Wifi and usb drive dead after fresh water immersion.

[jolab14]

Hi,

I opened a case at Yuneec support, but since I got no answer yet, I refer to your collective experience to see if anybody has come across a similar issue. Thanks in advance for your help.

Here it goes :

My Breeze 4K went in soft water a week ago after "deciding on its own" to drop like a rock from 10 feet height even if the battery was over 50% and everything was working normaly.

After drying it carefully for 3 days, I tried to power it up again. The LED and sound signal seems to work fine but I get no wifi. When I plug it to my computer through USB, the drive is not shown.

However, a device "A9S" is detected by Windows. My guess is that the "computer section" of the breeze is not booting-up at all, maybe a filesystem problem after its submarine experience.

My question for you is to know if there is a utility to flash a new firmware on this A9S device through USB from a Windows 10 computer ? If so, where can I get the firmware image for it ?

Thanks,

JL

 

[ravell]

This is a tough one! Sorry to hear about your breeze... With that said, once water comes into contact with any electronic (especially POWERED ON) it is going to make connections on the board where there should never be connections shorting out all/many/much of the circuit board. Some devices survive a quick dunk much more because of their sealed design for example a phone is sealed better for dust etc. However he breeze is not sealed at all and has many opening/venting to keep the motors cooled and the circuit board, corrosion will start to happen on the board components itself shortly after that . While part of the board maybe functional, I can guarantee their is no fix other than replacement. Can you describe what/where/when you were flying? So we can all learn or at least take caution for future flights. Thx R

 

[jolab14]

Hi,

That was what I was affraid of but I had some hope since Windows detects a A9S device. I noticed that the Breeze uses an Android system for its high level communication and control module. There exists an HTC A9S phone, maybe, or maybe not, there are some common components used by the Breeze. It might be remotely possible, if the electronic is not damaged, that a utility exists to flash a boot-strap on this device. Maybe not. I will look into Android forums for low-level tools that could be used for that purpose. If I find anything of interest I will keep you posted.

---

For the benefit of everyone flying a Breeze, here is what happened :

I was flying above a lake at about 100 feet high. Everything was fine, the wifi was solid and I was shooting a wonderful (but now lost) video of the area. The Breeze was connected to over 15 satellites for GPS, so no problem there.

At around 50% of battery I decided to bring it back. Better be safe than sorry. So I brought it down, still above the lake, until it reached roughly an height of ten feet where it suddenly "decided" to drop like a rock in water. The propellers were still running but its was like the Breeze had evaluated it had to go down even more.

At that time, there was some mild waves on the water, and I believe that the Breeze sensor got confused with the water when trying to evaluate its actual height. I have seen other reports of such behavior when flying close to a water surface.

My advice would be to avoid going lower than 20 feet when flying above water.

I hope this can help someone.

Thanks,

JL

 

[ravell]

Yes thanks for filling us in keep us posted. I plan to take the breeze over water in a couple weeks. Going to maintain a higher altitude for sure... even made some floats that I may strap on

 

[Asserti]

That's neat!

 

[MaxBtmTime]

I've had one breeze over the water numerous times without issue, and one in it.

Have you tried contacting Yuneec? my yuneec disconnected on take-off, drifted a bit, then decided to land itself. They are replacing it because the connection error prevented me from piloting it.

 

[xynn6]

hi.
Well, I have just the same issue. No water, no fall, yesterday had a nice flight, today only red light on the camera side. No luck on hard reset or anything. Anything on this?

 

[DoomMeister]

hi.
Well, I have just the same issue. No water, no fall, yesterday had a nice flight, today only red light on the camera side. No luck on hard reset or anything. Anything on this?

See this thread first Breeze Troubleshooting Checklist and Help, if it doesn’t help we still need information mentioned in it to assess your situation better.

 

[xynn6]

See this thread first Breeze Troubleshooting Checklist and Help, if it doesn’t help we still need information mentioned in it to assess your situation better.

Well, it looks like it stuck on step B, it starts, goes from white to red and there stuck until it powers off after some time. No SSID is broadcasting.

 

[DoomMeister]

Well, it looks like it stuck on step B, it starts, goes from white to red and there stuck until it powers off after some time. No SSID is broadcasting.

Did it do an Over-The-Air update after the last time you successfully launched the Breeze? If that is the case, see this thread Help for Breeze WiFi and Firmware Issues.

 

[xynn6]

Did it do an Over-The-Air update after the last time you successfully launched the Breeze? If that is the case, see this thread Help for Breeze WiFi and Firmware Issues.

Would like to, but when I power on Breeze, nothing happens on Windows (nor Linux - Ubuntu 16)
If I power on with holding reset, Windows recognizes device as A9S, but connot mount it as removable device. On Ubuntu, well, that's funny, it sees as device (GoPro), but cannot mount it.

 

[DoomMeister]

You should contact Yuneec Customer Support. The circuit board that has the onboard memory, USB port, and WiFi circuitry is not functioning properly.

The internal memory was not formatted by Windows or Linux was it?

 

[xynn6]

Of curse it's not formatted.
Well, I'll try to mail them.

 

[DoomMeister]

Of curse it's not formatted.
Well, I'll try to mail them.

I was not making an accusation. A few have done that with their Breeze and it made the Breeze where it could not connect via WiFi or USB.

If you email Yuneec you will never get an answer. Use a non-mobile web browser, go to http://yuneec.com/support, choose Speak to a Pro, then select one of the options in that menu to contact them. You will only get in touch with them Monday through Friday during normal business hours.