Anafi dives into a lake

[Liew]

Used hand launch and drone flew up and forward out to the middle of the lake before suddenly I lost the feed on my phone and then saw the drone dive into the lake. Drone is unrecoverable and the retailer won’t replace without the drone to asses for repairs

Battery was at 79% had flown earlier in the day with no issue. Less than 30flights in total for this drone.

Further the app did not record this flight at all!

Have requested warranty assistance through parrot online system but I’m at a loss as to why this has happened and reading through some other posts it doesn’t seem to be the first time either!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Do I understand that you were only using the phone to control the Anafi? If so your phone has very limited range and this could have caused your crash. The reason there is no logs is the flight never completed and the logs are lost at the bottom of the lake. You can explain to Parrot what happened and they will ask for the last known location which will be on your App. They might also give you a hard time because flying over water is not recommended in the manual.
Good Luck

 

[Liew]

Thanks Augustine,
FYI I was using the skycontroler3 with iPhone 8 connected

Cheers and hope to hear from Parrot soon about my situation.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

Saying that flight over water is not recommended is a get-out that drone manufacturers should not be allowed to get away with. On the other hand, I suppose that they have to protect themselves from people who will try it on and just claim that the drone they crashed into the rotors of the air ambulance or into the lion enclosure actually just dropped conveniently into an anonymous and bottomless lake never to be seen again, except perhaps on eBay. Wouldn't life be so much better if there was no dishonesty?
My drone fell out of the sky almost a mile away over a lake. Fortunately, it just managed to land on the shore and I recovered it, still mewing like a sick kitten, about an hour later. I managed to get it back into the air again.

There is no good reason why you shouldn't fly over water other than giving the manufacturers a way to blame you for something which might well be their fault.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Saying that flight over water is not recommended is a get-out that drone manufacturers should not be allowed to get away with. On the other hand, I suppose that they have to protect themselves from people who will try it on and just claim that the drone they crashed into the rotors of the air ambulance or into the lion enclosure actually just dropped conveniently into an anonymous and bottomless lake never to be seen again, except perhaps on eBay. Wouldn't life be so much better if there was no dishonesty?
My drone fell out of the sky almost a mile away over a lake. Fortunately, it just managed to land on the shore and I recovered it, still mewing like a sick kitten, about an hour later. I managed to get it back into the air again.

There is no good reason why you shouldn't fly over water other than giving the manufacturers a way to blame you for something which might well be their fault.

Actually there are a lot of good reasons to warn the consumer not to fly over water. Parrot is not the only UAV manufacturer that warns you about this.
Ultrasonic Sensors that measures the distance between the aircraft and ground are subject to a lot of errors. The ultrasonic sensors may not function accurately above sound-absorbing materials. Because of this, we recommend that you avoid flying over surfaces that are:
•
Monochrome
•
Highly reflective, such as water
•
Extraordinarily dark or bright
•
Subject to frequent lighting changes
•
Made of closely repeating patterns, such as tiles
•
Absorbent of sound waves, such as thick carpet
•
In motion, such as roads with heavy traffic

These are some of the common warnings that I have seen in many UAV manuals.

 

[AugerIn]

If you absolutely need to be over water, I’ve seen floats made out of pool noodles on other quads/hexcopters. Try and place them low and out of the way of the propwash to minimize interference.

Floats will let you land on water or take off from water, provided there aren’t waves that tip you, and the sensors don’t go crazy when you fly too close to the water.

They probably won’t do much to prevent getting wet if you have a failure of some kind and tumble out of the sky into a lake.

There will be a large performance hit from drag, you’ll probably be quadrupling surface area of the drone, maybe doubling the weight, and it’ll be less able to stabilize itself with the drag down low.

What might work well in a hover will start to cause problems when you move forward as the propwash trails behind the drone, so when you move forward slowly everything looks okay, but go a little faster and and it all of a sudden has to compensate for push from the rear rotors. Will look fine until it gets outside that envelope and flips, then shuts off with an error.

If it falls from the sky, the floaties will be like fins on a dart, the heavy part you want up will point straight down, no tumbling like it normally does.

I’ve flown over water with Anafi plenty of times, but keep it nearby, take off and verify I’m stable with GPS lock, keep it up high, and prefer flying over lakes when they’re frozen enough to walk out on ( flying low and fast over ripples and cracks on a frozen lake is great fun ).

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

Those are all reasons not to fly LOW over water. People have been flying over the sea, rivers and lakes with drones ever since the technology first became available. I am pretty sure that shots of drones flying over water feature in many advertisements and promotional material for drones. If the drone is above head height it has little idea about what is underneath it.

I fly over water very regularly but I don't casually fly low over water. When you are in range of the bottom sensors you do have to be extremely careful. I have tried it a few times and it is scary as the drone can start to drop unbidden, you need to be completely focused and ready to give it more throttle instantly. If you do fly low over water you are doing so at your own risk, and it is a severe risk. If flying at knee-height over water you have less than a second to respond to a change in the drone's level which can come at any time as it struggles to make sense of the signals coming off the water surface. There are better forms of laxatives available. The chances are that shot simply isn't worth the risk. But when you are up three metres or more water is effectively just land which doesn't have trees in it and will not have a deceptive slope!

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

If you absolutely need to be over water, I’ve seen floats made out of pool noodles on other quads/hexcopters. Try and place them low and out of the way of the propwash to minimize interference.

Floats will let you land on water or take off from water, provided there aren’t waves that tip you, and the sensors don’t go crazy when you fly too close to the water.

They probably won’t do much to prevent getting wet if you have a failure of some kind and tumble out of the sky into a lake.

There will be a large performance hit from drag, you’ll probably be quadrupling surface area of the drone, maybe doubling the weight, and it’ll be less able to stabilize itself with the drag down low.

What might work well in a hover will start to cause problems when you move forward as the propwash trails behind the drone, so when you move forward slowly everything looks okay, but go a little faster and and it all of a sudden has to compensate for push from the rear rotors. Will look fine until it gets outside that envelope and flips, then shuts off with an error.

If it falls from the sky, the floaties will be like fins on a dart, the heavy part you want up will point straight down, no tumbling like it normally does.

I’ve flown over water with Anafi plenty of times, but keep it nearby, take off and verify I’m stable with GPS lock, keep it up high, and prefer flying over lakes when they’re frozen enough to walk out on ( flying low and fast over ripples and cracks on a frozen lake is great fun ).

I doubt that the Anafi will have enough spare thrust to make this work. I have speculated about making floats but I think the Anafi only just has enough thrust to lift itself and the battery. When I have flown it with really light and slender prop-guards it does noticeably impact the top speed, and probably also the endurance. The performance hit from floats would be, as you say, very significant. There are lots of accessories out there, the absence of floats for the Anafi is probably because they barely work as a crazy experiment for the crazy user let alone as a marketable product.

 

[dashSolo]

We all feel your pain. I lost mine in the lake the day I got it two days after Anafi came out 2 July 2018. Parrot replaced it but took over a month. I believe I was the first overwater issue they had to support.
Parrot did not determine what the cause was.

I have since flown hundreds of flights over the lake with no issues using flight plan to get above the max altitude.

I recovered it two hours later exactly at the last know coordinates, depth was about 60 feet.
I put in rice and left for three days and it flies today as a spare.

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

We all feel your pain. I lost mine in the lake the day I got it two days after Anafi came out 2 July 2018. Parrot replaced it but took over a month. I believe I was the first overwater issue they had to support.
Parrot did not determine what the cause was.

I have since flown hundreds of flights over the lake with no issues using flight plan to get above the max altitude.

I recovered it two hours later exactly at the last know coordinates, depth was about 60 feet.
I put in rice and left for three days and it flies today as a spare.

Three Anafis? Who has three Anafis?

I have had four. Lost one. Crashed one and Parrot replaced it. Crashed and repaired the replacement (with just superglue and tape). And I have one I bought to replace the one I crashed that I haven't crashed. Yet.

I still hold out hope that the lost one might be found and returned, it does have my phone number attached to it. I also have two Mavic Pros, that's why I'm Reconnaissance Squadron. One pilot, lots of aircraft.

 

[Vegasrobbi]

I love my Anafi but I live on a lake so I just purchased a Splash Drone 3 +.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

I love my Anafi but I live on a lake so I just purchased a Splash Drone 3 +.

Cool, looking forward to you showing us some videos from it. I been thinking it might be my next venture

 

[Vegasrobbi]

I made the decision after flying my Anafi in heavy rain, several times; I know i was pushing my luck.

The SP3+ is giant, has carbon fiber(sharp) rotors, is heavy..... everything Anafi is not. Anafi is my smallest drone but also the workhorse for what I do; I feel it is underrated.

Dustin can be tough but I feel he crossed the line here in Part 2.

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Wow he was really having a hard time with this review LOL.
Wonder if he read the manual. ?
Once he got the video to record it was pretty good I thought. Think he was pushing it way past hat it was designed for by crashing it into the waves like that but it was a good test I guess.
Looks like a lot of improvements still need to be updated before I would buy one.

 

[IM35461]

That was one advantage of the Karma drone. Having zero sensors if you were brave you could fly it very close to water.

Not my video BTW

 

[PascalG]

I love my Anafi but I live on a lake so I just purchased a Splash Drone 3 +.

I’m curious to know how the video from the SD3 compares to Anafi especially the stabilization. I mostly use drones from a boat and would prefer a waterproof drone... so far so good with Anafi but it s only a matter of time

I have a SwellPro Spry which is very good for still pictures but useless for video as it is not stabilized.

I ve shot a lot of video over water with Anafi with a couple of close calls at high speed while shooting watersports. Looks like Anafi sensor worked by preventing it from splashing down

 

[Vegasrobbi]

I was of the same opinion. The Spry and older 2 axis SP3 gimbal did not meet my requirement; I waited for a 3 axis 4K setup. I'll post some videos soon.

 

[PascalG]

I was of the same opinion. The Spry and older 2 axis SP3 gimbal did not meet my requirement; I waited for a 3 axis 4K setup. I'll post some videos soon.

It s a real shame SP didn’t put a good gimbal on the Spry because it s a nice drone. Very solid and heavy feel. While range is a little shorter than Anafi, I really like control with built in screen. Simple. But the lack of stabilized video makes it near useless.

 

[pmh1nic]

I'm just wondering why the loss of connection didn't trigger a return to home. Are you certain you had green gps for both drone and controller?

 

[Reconnaissance Squadron]

I'm just wondering why the loss of connection didn't trigger a return to home. Are you certain you had green gps for both drone and controller?

I suspect the explanation is some kind of total power failure. It is possible to fit the battery in partly, but not completely. If this shook loose, or some other open circuit of the power supply occurred the drone would cease communications and drop out the sky at the same time. The only explanation for a healthy drone and a healthy battery to just stop like that, everything is working fine then nothing on or of the drone is working at all, is a total severing of the power connection. A lack of GPS wouldn't cause the drone to drop out of the sky. The drone wants to do as it is instructed, or return to home, or hover in place (awaiting further instructions) if it doesn't know where home is until it has only enough power to land, in that order of preference. Nothing is going to make the drone autonomously decide to become an uncommunicative kamikaze. If the power to the motors is shut down there is no reason to stop sending back data until it hits something hard.

Correct me if I am wrong here but I don't think there is any stored power in the Anafi other than the battery. If the battery connection is broken, for whatever reason, the drone will cease transmitting any data, cease recording video, cease thrust and cease understanding that it should be navigating the skies all pretty much instantly. This seems to describe what went on here. An unexplained and unexpected total power failure.