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Uncontrolled yaw during flight

Etalon

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So I am trying out the anafi for the first time, after having experiance with a Matrice 210v2 (and a little hubsan x4).

During each flight (admittedly in fairly windy conditions, 22mph gust, 14mph wind speed, area will have some mechanical turbulence) I was not prepared for the yaw instability that the drone was showing during flight.

Every flight I cut short due to un-commanded sudden 90-180 degree yaw movement, the last was the worst and during the auto land sequence it managed to not shut down the motors (may have been a insufficiently flat landing area to be fair) and it managed to do a flip. Weirdly that flight was not logged as a crash in the log file.

I have screenshots of the last flight from ShowAnafiLog, any thoughts on this? (I will try again in a more still day, do a compass recalibration...) My confidence has been shaken somewhat! I am used to either a fully manual drone where I have complete control, or the Matrice 210 which is just rock solid.

Screen captures here


Thanks!

Etalon
 
Last edited:
Did you ensure that both the Anafi and your phone had a good GPS lock before you took off?
Also did you do a compass calibration before your first flight?

The screen captures that you have posted do not have the legends which makes deciphering them difficult. It would be better if you attached a copy of the relevant .json file(s) so that other experienced members can see the raw data which is necessary in order to even have an educated guess as to what is wrong.
 
Hi Thanks for the reply. I had good (green) GPS lock before I took off. I did compas calibration twice, (once indoors, but I knew that woudl mess things up, so I re-did it out doors.

Good shout on the graphs, my bad!

Will edit the original post so it has the key. If I can work out how to remove the GPS location from the log files I will be more than happy to upload!

New link
 
OK I have adjusted the first few numbers of my lat/long by a fixed amount in order to hide the location, apologies for my paranoia!
 

Attachments

  • 0914_2021-04-02T142634+0100_582184_0008.json
    185.2 KB · Views: 6
My experience is that the Anafi is nearly uncontrollable in the wind and turbulence you described....it's just too light. In a steady wind you might fly up to 20, but the video will be nearly useless.
I have also experienced momentary uncommanded yaws up to 90 degrees in winds with gusts below 14 or 15.....which is of course an estimate as I was doing a follow me on my motorcycle. I don't think there is anything wrong with your bird, it's just one of the Anafi's limitations.
 
OK Thankyou.

I might be getting another weird issue, before I go down a silly rabbit hole: I have got intermittent issues with it on my desk. The worst one I had was: everything connected, getting video feed to my phone, then suddenly the gimbal goes to max lock up, then I loose connection to the drone from the skycontroller, that has happened a couple of times, but rarely.

What happens much more is the startup sequence is unreliable. Sometimes it starts up, I connect, and its OK. Sometimes I start up, the gimbal fails to calibrate and its wonky and offcenter, but still connects and I get video.

Othertimes it starts up, does the motor check, the gimbal calibration fails, and then I cant turn it off without removing the battery (the blue light on the bottom of the drone never illuminating, but fan still running). Or the blue light is flashing, but the gimbal is frozen and I cannot connect. I did a hard reset of the Anafi, am I missing something, or should I be concerned?
 
(I am uploading some super exciting videos to youtube showing these issues, will show them to parrot, see what they say). I did catch it on camera with me having video feed, then the sky controller loosing connection, flashing blue/white, so that seems pretty clear cut!
 
Looking quickly at your .json file there appears to be some corrolation between the vertical speed and the compass heading. A sharp rise and then drop in vertical speed occurs jarround a rapid change in compass heading even though the altitude does not appear to change very much.

Screen_Charts attitude_1.png

It may be just a coincidence but do your videos show a similar corrolation? Can you please check the propellers with a magnifying glass for any nicks and micro cracks and also check that the propellors are not too tight a fit on gthe screws. I assume that the Anafi is brand new, and not second hand, and that the propellors are OEM and not after market.
 
Thanks for looking:
Yes the anafi is brand new, using all original hardware. Props are free to pivot, I checked them all carefully, there is no sign of damage, and they all look identical to each other. (none seem bent out of shape).

You are right on the change in altitude during these yaw manoeuvres, but I feel those were induced by me putting in some sharp downward control movements when the drone seems to stop responding to my commands. Unfortunately I didnt have auto video record turned on at this point, I was going to focus on stills. From memory the yaws started during level flight but I could very easily be wrong here.

Sorry to trouble you on this, but what do you think of this behaviour I found during me testing this sitting on my desk? (it looses connection to the skycontroller3).
- gimbal snaps to horizontal a few second after this timestamp, and I loose connection to the controller


There is lots of other weird startup beheaviour I have noticed:
Locking up without the blue light turning on during starup
Starting up, but not calibrating the gimbal saw the gimbal is skewed, untill I power cycle and hope the gimbal does its calibration the next time
Starting up, blue light comes on, then locks up, cant power off or conect to it, I have to pull the battery
 
If you have the controller and the Anafi too close together you could get swamping of the signal so try it again with the Anafi at least 2m away from the controller. Also how far away is your router as it's 2.4GHz signal could also be swamping the Anafi.

If the Anafi is faulty, and it would appear to be, then I would suggest that you return it to the supplier asap for a refund or replacement.
 
If you have the controller and the Anafi too close together you could get swamping of the signal so try it again with the Anafi at least 2m away from the controller. Also how far away is your router as it's 2.4GHz signal could also be swamping the Anafi.

If the Anafi is faulty, and it would appear to be, then I would suggest that you return it to the supplier asap for a refund or replacement.
The phone WiFi was turned off, and I am a good distance from my router, but I didn't know the controller itself could be sending a signal that is too strong to the drone itself. I am leaning toward replacement right now, I just dont have trust in this at the moment. (too many other issues, like the unreliable startup sequence).
 
Parrot are not renowned for answering emails. It is better to phone them but they will want you to jump through hoops and supply lots of information and files from the Anafi SD card.

If I were you I would return it to Currys saying that it is faulty and that you want a replacement or your money back. You have nothing to lose and may be pleasantly surprised.
 
As "Liger 1956" says..... Return it to Currys as faulty.

Parrot will make you jump through the hoops over a period of weeks. Now they have their "Parrot USA" they are not really interested in us as customers. Support was bad before..... Its now non-existent!!
 
Does anybody have a current working phone number?
I found a bug in the software
 

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