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Anafi turned itself off midway through landing and tumbled to the ground?

jdenhaan

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Hi,

Today, I took my Anafi on a flight to take a few shots of a pod of dolphins that was frolicking around. I launched from a ledge, but since I didn’t fancy my chances at landing it there, I planned to land it on the beach below instead and retrieve it from there.

When the time came to turn around, the anafi entered auto RTH. I overrode that and flew it to the beach (closer) instead. I found my planned spot and commenced descent. Midway through the descent, with about 10% battery left, the drone just cut out and tumbled ~15m from the sky. It fell awkwardly and it’s basically completely wrecked.

I get it, maybe I should have taken more margin and not let it go to auto RTH, but battery is battery and the drone should NOT just cut the motor without being completely drained. This tells me either the battery was incorrectly reporting, or there was some software glitch that caused the drone to somehow “think” it landed safely.

I’ve looked at the log and it didn’t record the flight as a crash. I was on 1.7.3, on iOS using the sky controller 3.

what should I do next?
 
Hold on - no way am I just going to “accept” this. I didn’t make any pilot error. As a consumer I have rights, and I intend to assert them.

This drone is about one year old, and Australian consumer law clearly gives me a 2 year minimum warranty period on electronics products that are >$500 purchase price.

There was minimal wind, no bird, no debris, no object strike. This is a product fault (no matter how low the battery is - it should not cut out until it’s fully drained) and I will claim either repair or replacement. Apparently this is a result of the battery reporting an incorrect percentage - that is a product fault and it should be covered under my warranty rights.
 
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I’m not going to fall over that easily: the drone was made and sold under the premise that it would fly until its battery is drained. It very clearly didn’t do that, which makes it a faulty product.

As for the battery itself, it started flashing red after the crash and won’t charge. I’m guessing the impact destroyed it.
 
you need to contact parrot
And be persistent: Just because the FF6 has no file, tell the callcenter guy, he should look it up, Parrot ALSO accepted the SD card file/folder.
Since you found your bird, the SD card has all you should need!

It is a design flaw!
The usable battery power is NOT updated, to the live ending of the batteries!
Not in FF6, not in the handling of the batteries power by the bird itself!
Unlike on DJI's, the pilot HAS NO chance, to overwrite a auto landing.
We can cancel the RTH, but as soon the bird "thinks", there is not enough juice left, it lands. NO MATTER WHAT! Even if it is already to late and midair the bird shuts off.
I have a couple of batteries from my Spark, with each over 100 flights on it.
The flight time gets down, SHOWN in Go4, and still these batteries have juice when on 0%

So Parrot is at fault here. Go for it, the former consumer managment boss (former b/c Parrot gave up on Consumers) is Aussie. If I remember that right!
 
I have a flight log. It shows crash = 0. Actually battery was at 7% when it shut off. Low, but now low enough to just die. In fact, it should have been more than enough to land from the altitude it was at (~10m).
 
I meant, from your memory. Roughly, how many recharge cycle of that battery?
Oh I’m really not sure. I’m not going to give you a guess because I really don’t even know a ballpark. It’s about a year old and it’s been taken out every other week or so. But I have two batteries, so im not sure which one etc.
 
By the way, the gimbal is completely wrecked. The camera is still working though. Also, one of the legs is broken, but the motor still registers and I think the wiring is intact. Should be able to super glue that one back together.

not going to do any of that though; parrot owe me a working product, plain and simple.
 
I’m not sure I follow your logic here. You don’t pay for marriage with your virginity. You pay for it in monetary value, which you at least get partially back through divorce proceedings.

anyway, a purchase contact is not a marriage. Consumer law is not family law, and Australian consumer law gives me a two year consumer guarantee.
 
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The "usual way" would be :


I think
 
I see, you guys have no faith in this thing. That's why this company sinks. Because they cannot have your love.
Anyway, take care to the battery. If you don't want to experience the same outcome again.
I think that you got that wrong.
jdenhaan needs first a new bird, before he can take care the batteries!
And a new bird can just come from Parrot!
Or do you send one as "the needed part" to send LI's around?
Aside it looks like, you are not sending to Australia, "these days"
 
Your bird is dead, because it wanted to RTH because of low battery, but you did an override and tried to fly it to another spot.
But Anafi could not reach that spot because of empty battery and died in the air.
And you really think, you should get a new one from Parrot??? Really?
 
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Your bird is dead, because it wanted to RTH because of low battery, but you did an override and tried to fly it to another spot.
But Anafi could not reach that spot because of empty battery and died in the air.
And you really think, you should get a new one from Parrot??? Really?
The spot I flew to was closer than the RTH spot. It would have died anyway, and probably have been irretrievable, had I not intervened. It still reported battery when it shut itself off.
 
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It's Australian government not sending. It is no way to send stuffs to Australia if their government doesn't allow to do so. No battery content can be shipped to Australia without a full set of Lab reports. Those cannot be prepared for end consumers.
Beside, we're not australian and do not have to entertain rules set by Australia government. We can just walk away. Problem solved.
I did not try to offend you here!
I know that you can't send to Australia by there rules.
I just pointed out, that OP NEEDS a "fit to fly" new bird first, before he even could consider a way to get his fingers onto YOUR offer!

Btw: Can you send to Thailand? (Did not see that in your shop)
 
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Your bird is dead, because it wanted to RTH because of low battery, but you did an override and tried to fly it to another spot.
But Anafi could not reach that spot because of empty battery and died in the air.
And you really think, you should get a new one from Parrot??? Really?
Thats to easy!
Yes, he did overrule the RTH.
But he can't overrule the "critical battery landing"
It is NOT a DJI!
A battery SHOULD not die with some % of load in it, anyway.

But you may have a point:

OP, how much deeper was the beach, as the HP on the ledge?
And as the height from where the bird had to descend?
Just still: 10% Battery on a 20+ minutes drone (that is, what Parrot has sold!) should give about 2+minutes anyway!
The ball is in Parrots penalty area, here!
 
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Thats to easy!
Yes, he did overrule the RTH.
But he can't overrule the "critical battery landing"
It is NOT a DJI!
A battery SHOULD not die with some % of load in it, anyway.

But you may have a point:

OP, how much deeper was the beach, as the HP on the ledge?
And as the height from where the bird had to descend?
Just still: 10% Battery on a 20+ minutes drone (that is, what Parrot has sold!) should give about 2+minutes anyway!
The ball is in Parrots penalty area, here!
Sure, its that easy.
The manual v6.7 warns you to be very careful if you override a RTH because of low battery (page 12: "...while monitoring closely its battery level...") and even doesn't guarantee a safe landing with advanced RTH options activated (note on page 45).
So a safe landing is possibly not possible after overriding a RTH with low battery.
And: no certain minimum battery level is defined for a safe landing.
 
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Sure, its that easy.
The manual v6.7 warns you to be very careful if you override a RTH because of low battery (page 12: "...while monitoring closely its battery level...") and even doesn't guarantee a safe landing with advanced RTH options activated (note on page 45).
So a safe landing is possibly not possible after overriding a RTH with low battery.
And: no certain minimum battery level is defined for a safe landing.
Yes, that is the "usual disclaimber".
And it would be true or possible in case you ignore it for quiet some time and then wanna fly back to the starting point.
Since Op said, the landing point was closer than the HP, so it comes to the height difference between start and landing location.
But also only in case, the dolphins got observed from a high altitude (zoom? ;-) and if the ledge was perhaps 50 meters high(er).
Since I am not using RTH often, I have no idea what Parrot coded as a save margin into the Anafis battery RTH routine. Being back with 20%, to be save?
Just there is this "thing" with the battery fw and the communication of the wrong powerlevel in the batteries. Even with 20, or 30%, there ar reports, mine is one of 'em, that the bird NEITHER did an RTH request before, but instead "critical battery" landed, and if high "enough, fell the last meters!
Just saying, intelligent batteries, failing to tell there actual status to the birds fw, that is on Parrot!
My DJI's are loosing power %tage quicker, in the app, flighttime gets calculated on actual battery behavior, in case the battery is about 100 flights old.
And the Spark is a similar 2S, but DJI is either giving the usual 6 month or (I think it was) 200 cycles warranty!
But anyway, you know that the battery is only good for 10 minutes till 10%.
But still is doing minimum another minute WITH the last 10%
 

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