Sad Day: Lost the Anafi :(

[AnafiPilot1]

Went out for my normal lunch time flying and ended up losing the Anafi. Totally my fault, and a combination of errors on my part.

Events happened as follows :-

1) sent the Anafi off on a flightplan - maintaining VLOS as normal.

2) A few wifi signal errors popup - normal as I am around 400-500m outs.

3) First ERROR on my part - Geofence reached error pops up on controller while excuting the flightplan. I have my geofencing set at 500m and it turns out my flightplan was taking the Anafi out to around 550m from me! and guess what I do not have VLOS on the Anafi due to a couple of trees which from my elevated position are still too tall for me to see it!

4) So I quickly go in to settings and adjust the Geofencing to 1Km

5) Lose video feed and signal - so I wait for the expected finish time of the flightplan and I see no Anafi in the sky.

6) Second ERROR on my part - I hit the RTH button a few times - wait a few more minutes - still no Anafi.

7) Third ERROR on my part - I decide to try and walk to the last position of the Anafi before I lost contact.

8) Hard to explain but the walk to the location takes me around the site rather than directly to where the last Anafi position was, so around 15 minutes long walk.

9) While walking round I get a signal and video feed on the controller and looks like the Anafi is near some bushes and being moved around with the controller saying unable to take-off. And the position - back at the RTH point.

10) I rush back to the RTH point and sadly no Anafi!!

So my take on this is that when the Anafi hit the Geofencing limit - it stopped and just hovered awaiting instructions, by that time my controller had lost connection with it - so it did not get the updated geofencing commands.

Then I started walking around and at some point when I was near enough the Anafi received the RTH command or the Anafi executed an low battery RTH.

The Anafi went back to RTH - it either landed in some bushes (I looked and could not find it and unlikely), or as I suspect it was STOLEN as I took off from a footpath/trail! It took me over 15 minutes to get back to RTH!!

The takeaway from this was, I paniced and jumped to the conclusion that the Anafi decided to plunge to earth - where as if I had stayed put it would have RTH when it hit low battery and I would still have the Anafi !!!

 

[Liger 1956]

That is a sad story. Was there anybody else about when you got to the launch position that could say whether it was stolen or not? Could some well meaning bystander have picked it up thinking that it was lost? The "unable to take off" message is strange as it should have stopped the motors when it landed. You could try making some posters to put up near the site. I hope that you get it back.

 

[Rocky the FS]

Sad and unfortunate. At least others may learn from your good analysis of what happened. Setting the Geofence to match the Flight Plan is very easily overlooked.....not to mention half a dozen other things that might need setting correctly, like camera modes, RTH height setting, etc.

I made a checklist, but I need to revise it as I did not include: Set Geofence to match Flight Plan!!!

Too bad whoever stole it didn't take his own selfie!!!

 

[MustangPhil]

Thanks for your experience analysis, I think I would have done the same as you did...

I did not know the Geofence had an impact on the flight plan setting (maybe a warning message prior to take off should pop-up saying ‘your trip distances an heights are not compatible with Geofence settings). If Parrot read that info... please add this security check in a future release !!

Hope you will find it back soon...

 

[AnafiPilot1]

Thanks for support guys!! Still really annoyed by what happened.

When I created the flightplan I did make sure it was within 500m but what I did not account for was the starting point and my launch position which was around 50m away from the first waypoint, hence my geofence getting triggered!

I did return to the RTH site after work - and it is just not around there, and the bushes and shrub growth around is so dense I just cannot imagine the Anafi falling through it, I would have expected to see if sitting on top of the vegitation!! I will keep looking as the area tends to thin out over winter.

There was no one around when it happened, but I was away from RTH point for over 15 minutes - I will leave a 'lost drone' poster in case - but I am treating it as a loss, I will have to see if my budget will allow me to get another Anafi soon!!

Some interesting info - I had a look at the Anafi page on the FF6 app which shows the last known position - the final flight is recorded as 22m 17s - so I suspect it came back on a low battery RTH, rather than me pressing the RTH button on the controller. The flightplan it was executing was only 3m 30s long.

 

[Handymel]

Sad, but submit a claim to Parrot. Supply your flight information, previous flight information and the details of the flight. There is a slim chance there was a malfunction and warranty will cover it. Be polite, give them all information you can and follow up with a phone call 10 days later. Always follow up written communication if you don't hear response within a week. Good luck.

 

[AnafiPilot1]

Good and Bad news!!

Good news found the Anafi, bad news it missed the RTH point by about 6 meters and end up in an small stream only around 20cm in depth (which was unknown to me!!) down a 5 meter embankment. A kindly fisherman fishing the local river came and managed to fish her out for me!!

I have stripped it down and soaked it in a some electronic solvent cleaner - after which I have spray out all the unreachable areas with some air-duster spray, and have left in the oven at 50 C to bake out!! So we will see if it can be recovered or not!

The battery looks like it is toast, after all the cleaning - it is just giving me the 4 red light flashing sequence - the reset process does reset the battery but it then goes back to the flashing 4 red leds. I suspect that means the Cells are damaged or faulty - as I am only measuring around 1.7v across the output pins of the battery!

Finally, my conclusion of what happened is correct - once the Anafi reached the geofencing - it stopped the flightplan and stayed hovering on the spot - I have managed to recover 19 minutes of footage from the SD card - and it shows around 2 minutes of the flightplan then just hovering for over 17 minutes - after which it RTH's due to low battery. There is a TMP file which is probably the remaining few minutes of the flight I will try and see if I can recover that.

This all the algae and debris that came out from the solvent wash!!

 

[Liger 1956]

Good news that you found it but not so good that it has had an extended bath. Was there no mechanical damage? At least it was, sort of, fresh and not salt water. Do you have a spare battery to test it with when it has fully dried out?

 

[davyg]

do you have spare battery to test the unit when it is dried out.... hope it is a happy ending for ya...

 

[AnafiPilot1]

There was no damage at all to it, not even the props - everything looks good as new!!

Managed to get the Anafi back together, everything cleaned up, some area had to be scrubbed due to electrolysis type corrosion where power was still on while under water.

Unit is powering up - gps locking and ultrasonic sensor buzzing away - connecting to the controller, even managed to download the last flight data BUT no motor twitch nor gimbal movement!!

SO probably the motor pcb is damaged.





But looking at the flight data, I am beginning to think that is was an software error - it never made it back to the RTH point and looking at the flight data it looks like it ran out of power before it could reach it - as it was not under my control it should have made it back to RTH as designed taking in to account battery levels, etc.



I think I will put in a warranty claim with Parrot, or as I bought it from Amazon, I may just initiate a return with them as it is only a few months old.

 

[Liger 1956]

Was it fighting the wind on the way back home?

 

[AnafiPilot1]

Nope - it was a very calm day.

I think the 18 minutes of hovering taxed the battery more than the software calculated - so when it started the RTH at 10m/s the battery just could not deliver.

That is what I am seeing from the graph.

 

[Vegasrobbi]

Looks like you struck gold

View attachment 2616
[/QUOTE]

 

[AnafiPilot1]

Well I would have just prefered if the Anafi had landed at RTH point rather than all this!! It was working so well been to a few countries performed really well !! - now I will have to start again with a new drone, and build trust in its reliability and performance!

 

[speagles2]

Bad luck :-( Glad you recovered the Anafi, but bad luck ending up in the water.

How can you tell that it didn't make it back to the RTH point (as opposed to just missing it) - from the GPS data? From the graph you included above it looks to me like it made a controlled descent from 50m at the end of the flight, but it's not obvious whether that was because it thought it was over the RTH point or because it detected a critical battery low state while en-route and had to land immediately. Either way, do you think the fact that it was not physically damaged suggests that it made a controlled landing into the stream? If so it's pretty bad luck that it should almost make it back and down safely :-(

 

[AnafiPilot1]

I can never 100% sure - but I measured the distance from the RTH point and where it actually landed, it was around 8 meters away, which is a big error especially since the precision landing was set.

Battery data looks like it was down to 1-5% - which may indicate that it made a critical landing due to battery level.

It is sad actually RTH point had a clearing 5m radius around it, so anywhere within that area and it would have turned out ok!!

 

[Liger 1956]

If you run the .json file through the ShowAnafiLog software then it will give you accurate data of position, battery level and any alerts.

Show Anafi Log Project

I have been working with someone who makes programs to read telemetry files and displays the output with errors if any are found. His specialty is with Yuneec drones but I thought I would pick his brain and see if he could make a similar program for our Anafi's. Here is a link to what he has so...

parrotpilots.com

 

[speagles2]

That's rotten luck, if you had a 5m clearance around your RTH point and the Anafi just didn't quite make it back :-( Sounds like it did just miscalculate and leave it too late to initiate RTH on low battery.

 

[AnafiPilot1]

Ok here is some info from FlightData Manager absolutely huge .json file 2.8MB in size!! :-





I think the graph clearly shows the battery level collapsed during the RTH - and before it 'splashed down' it was at 2%.

 

[Liger 1956]

The ShowAnafiLog software gives a lot more data than FlightDataManager including the "alert states" which should indicate whether it missed the RTH point due to bad GPS fix or lack of battery.