Three days ago, I had a super-weird crash, and my Breeze almost hurt a four-year old boy at that incident...
This was during my vacation. The Breeze had been flying fine as always, with the last flight only two days ago, for several flights in the same area and after a proper calibration. On the last day, I wanted to shoot my son's new toy RC boat on the lake, and took off from the little wooden pier we was standing on. 6-8 meters behind us, under some trees, another family was gathering for a swim, with three small boys.
Directly upon take-off, maybe even before the Breeze had reached its start altitude of about 1 m (this happend too fast for me to be able to react, and also to remember all details), it accelerated horizontally to full speed over its left-rear arm, right in the direction of two of those little boys which I had believed to be in a safe distance. As the banks of the lake slope up a bit, it crashed into the ground only 50cm from his feet, at full speed. The poor guy was pretty shocked, and so was I. (I'll retrieve and post the flight log later - I was flying per phone control on that occasion, so there should be a log file.) In the end, nothing serious happened, not even his parents got angry with me, although I felt very guilty. But I had come to trust the Breeze quite a lot, after many flights without anything like this happening.
Anyways, even the Breeze incurred no major harm. The bottom cover popped off, with a few of the plastic notches broken, and two props are nicked and bent, and one motor housing is scratched. But today, home again, I tried flying it again in my garden, after a new calibration, as the vacation place was 500 km away. No problems whatsoever!
The big question of course is, what caused this crazy behavior? (I swear it was not user input.) I have two and a half ideas and would like to hear your opinions:
1. The IPS system got upset over one of two things: either the fact that I was starting close to the edge of the pier (like 20-30 cm from the edge, with the water 50 cm below), so it might have 'seen' something very uneven. I imagine that the infrared sensor got confused once the Breeze was airborne. Or it is the ground cam, which fell over the lined pattern of the pier surface: the planks had a regular pattern of 4 mm wide cuts in about 10 mm distance. This strange idea comes to one because I suddenly remembered that I had had a similar incident (without anyone being at risk, though) shortly after I bought the price - then, I had been flying over a very regular metal grid with about 8 mm wide rectangular holes, at about 150 cm altitude and at the moment the Breeze reached that grid, it shot back horizontally over its left rear arm and crashed into the wall. Luckily, that wall was only 40 cm away, so it had no time to really accelerate. Overall, these two crashes were the only ones I ever had with the Breeze!
2. The other alternative is that there was interference from the toy remote my son was using to control his boat. This is a very cheap 40 Mhz style remote (with good range for a toy, it runs from a 9V battery), and he was standing like 2 or 3 meters away from the Breeze (I know, too close for his safety - I was quite obviously over-confident). The hypothesis would be that it was causing direct eletronics errors on the Breeze flight controller, but somehow I cannot bring myself to believe that.
Any other ideas?
Thanks for your input!
This was during my vacation. The Breeze had been flying fine as always, with the last flight only two days ago, for several flights in the same area and after a proper calibration. On the last day, I wanted to shoot my son's new toy RC boat on the lake, and took off from the little wooden pier we was standing on. 6-8 meters behind us, under some trees, another family was gathering for a swim, with three small boys.
Directly upon take-off, maybe even before the Breeze had reached its start altitude of about 1 m (this happend too fast for me to be able to react, and also to remember all details), it accelerated horizontally to full speed over its left-rear arm, right in the direction of two of those little boys which I had believed to be in a safe distance. As the banks of the lake slope up a bit, it crashed into the ground only 50cm from his feet, at full speed. The poor guy was pretty shocked, and so was I. (I'll retrieve and post the flight log later - I was flying per phone control on that occasion, so there should be a log file.) In the end, nothing serious happened, not even his parents got angry with me, although I felt very guilty. But I had come to trust the Breeze quite a lot, after many flights without anything like this happening.
Anyways, even the Breeze incurred no major harm. The bottom cover popped off, with a few of the plastic notches broken, and two props are nicked and bent, and one motor housing is scratched. But today, home again, I tried flying it again in my garden, after a new calibration, as the vacation place was 500 km away. No problems whatsoever!
The big question of course is, what caused this crazy behavior? (I swear it was not user input.) I have two and a half ideas and would like to hear your opinions:
1. The IPS system got upset over one of two things: either the fact that I was starting close to the edge of the pier (like 20-30 cm from the edge, with the water 50 cm below), so it might have 'seen' something very uneven. I imagine that the infrared sensor got confused once the Breeze was airborne. Or it is the ground cam, which fell over the lined pattern of the pier surface: the planks had a regular pattern of 4 mm wide cuts in about 10 mm distance. This strange idea comes to one because I suddenly remembered that I had had a similar incident (without anyone being at risk, though) shortly after I bought the price - then, I had been flying over a very regular metal grid with about 8 mm wide rectangular holes, at about 150 cm altitude and at the moment the Breeze reached that grid, it shot back horizontally over its left rear arm and crashed into the wall. Luckily, that wall was only 40 cm away, so it had no time to really accelerate. Overall, these two crashes were the only ones I ever had with the Breeze!
2. The other alternative is that there was interference from the toy remote my son was using to control his boat. This is a very cheap 40 Mhz style remote (with good range for a toy, it runs from a 9V battery), and he was standing like 2 or 3 meters away from the Breeze (I know, too close for his safety - I was quite obviously over-confident). The hypothesis would be that it was causing direct eletronics errors on the Breeze flight controller, but somehow I cannot bring myself to believe that.
Any other ideas?
Thanks for your input!
