Super weird failure and crash

[JuanDiego]

Hi there it’s JuanDiego


I bought a Yuneec Q500 4K from an eBay retailer (wbb6679) about a week ago. It came here yesterday I tested it last night and everything looked just fine, I couldn’t fly it a long time because battery was pretty much dead. This afternoon I was flying again with the 100% battery charged the original one. I flew for about 15 minutes everything was fine I was happy with it. Suddenly I can’t explain how and why happened but the Yuneec kind of turn off by itself and fell from more than a 20 feet altitude straight to the ground there was nothing I could do to stop it. It’s so weird what happened because I’m familiar with drones and I have several like the phantom etc... (never has happened before to me with any other drone) the best way I can describe it is like if the battery came out and Yuneec just fell off and hit the ground... I’d like an explanation and see how the warranty I bought works. I’ve been looking online and several people are complaining about this problem.
Now the drone does not work properly, the camera is definitely broken and gone and one of the lights is no longer working... the battery safety push in compartment doesn’t close. I’m looking forward to hear from you soon. I have all the parts and I have it here with me I’d like you guys to investigate what happened so I can get my drone back or just another one.
Thank you.

 

[h-elsner]

Hi,

this is really hard to say. There are several reasons. One is ESC failure. This can be seen in Telemetry in Motor Status. Another is battery plug. There is no clear evidence of that. Telemetry simly end w/o indication why. Mainboard error - just the same, no evidence any more. Just have a look on the telemetry data or post it here.
telemetry is saved on SD card in the controller, located under the battery. Hope, you have one in...

br HE

 

[wings]

Just a thought. Many of the Q500 owners report that they get much less than the 15 minutes of flying you reported. With the video running and moderate use, I get about 8 to 9 minutes.
Could you possibly have depleted your battery?. Normally there are a couple of warnings that you will receive before the battery dies.

 

[JuanDiego]

I do not think I did depleted the battery. I charged it 100% before I started flying, and there was no signal of low voltage or low battery. It was definitely something that failed with the system or main board I do not know.

 

[h-elsner]

but they seem to be from 2014 is that normal

It used date / time, that is set on the ST10. What do you have in settings? I think one of the last FlightLog is the one in question.

br HE

 

[Thomas111]

It would seem you have not set the time and date in ur settings now if yuneec want they might try get out of this by using that to say you have not correctly set it up

 

[ATLienQ500]

It would seem you have not set the time and date in ur settings now if yuneec want they might try get out of this by using that to say you have not correctly set it up

This happened to me once. When I got my quad there was an SD card in it. Had my first experience with this random drop and reported it. Yuneec asked for telemetry, there was none from the crash ... turns out none was ever being recorded while I owned the drone. I got someone at Carolina Drone to take a look at it and they got it up and running recording logs and all. Turns out they had to replace an ESC and I suspect the SD card was not seated correctly. It's my opinion that Yuneec should have provided owners a way to check that the telemetry data is being recorded correctly before flying, especially since they like to use failure to provide telemetry to void the warranty. Simply horrible customer service.

 

[DoomMeister]

Was your warranty through Yuneec or a third party warranty?

Was the eBay seller private or an authorized Yuneec retailer?
EDIT: I looked up the seller wbb6679. They sell a lot of refurbished(via their own shop) phones/pads/tablets, but they are not a Yuneec dealer. Unless you went to Yuneec and bought a Yes! Plan you will have to use the third party warranty you purchased. I would be contacting the seller for resolution.

If you purchased the Yuneec Yes! Insurance with crash forgiveness you should have no problem.

The problem you describe, sounds like the battery may not have been fully seated and latched. It causes total shutdown with no warning when the battery vibrates off the contacts.