St-16 reboots for no reason in flight and causes crash.

[vader]

Last Thursday (April 26th) we had flown and done several shots of a real -estate project. In the final and last segment, the controller (St-16) decided to reboot when trying to adjust exposure on the camera. The only problem, never even got close to the screen with finger to adjust such exposure value. (Yes we were always shooting in manual camera settings) - the next thing that happened was the screen went to the green "pad" then simply shutdown and rebooted the entire controller. We tried to catch the H as it was low enough for reach, but for some reason as the controlled was doing its strange thing, the H kept "running away" as if it was in "smart mode" against the controller. Made no sense. Looked at the log files and saw nothing other than a clean cut (shutdown) with everything in the last second being normal (switches, signaling etc..) In any case, since the H was fairly close to the ground already when it plowed into the wall of the house, it only sustained minor damage and only needs the shrapnel clips replaced on 4 arms. Ran full diags on the H and everything is green aside from the arms staying up. Once I get the parts in, I will of course run full diags again and do some short flight tests in hopes of further discovery. If anyone else has ever had any such experience with their St-16 I would love to hear about it. As a side note: I updated all firmware prior to this incident and flew several times. The only thing I can think of is the NFZ removal special install (yes I am licensed for this) firmware with full re-calibration on everything. But that also was in use for several flights prior without issue just two days prior.

 

[Steve Carr]

Sounds like a glitch with the ST16. You may wish to try and reinstall the firmware. At the very least I would do a factory reset of the controller.

 

[PatR]

Sounds more like something I've done a few times, but only all the way once. That's all it took to learn. It's real easy to accidentally bump the Pad button with a knuckle or other finger tip when changing camera settings. Something that alerts you to that possibility is the warning message pop up that you have to accept or reject before it goes into Pad mode. If you are not cognizant of what you had just done it's real easy to tap the OK button in the warning pop up and enter Pad mode, which terminates flight control mode and enters a form of RTH mode.

It's not a glitch, more of a "dumb thumb" thing. I'll wager that going forward you'll take a step back and fully read and digest a warning pop up before tapping any of the selection buttons. That's the lesson we learn when that happens.

 

[NorWiscPilot]

I am curious if the battery level of the ST16 was observed, at time of shutdown or at least when it came back online.

Just curious; not implying anything.

Jeff

P.S. may I also suggest editing the title of this post to “...rebooted...” rather than implying this is a recurring occurrence. Makes quite a difference in meaning leading to potential responses such as: “If this was a repeating failure, that particular ST16 should not have been in service.”

In that case, I would be implying something.

[emoji41]

 

[PatR]

Something I’d like to mention, call it a PSA if it fits, as it was not clear in the OP’s first post. If you have NFZ removal software installed and later update the system firmware the NFZ software has to be installed after the new firmware for it to work again.

 

[vader]

I am curious if the battery level of the ST16 was observed, at time of shutdown or at least when it came back online.

Just curious; not implying anything.

Jeff

P.S. may I also suggest editing the title of this post to “...rebooted...” rather than implying this is a recurring occurrence. Makes quite a difference in meaning leading to potential responses such as: “If this was a repeating failure, that particular ST16 should not have been in service.”

In that case, I would be implying something.

[emoji41]

One of the first things I checked when it came back up. Battery level was fine on the ST-16. In regards to the "rebooting" vs "rebooted" - I don't think it has any impact on meaning once someone reads the incident information. But appreciate the thought.

 

[vader]

Sounds more like something I've done a few times, but only all the way once. That's all it took to learn. It's real easy to accidentally bump the Pad button with a knuckle or other finger tip when changing camera settings. Something that alerts you to that possibility is the warning message pop up that you have to accept or reject before it goes into Pad mode. If you are not cognizant of what you had just done it's real easy to tap the OK button in the warning pop up and enter Pad mode, which terminates flight control mode and enters a form of RTH mode.

It's not a glitch, more of a "dumb thumb" thing. I'll wager that going forward you'll take a step back and fully read and digest a warning pop up before tapping any of the selection buttons. That's the lesson we learn when that happens.

Could be as remembering exactly what happened is always a mystery. I could go with what you state here. I got very lucky in any case, I just needed to replace 4 of the shrapnel clips and 5 props.. Ran tests/diags on everything and it shows all green. Whew.

 

[vader]

Something I’d like to mention, call it a PSA if it fits, as it was not clear in the OP’s first post. If you have NFZ removal software installed and later update the system firmware the NFZ software has to be installed after the new firmware for it to work again.

Yes that is correct. As stated the last thing that was installed was the firmware to release the NFZ info. No other updates since that as there are no other updates since a few months ago.

 

[PatR]

Ok, cool, you did do that correctly

I remember when I did it I was a bit dumbstruck as I suddenly had no control of the aircraft. As it was already at the set RTH height it wasted no time getting back to where it thought the ST-16 was. Used up a fair amount of battery time figuring out what was wrong.

 

[vader]

Sounds more like something I've done a few times, but only all the way once. That's all it took to learn. It's real easy to accidentally bump the Pad button with a knuckle or other finger tip when changing camera settings. Something that alerts you to that possibility is the warning message pop up that you have to accept or reject before it goes into Pad mode. If you are not cognizant of what you had just done it's real easy to tap the OK button in the warning pop up and enter Pad mode, which terminates flight control mode and enters a form of RTH mode.

It's not a glitch, more of a "dumb thumb" thing. I'll wager that going forward you'll take a step back and fully read and digest a warning pop up before tapping any of the selection buttons. That's the lesson we learn when that happens.

I agree as it could be a possibility. However I also tried very diligently to hit the home icon as well as the return arrow icon several times and the st-16 was totally unresponsive. I am going to try to re-create the symptom in the flight simulator module and see if I even can re-create using that. I will post my findings if I have any success doing so.