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Complete Failure of INSPIRE 1 during flight - Dropped from 400 feet

Wow...frightening!!!....but it shows how good the gimbal is. Notice how well it holds the horizon during the fall. (0:40)
 
It's always fun to see people discuss why a DJI or any product falls out of the sky. Simple fact is...defying gravity is not easy and its a wonder these things don't happen more often. I expect this to happen every flight.
 
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It's always fun to see people discuss why a DJI or any product falls out of the sky. Simple fact is...defying gravity is not easy and its a wonder these things don't happen more often. I expect this to happen every flight.

Do you fly in airplanes? I assume not since you expect everything to fall out of the sky lol
 
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It's always fun to see people discuss why a DJI or any product falls out of the sky. Simple fact is...defying gravity is not easy and its a wonder these things don't happen more often. I expect this to happen every flight.

When I was flying full size aircraft I always said to myself, How is this airplane going to try to kill me today and what can I do to prevent it!
 
Discussing points of failure is good for all! Even the people who are amused by the discussion :)
 
I'd suspect the cause of this crash is a ESC related issue...it's a pretty viewable decent and once a prop slows down or speeds up it effects yaw movement. Speed controllers are impossible to predict when they will fail.
 
I am not sure, but to me it looks like you lost power to all the motors at the same time. At the very first sight of a prop in the video it looks like it was stopped, and as the video plays on in a reduced rate you will see the proper is going in reverse, which tells me your rotor system is in a counter rotation phase. Also since the copter stayed somewhat balanced, I feel like all the propellers were attached all the way down to the ground.

Something else that catches my attention, but not sure what to make of it. I find the fact that the gimbal stopped, facing towards the back, around the motor number 3 interesting, especially once astablishing a position, it stayed consistent with direction and horizon. While pushing the camera's tilt all the way to its maximum position up.

Its an interesting video to me, it almost look like the IMU somehow flipped an axis or so, I can't see that happening.

I would like to hear what comes of this one.

sorry for the situation and hope you are able to have it remedied quickly.

Best
 
It's always fun to see people discuss why a DJI or any product falls out of the sky. Simple fact is...defying gravity is not easy and its a wonder these things don't happen more often. I expect this to happen every flight.
I agree with The Editor. The video indicates the craft did not fall out of the sky. And I don't see any fun in a discussion about someones $3,000 misfortune.
 
Considerably more engineering and long term failure testing goes into a Airbus than a DJI product.
There are approximately 2.5million individual components that go into manufacturing a modern passenger aircraft and every single one has been chosen for its cheapness or cost effectiveness - right down to the last rivet and screw. :eek:
 
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There are approximately 2.5million individual components that go into manufacturing a modern passenger aircraft and every single one has been chosen for its cheapness or cost effectiveness - right down to the last rivet and screw. :eek:

Although every single one of those parts can be traced back to its manufacturer.
 
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Was the camera mount attached when it hit? It almost appears the camera mount or something was swinging under the drone. When that comes loose the COG changes and it falls like a rock. It appears the props are turning so it has power? I had the camera mount unhook from the frame on vertical acceleration but only from 5 feet, but for 5 feet if feel like a rock. Sorry that cant be a good feeling for you.

I watched again it and it looks like it was still attached. How often does dji say to replace motors? You have a lot of time on them maybe one finally failed. Is there a maintenance schedule DJI recommends for motors? I worked at a University doing drone research and we did have to replace motors every so many flights or after so many hours of flight time.
 
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Here is what most likely happened. You had an ESC failure. Could be a short, could be an open, could be just a single lead on either the power side or motor side with a broken solder joint. Depending on what exactly happened, it can also result in a low voltage situation in which the FC shuts down. Wallah no power to any of the motors and no control period! Doesn't matter if even three ESCs and motors are still working, your gonna crash hard! Depending on how DJI configures things there may still be Power to the gimbal. But so what, Down she comes! I've had ESC failures in model planes and quads which sometimes resulted in smoke or no smoke, irregardless the motor stops turning. Also had a single bad ESC with a short drop voltage and shut down and kill the FC. These things get hot and are always a worry! I would say 80% of my mechanical crashes have been caused by failed ESCs. In a quad you've got 4 to worry about and no ability to dead stick land.
 
I'm sorry for your loss but on the other hand, you could consider yourself lucky this happened in your own yard, avoiding a more dramatic scene.

On the technical side, I wonder how an ESC failure would result in a software failure, you said the signal was lost, right? I guess (not pretty sure though) the ESCs are monitored by the FC at all times, but in this case, the failure caused a loss of signal. So, the question is how an ESC failure can cause a series of other failures to the FC and the transmitter?

Another point is about the stress of the motors and a potential failure due to an uninterrupted full throttle operation. In my opinion, this should be out of the question. The software should be able to protect from this to happen, otherwise the manual and everyone that had tried such a climb, would soundly warn about a potential motor failure. Hobbyists have suffered from that in early-made or custom controllers but DJI targets a bigger audience now, I expect their software should provide all kinds of safety precautions.

Finally, analysing the logs is the only way to find what exactly happened. Logs are maybe the most crucial part in the development of such delicate machines. They owe to give you a full report of what happened.
 
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Not sure how but I am convinced there was a catastrophic power lost into the copters rotor system. If it was one motor I believe it would have flipped over one or many times.

When you see the video in a slowed down speed you will noticed both motor that come into view are spinning in the opposite direction of what they should when powered. The aircraft in this state is auto-rotating, this is when the air comes up from below forcing the rotor system to automatically rotate in the favorable direction, on a fixed propeller this would be the opposite of what is needed to produce lift.

Because the camera never went dark, tells me some type of power was always present. If you caused a full shut off while in flight by crossing your sticks like when you start the copter up, then you could induce this type of drop, and maybe the flight logs would end, however it still does not explain why the gimbal changed its orientation.

This is a very interesting case, to me.

As of settling with power I would wipe that thought out, it deals with vortices and quick descents. This video does not support that especially when the camera goes lose then comes back facing a different direction, and seeming to work properly.

Something catastrophic happened, a hiccup of some sort to the rotor system/possibly IMU, and unlike the post before stating they thought it was pilot error I would favor not, but not rule it out,

I just can not see how a pilot error would cause the gimbal to respond the way it did, while having other issues in the craft at the same time.
 
Just so we are on the same page, I do not think its an ESC at all, but lets take this from another approach, if you had your inspire up at 400 ft, how could you reproduce the same situation and video?

I know I could put the copter into auto rotation by cutting the motors in flight, but how do you get the gimbal to act the way it did, That's my issue. In the RC controller (pilot's) we can tilt but not pan the camera unless we do it with our finger on the tablet.

Now because the camera did a very unusual action, coincidentally at the same time the copter started dropping from its altitude, Its this that I am having trouble connecting the copters actions to something the pilot did.

Also if all four motors did not stop at the same time the copter would have flipped, not keep some what level all the way down, and the video shows proof that two motors were spinning in wrong direction.

I am not ruling out pilot error but looking at the video, how do you account for the actions of the gimbal? This is what makes me think it could be an issue within an on board item.
 
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The only thing it can be is pilot error. If it was esc related we will never know. DJI will!
The pilot knows what happen! You gone sit here & tell the members of the forum you don't know ****. If I crash my drone I know what I did.
When you interrogate you ask questions you don't tell the answers.
 
I know I could put the copter into auto rotation by cutting the motors in flight, but how do you get the gimbal to act the way it did, That's my issue. In the RC controller (pilot's) we can tilt but not pan the camera unless we do it with our finger on the tablet
If the gimbal is in follow mode giving full yaw (i.e. as would be needed for CSC) would cause exactly that camera movement.
 

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