plastic.
The bottom case piece that covers the electronics and indoor sensors had one of the front clips missing as well as one side one making it easier to come off.
After fixing those issues and that motor spinning much better but not as loose as a new one I decided to try again. This time I may have accidentally forgotten to turn off gps. As it went to hover position (still a bit louder than normal and a slight vibration) I tried to bring it down as low as possible and it all of a sudden took off to the ceiling which is completely explainable if I forgot to turn off gps.
I caught it when it did the stuck motor or whatever it's called shutoff and the blades looked like they had very minimal damage.Of course I shut it all down and tried again but like an idiot I forgot to check the gps and it did it again.
This time I changed all blades correctly and I mean paranoid correctly checking many times including against another unit both in looks and labels. Stopped for the night after verifying no other damage.
This morning the first thing i did was reset the drone twice to make sure it was reset following the proper procedure and recalibrated outside.
The problem I've got now lol is that I'm paranoid of trying it again only because I'm not certain that gps was on the other 2 times and dont want it to fly into the ceiling again.
I did contact the seller yesterday and agreed that he could send me another parts drone that he claims has all working motors and props after I said I would either need $40 refunded or the parts to repair it.
He did send a parts drone out with tracking number and i might even have it tomorrow.Now I believe that one does connect to the app but I'm not sure. The reason why I say that is because he is selling a few of these for I believe $20-30 for parts with free shipping. That's how I came up with asking for the $40 refund or I'm sending it back.
If the parts drone has working parts and not what I'm assuming is just a messed up frame i wont have an issue with spending the $60.
So, what should i do before trying to hover again in the house? I know you can check for errors in the app itself but some things cause an error to begin with such as the optical flow too dark or too close to the ground and the sat being red (but of course that one will be greyed out this time slap my face before trying). The sat will absolutely say 17 and is just fine outside but theres 0 possibility I'm taking a chance of it flying away.
Apologize in advance for the long message. I'm a descriptive person
Not that it matters but the camera works just fine in all respects.
Dont show any errors connecting. Dont see why there should be any issues starting it for just a hover especially right off phone without the controller and gps/says off.
Any reason why it would take off to the ceiling unless there is an issue with a board at this point?