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New owner/pilot - camera cover lesson - not...

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New Typhoon H owner here. If this isn't one way to get a guy make an actual pre-flight check list - I discovered that if you don't take off the protective camera cover, response to commands is slowed and/or blocked. Never saw that anywhere, don't know if it's atypical, but the ONLY thing that finally worked normally and correctly was RTH. Lesson learned, luckily not the hard way ($). Removed the cover, re-started and normal operations the rest of the morning.
 
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Reactions: Steve Carr
Yep, that's the one. Excited to get in the air, had been messing with the camera at home (one of the washers for the pins had broken), so I though I had messed up the camera so that's why I wasn't getting a feed on the controller. Controls were disabled/slowed in all modes, but the mentioned return to home, and that was painfully slow. A bunch of dumb-assery all rolled together.
 
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Reactions: Steve Carr
The cameras on the Q500 had a gimbal lock on the back side of the camera. It used to be a standing joke: "If you see something drop from the Q into the lake, it was your gimbal lock."
On the H, they moved it to the front of the camera so there is no picture on the monitor. I'm surprised you didn't notice a black screen.
 
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Reactions: 7cyclops
Did that just once with my Q500+,flying over township cemetary.Don't seem to ever bother anyone there. After several attempts to lower the camera, something came out of the sky Twirrling around like a one bladed chopper. Took me awhile to find it after I landed. I didn't even realize what it was till I found it. DUH!! Keith
 
Interesting. I have never seen such behavior mentioned. Just to clarify, you are referring to the gimbal lock that covers the camera?

I haven’t either. Usually it’s only the camera that’s effected. It won’t work right until the aircraft gets re-booted after removing the gimbal lock.
 
More flights, more updates. It seems cause/effect are not always what they seem. Repaired my gimbal issue. Ground test of camera works fine, controls well, broadcasts to the controller. First flight (with camera cover removed) - takeoff (Angle mode), kept it at about six feet, no control but down-ish - got to the ground fairly slowly, before I could kill the motors it tipped over, luckily no damage. Shut down, stubbornly turned it back on - perfect control/flight, all systems go. Freshly charged battery, screen on controller all normal. Today - exactly the same - crazy legs at 6 feet, slowly lowered to the ground, flopped and tipped over, broken prop this time. Same thing, shut down, repowered, perfect fight after that. Next battery (same day/place), fully charged - exactly the same process - crazy time, then perfect flight. First flight I waited 15 minutes after power on, but GPS and sat numbers stayed exactly the same. Once crazy time was over, smart mode worked great, RTH perfect, automatic takeoff in smart mode worked fine, flying the majority of the time in Angle mode and response and picture taking perfect. Anyone have a theory? Prior to takeoff, I did a hardware check, and all of the controls were shown to respond normally. Next session, I'm going to power up, acquire signals, etc., then power down and restart. Don't know if that will work, but seems like a dumb ritual to have to go through for each battery, if that even makes it work normally. Because of this, I don't have much trust yet. I get over about 50', I start to think that if it gets nutty there, I've got some real problems. Used unit, so I don't know the history of the batteries, but they charge normally (Hitec x2 plus charger - I actually get 20+ minutes of flight before the first warning), anyone? Older firmware, considering updating...could that be a possibility? When it does fly, it's awesome. I'd hate to brick it with an update.

All that other stuff with the camera/gimbal was totally coincidental.
 
Ideally the copter should be on the ground before the warnings. Some have reported the H becomes unstable when trying to land after they've got a battery warning and the battery is severely depleted, if the copter joystick isn't held down correctly down and the tone change, the copter can tip over.
 
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Reactions: Mike Irish
My problem is only at full battery/takeoff time. Landings & battery management don't seem to be involved. During the incident, controls don't act normally and the drone moves unpredictably. Done dozens of landings in Angle mode with no problem when drone responds to controls correctly.
 
My problem is only at full battery/takeoff time. Landings & battery management don't seem to be involved. During the incident, controls don't act normally and the drone moves unpredictably. Done dozens of landings in Angle mode with no problem when drone responds to controls correctly.
If your landing and are too near ( Smart Mode) the Copter with your controller it will move away from you, it creates a safe area between you and it, and can cause problems, especially when you mention successful angle mode landings.
 
Seems landings have caught some attention - bad landings I had were another symptom of loss of control of the drone. The drone would ONLY descend slowly, and wanted to climb on it's own, no matter which mode I had it in or how far I was from it with the controller. It seemed like it wanted to climb, but I kept downward pressure on the stick to try to get it to return - again, in Smart and Angle mode. I was afraid it wouldn't stop climbing at all. It definitely was not in RTH mode. Once it did touch down, it wanted to try to climb making it bounce and tip. Unfortunately, I didn't observe what, if any, indicator lights were doing and didn't take a screenshot of the controller to see if it read anything unusual. I've read, re-read, and re-re-read distances, modes, functions. I'm eager to call this operator error and learn from it, but in this case I just can't find my problem, given my success when the drone responds appropriately. When it is functioning well, I can't reproduce the crazy stuff in any mode. I haven't tried to obtain the flight log yet. The log you can read on the ST16 doesn't go into the needed detail. I'm thinking upgrading the firmware is up next, got to get some confidence. Yet...not discouraged at all - so far, kinda' like golf - those perfect shots keep drawing you back in. Without the small bits of cray-cray, it's great.
 

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