So do we have a problem? Drones that 'fly away'

[Scott_in_Colorado]

We have no scientific studies. Some think because Yuneec may not be supporting the Breeze any longer (unsure if this is actually confirmed - as Yuneec is taking calls, but we may not see any more software updates) the assumption seems to be Yuneec knows of issues with the Breeze. Not sure I buy into that theory.

There are many unexplained posts of the Breeze flying away. We can't explain the behavior of the Breeze because we don't have enough data in most cases. For instance, someone posted they saw a "magnetic interference' warning or some such thing on their phone. They moved 10' away from that spot, and the warning was not there - so they flew and the Breeze flew away or crashed - I don't recall which. What we don't know here is if the Breeze was recalibrated AFTER the warning, and before the next flight 10' away from where the warning took place. These sorts of details are necessary to figure out if WE (all of us that fly the Breeze) have a problem. I'm just in from flying mine around and again, all went perfect. I fly sequences, forward and backwards, figure 8's, squares, square 8's and so on - rotating the Breeze 360 degrees as I fly. This teaches me to always be in control no matter what attitude the Breeze is in. I don't normally fly more than 200' away as the Breeze get's pretty small for me to see and I do not fly by the camera alone - that's just me. Others do, and that's fine.

As I read many posts I can't help but wonder if I'm next. Will I be the one posting - "my Breeze just flew away"? We have no way to get good answers unless we all post specific details of what went wrong. Did we crash before our last flight (perhaps 5 flights ago?) - possibly causing an issue. How many GPS satellites did we have locked on when we took off? Some think the IRS is the issue, but isn't the GPS the guiding factor here - once locked on, even if we lose Wi-Fi, the Breeze should self fly back to the home position.

Look, I'd just like to get answers - real answers - so WE can all see if there is a problem. DoomMeister has done some good work with flight logs - and discovered some of the log data we could use to determine if we have problems is not available. I know he's been telling Yuneec about this issue - but I don't expect answers back from Yuneec.

I don't want my Breeze to fly away someday - so all I can do is make sure I have GPS lock, 15+ satellites, all seems fine when I take off, the battery is charged - and I'm not flying near potentially large metal objects. Other than this, I don't know what else to do. So far, no issues, but many in the forum have had issues, and I'm sure competent pilots, as careful as we all are.

I know from experience intermittent failures or problems are the hardest to debug as they don't always occur. We don't know when something will cause a failure. I found myself actually thinking today, "what if I lose the Breeze, am I having enough fun with it to get another - or get another drone (DJI??) that will not have issues?" Is there such a Drone that has no issues? I bet not - so in the mean time I'll keep watching my battery voltage, calibrating my drone whenever I fly and watching for odd behavior.

Good luck to us all!

 

[Jeff@W]

We have no scientific studies. Some think because Yuneec may not be supporting the Breeze any longer (unsure if this is actually confirmed - as Yuneec is taking calls, but we may not see any more software updates) the assumption seems to be Yuneec knows of issues with the Breeze. Not sure I buy into that theory.

There are many unexplained posts of the Breeze flying away. We can't explain the behavior of the Breeze because we don't have enough data in most cases. For instance, someone posted they saw a "magnetic interference' warning or some such thing on their phone. They moved 10' away from that spot, and the warning was not there - so they flew and the Breeze flew away or crashed - I don't recall which. What we don't know here is if the Breeze was recalibrated AFTER the warning, and before the next flight 10' away from where the warning took place. These sorts of details are necessary to figure out if WE (all of us that fly the Breeze) have a problem. I'm just in from flying mine around and again, all went perfect. I fly sequences, forward and backwards, figure 8's, squares, square 8's and so on - rotating the Breeze 360 degrees as I fly. This teaches me to always be in control no matter what attitude the Breeze is in. I don't normally fly more than 200' away as the Breeze get's pretty small for me to see and I do not fly by the camera alone - that's just me. Others do, and that's fine.

As I read many posts I can't help but wonder if I'm next. Will I be the one posting - "my Breeze just flew away"? We have no way to get good answers unless we all post specific details of what went wrong. Did we crash before our last flight (perhaps 5 flights ago?) - possibly causing an issue. How many GPS satellites did we have locked on when we took off? Some think the IRS is the issue, but isn't the GPS the guiding factor here - once locked on, even if we lose Wi-Fi, the Breeze should self fly back to the home position.

Look, I'd just like to get answers - real answers - so WE can all see if there is a problem. DoomMeister has done some good work with flight logs - and discovered some of the log data we could use to determine if we have problems is not available. I know he's been telling Yuneec about this issue - but I don't expect answers back from Yuneec.

I don't want my Breeze to fly away someday - so all I can do is make sure I have GPS lock, 15+ satellites, all seems fine when I take off, the battery is charged - and I'm not flying near potentially large metal objects. Other than this, I don't know what else to do. So far, no issues, but many in the forum have had issues, and I'm sure competent pilots, as careful as we all are.

I know from experience intermittent failures or problems are the hardest to debug as they don't always occur. We don't know when something will cause a failure. I found myself actually thinking today, "what if I lose the Breeze, am I having enough fun with it to get another - or get another drone (DJI??) that will not have issues?" Is there such a Drone that has no issues? I bet not - so in the mean time I'll keep watching my battery voltage, calibrating my drone whenever I fly and watching for odd behavior.

Good luck to us all!

Just had a catastrophic event with my breeze. I was flying fine and the Breeze was about 220 feet away when it went into an orbiting pattern. It would not respond to my stick movements so I called it home. As it was returning, the orbits started increasing in circumference until it clipped a tree shutting off the motor. The breeze dropped like a rock suffering damage to a rotor arm, the gps cover, a propeller blade, and the fuselage. I was actually able to reassemble it and start it up. It’s a tough little bird, but I have no explanation as to why it started orbiting.

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

Thought I'd look at the DJI forum.. the topic: ANOTHER FLY AWAY..

The post:
Hi there, I had my first Mavic Air flyaway this morning. Right after the start at about 20m height the Mavic drifted away sideways fast and hit a tree shortly after that.

Seems we may not be the only ones having issues!

Just a point of reference.

 

[nikono]

Oct 20, 2011 - “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

I've test flown four Breezes with one iPhone5. None flew away.
Android might be the cause for Breeze flyways. Just look at how many times they updated Android. Each time, a cute new name to fool the mind.

 

[Steve Carr]

The Breeze was new territory for Yuneec. It was the first without a built in monitor, the first to use 5.8 GHz signal for video and control and the first to use an app on the phone for setup and logging. It appears they are staying the course with the latest models; The Firebird FPV plane and the HD Racer drone. Both will use a phone and an app.

The advantage is obvious. It is the standard for the consumer drone market because the manufacturing price is much less without the monitor.

Once you get into phone apps for control, the likelihood of control issues increases exponentially. I don't think you can single out Android vs iPhone as a cause. I've not seen any evidence of any particular model being better or worse. There is simply much greater risk for operators to use their equipment differently. Did you put it in airplane mode? Were you running other apps? Is this your first drone? Did you take care to avoid hostile locations (interference)?

Just fly and accept the idea that any of these can go on vacation without you. It does happen with every make and model ever built. Add to that, aircraft, spacecraft, cars, ships and trains. Minimize your risk and increase your knowledge and skill. It's the best you can do.

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

Good thoughts Nikono and Steve. It would be interesting to monitor Android vs iOS when something happens. Does it happen more on Android phones? I don’t know. My iPhone 6 seems very solid (yes, I’m knocking on wood as I say this)

I very much agree with Steve but I’ll add (and ramble on for a minute); To accept (possibly a fact - but I hope not) that any drone can ‘go on vacation’ (great way to put it) at any time goes against my thinking. Sure, there will be random failures as anything we buy can fail at any time but to accept this means, in many cases, the the operator did nothing wrong, it was a random failure of some electrical component, or interference by some source. Given any drone (the Breeze in our case) made by company ‘X’ - all being made the exact same way, and thinking any one of them can just fly away at any time does not make sense to me (my wife often says I’m in denial about many things!). Yes, there are many variables making it hard for us to narrow down. But I believe there is a cause and random failures of what seems like, so many, is not the answer.

Perhaps our conclusion will be; ‘we’ll never know’ but as the saying on the tv show The X-files says, ‘the truth is out there’.

This forum is a common place for some to come looking for information about things we don’t understand about our Breeze’s. I totally agree with Steve, ‘minimize your risk and increase your knowledge and skill’. It IS the best we can do.

To that end, how does this forum help us (everyone) do this? We write about issues and try to apply logical thinking to what might of happened and share experiences we’ve had with others.

Good discussion!

 

[DoomMeister]

Discounting posts that were obvious pilot error; set Orbit too large for area flying in, initiated RTH while under a tree, use Follow Me mode and fly the Breeze into an obstacle, etc. I’ve found the unexplained crashes to fall into four major categories:

1. IRS failure - the Breeze takes off and reports a takeoff failure. It continues to rise at maximum rate for a few seconds then the motors are turned off and the Breeze falls like a rock. There is no abnormality with the IR filter (cracked, fogged, or dirty) but the IRS still sees the Breeze on the ground and applies full power to the motors trying to get it airborne before stopping them after a perceived takeoff fail.

2. Vacation - the Breeze takes off, then flies off continuing to fly up and away not responding to control inputs or entering RTH when WiFi is lost. Possible GPS failure.

3. Orientation - the Breeze takes off and goes full tilt in some direction at takeoff height until it crashes into an obstacle. Not sure if RTH would recover as no one seems to have had time to react to it. Possible causes could be ESC or motor failure, compass failure, or electromagnetic interference.

4. Death Spiral - this is an odd one! The Breeze suddenly goes into an orbit of ever widening size until it flies off or crashes into an obstacle. RTH seems only partially functional in these cases, as the Breeze starts back toward the home position but continues to make an expanding spiral.

Please weigh in on this if you have had any of these happen to you. The more data the better.

 

[gwhuntoon]

I would also be curious to know if this is occurring in Pilot mode and/or one of the smart modes?

The ST16 ground station running Android is pretty locked down and dedicated to the Typhoon H flight controller. Phones can be running multiple apps in the background while trying to update or receive push notifications. Personally at a minimum, I would close all running apps on your phone, (Apple or Android), before running the Breeze app. Preferably, I would suggest powering off your phone, powering it back on, allow it to boot, then close any running apps which may have auto started before starting the Breeze app.

I think it's ironic that with the Typhoon H when calibrating the compass, it's recommended to keep it far away from your cell phone, while with the Breeze the cell phone is the controller, so I'm sure it's a pretty accepted practice to calibrate the Breeze compass while being near the cell phone controlling it. You also need to keep in mind not just interference from your own phone but interference from other cell phones in the vicinity.

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

Steve, interesting- in your post #1, I was flying yesterday in front of my house - the last place I flew days ago - so no calibration was done. About 4 minutes into the flight I saw a message, ‘takeoff failure’ - never seen it before. I looked back up, the Breeze was flying fine. I punched ‘ok’ on the screen and never gave it a second thought. I landed fine and went on my way. I’ll now calibrate next time I fly. I saw no issues with flying but I was within 20’ of my phone.

 

[DoomMeister]

If you see it again, check the IR filter and glass over the IRS and Flow Sensor for fogging. Glad yours didn't do what I've seen on YouTube and read in a post in a forum. Might have been the Yuneec-drone.com forum. It could be, that they did not clear the error and that allowed the flight control to shut down the motors. Ahhh, another one to think about!

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

I’ll be checking it closely for sure. I know no cracks but possible finger prints or smudging? Would like to think it’s not that sensitive to diffraction and strange, I was in the air when it happened - about 4’ up.

 

[Steve Carr]

To that end, how does this forum help us (everyone) do this? We write about issues and try to apply logical thinking to what might of happened and share experiences we’ve had with others.

First, when you read a post of a failure, much of the time it starts with "Bought a xxxxx a couple of weeks ago and today it...........". The first thing you can conclude is that new member found the forum "after" the problem. That is true with every forum and gives the appearance of consistent failures when, if fact, they are not common. Simply, most people post problems and not perfect flights. So don't over estimate the % of fails.

Second, solutions come with maturity of the product after repeated attempts at finding solutions. In the summer of 2015, there were heated arguments over what caused the Q500 to suddenly change direction. The answer was simply wind at altitude, but many pilots refused to accept that. To prove it all they had to do was fly the Q without the camera and the problem disappeared.

The technology in the Breeze is much more complicated than the Q500, so answers are likewise going to be more difficult.

 

[DoomMeister]

First, when you read a post of a failure, much of the time it starts with "Bought a xxxxx a couple of weeks ago and today it...........". The first thing you can conclude is that new member found the forum "after" the problem. That is true with every forum and gives the appearance of consistent failures when, if fact, they are not common. Simply, most people post problems and not perfect flights. So don't over estimate the % of fails.

Second, solutions come with maturity of the product after repeated attempts at finding solutions. In the summer of 2015, there were heated arguments over what caused the Q500 to suddenly change direction. The answer was simply wind at altitude, but many pilots refused to accept that. To prove it all they had to do was fly the Q without the camera and the problem disappeared.

The technology in the Breeze is much more complicated than the Q500, so answers are likewise going to be more difficult.

Duly noted Steve. The biggest problem with all of this is that the Breeze Cam app is not properly logging the flights. Without log data with the Breeze in the air the customer doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to warranty issues. The other craft produced by Yuneec the Q500, Typhoon H, the 520, the 920, and Blade Chroma seem to have the telemetry for every flight (provided they have an SD card in the controller).

Without telemetry on the Breeze Cam app there is no way there can ever be a decent analysis of failures of the Breeze, be they faulty components or pilot errors. Yuneec needs to repair the app, if for no other reason than to gain respect in the eyes of their user base!!!

 

[Steve Carr]

the Breeze Cam app is not properly logging the flights.

I agree. Does the logging appear related to the OS type, phone type or just random?

 

[DoomMeister]

It is equally absent in both iOS and Android equipment. Occasionally good data will be recorded with just the phone controlling the Breeze, but even that is spotty at best. When the Bluetooth controller is used I haven’t seen flight data recorded at all. If the FlightLog is started at WiFi connection using the controller it always stops before the Breeze gets airborne. Hence my big beef with the app. I’m sure the fault lies with the app because while flying the telemetry (altitude, distance, battery level, and video feed) are all present and displayed in the app.

 

[TStover]

These instances or "orbiting' sound like the classic toilet bowl. Usually caused by an issue with the compass not giving correct info to the gps. I own a Hubsan H501s and they do that crap a lot. Fortunately with the Hubsan you can switch out of gps mode, which stops the TB immediately, or even just fly in any direction really helps.

I don't know if you can turn off gps mid flight on the breeze, so if not, combined with reports of no response to the controls, you're no longer a pilot, you're a spectator.

Not a good situation.

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

Hey ST - good info, don’t suppose there is any cause for this? (Location, pilot error, done interference, ...) I’ll assume in most cases the drone flys fine. Then something changes - likely the environment you are flying - you moved locations. I was not real aware other drones had similar issues - but I did find a few posts on the DJI forum indicating ‘fly away’.

So, are we flying unreliable drones or can instances be prevented? Will we ever know?

 

[DoomMeister]

These instances or "orbiting' sound like the classic toilet bowl. Usually caused by an issue with the compass not giving correct info to the gps. I own a Hubsan H501s and they do that crap a lot. Fortunately with the Hubsan you can switch out of gps mode, which stops the TB immediately, or even just fly in any direction really helps.

I don't know if you can turn off gps mid flight on the breeze, so if not, combined with reports of no response to the controls, you're no longer a pilot, you're a spectator.

Not a good situation.

Thanks for your input T. Good to hear from you!
My Hubsan H107C+ has a mind of its own if you fly it in headless mode and it gets behind the transmitter. It just takes off to the side and I can’t seem to get control back. It’s not good in the wind so I seldom fly it. It’s not as stable as the Breeze, no GPS and you have to fly it constantly. It will hover ok, but drifts in all three axes. It can be trimmed indoors fairly well, but not outdoors in the wind.

 

[Scott_in_Colorado]

You know, I think about this topic a lot. 15 years ago we flew R/C planes / helicopters on 72mhz - we'd have a 'pin' with our frequency on it (72.230 as an example) and you DID NOT turn on your transmitter unless you had the pin. Two planes operating on the same frequency would disable both - the guy flying would crash - you have no control (jamming all signals) - and the guy ready to take off, that just turned on his transmitter WITHOUT the PIN, got out his checkbook and bought the guys plane he just crashed. There were other reasons we were very careful - the planes / helicopters could weigh from 1lb to 15lb+, and when they went out of control - crashing perhaps miles away, it was unclear what damage would be done - but damage would be done. This is part of the reason the AMA provides $1M insurance. This covers medical bills and property damage. We all now fly on spread spectrum 2.4ghz and literally 40 planes can fly at one time. There are very few crashes now - just when something mechanical fails - which does happen, but the plane hits the ground within 100 yards of when something fails, so we sort of control the crash.

We are in a similar position as drone pilots. While the Breeze is very light weight, I'm sure other drones weigh more and can (will) cause damage if they fall from the sky and hit a car, someone riding a bike, crashing into a house, whatever.

This topic of drones that fly out of control for whatever reason is very interesting to me as sooner or later drone flight may be become much more regulated as accidents are bound to happen. I'm not up on congressional topics but I'll bet drone flight is on the list. Clearly NFZ's are becoming more numerous, as no one is removing existing NFZ's so drones can fly more places.

The more we can identify issues that cause drones to fly out of control, the better off we'll all be - but somehow the word needs to be spread as many thousands of drone pilots are not on forums and don't know what issues others are having. I'm sure they just think, "pilot error" when they crash - as most will be new pilots. There are many drone YouTube videos for beginners that state, right up front, "You Will Crash" - it's not a question of IF you crash, it's WHEN you crash. (And its interesting that the more lower cost drones on the market - like the Breeze at $150 (a very capable drone for that price) - allows more people to try the hobby. This means more out of control drones out there at some point)

I hope we continue to identify the root causes of crashes and keep spreading the word to inform others of potential issues with drones.

 

[nikono]

There might be a remote cause for the Breeze to act bad if a solder joint on the circuit board broke off due to vibration or impact. I opened the bottom case once to see that Yuneec company also used "super glue" to keep the wires in place at the connectors and so on. Most of the times I flew the Breeze or other drones, the takeoff and the landing had always been on grassy area. When there's no grass, I chose dirt area instead of concrete to prevent big shock when landing the Breeze. Rubber feet may help lessen the impact when the Breeze lands. If the Breeze cost $1,500, I'd put cotton balls at its feet.