Almost crashed/lost my NEO today

[Chrislaf]

I was flying my NEO over a beaver pond at about about 12m my iPhone disconnected from the RC-N3 controller but I still had control. Shortly after is when the problem started, the NEO seemed to be descending very quickly toward the water. I was able to counter-act it but then it started quickly heading for the trees. I got it back under control just before it would have impacted the trees on the side of the pond and was able to land it safely.

I am no log expert but from the messages in the log it would seem that a number of problems occurred simultaneously - the Phone disconnected, the RC disconnected from the NEO, satellite reception suddenly decreased, and the VPS got confused.

Here is a screenshot of the error message:



And here is the log file:

Flight Log

If anyone can help explain what happened so that I don't repeat this again, I would appreciate it.

Also, it seems the log file ended right after the error message but I was able to regain control and land the NEO in my hand.

Other info: This was the second flight out of three and wet snow was falling.

Chris

 

[GFields]

Glad you recovered

 

[Chrislaf]

Glad you recovered

Yah, it came pretty close to hitting the trees at high speed. Not sure what happened but it seemed like both GPS and VPS failed at the same time.

Chris

 

[Erk1024]

They DO warn not to fly the NEO over water. Maybe it's not designed to hover and do it's autonomous functions over water.

 

[Chrislaf]

They DO warn not to fly the NEO over water. Maybe it's not designed to hover and do its autonomous functions over water.

Thanks for your reply. They do warn about water and that was something I was concerned about. I thought I was high enough that the VPS sensors would pass stabilization over to GPS.

I had been flying over the pond for about 6 minutes and even hovered and took a 12 frame pano but then all of a sudden the errors started. If I lose GPS and VPS, I should be in atti mode. Usually atti mode does not suddenly cause the drone to descend or veer right at high speed. That sounds more like a compass error.

Chris