I just ran into this issue. The drone crashed from low altitude - approx 1m up - onto a hard surface. No damage to the exterior but after resetting everything I received the "Vertical camera failure, please call Parrot support" error and the drone would not take off. The drone is just out of warranty and does not have much flight time but I contacted Parrot support and they responded with something to the effect of "Due to physical damage it is not covered by warranty" and then basically go to the Parrot website and buy the part and fix it yourself. Note that no mention of the crash was made in the initial support request which raises some unrelated suspicions. This pretty much soured me initially on Parrot's support and left me with a $700 paperweight but they did follow up several days later and offered the usual suggestions - uninstall/reinstall the app, reset the network settings on the phone, reset the drone. calibrate - which did not change anything and after my response the support tech informed me that they were going to escalate the support request so we'll see what becomes of that but it is out of warranty anyway unless they are considering a goodwill repair. I did come across the disassembly procedures and some other users who had encountered the same problem so I disassembled as far as mainboard removal, checked the connectors, reassembled and still got the error. I did notice what appeared to be a small 'pimple' on the ribbon cable to the sensor that just happened to line up with the end of the plastic retainer for one of the RF connector leads. After disassembling and reassembling numerous times to no avail I figured the sensor was bad, probably due to damage to the wiring in the ribbon cable. I was able to source a used sensor on eBay since Parrot had none listed on their spare parts page and installed it. This seemed to do the trick.
My best guess is that the way it crashed, despite being very low altitude, caused the mainboard to slam into the lower cover (the rubber isolation mounting pins are
very stretchy) pinching the ribbon cable between the retainer and the cover. I have attached pics of the front and back of the ribbon cable in case someone finds this useful. On the back side you can see a light depression between the legs of the 'R' in the part number. I personally found it difficult to believe that this resulted in severing a connection but the cable is definitely displaced and attempting to flatten it with a fingernail does not reduce it any so apparently that is what happened.
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One question... I noticed that several users say they disconnected and reconnected the connector to the sensor. My unit has a metal retainer soldered in place that appears to have been designed to prevent the flat connectors from coming apart. When I replaced the sensor I had to bend it gently out of the way in order to disconnect it. Also, I noticed prior to bending it that there was a small bit of clearance between the back of the flat connector and the retainer so I made a small shim to take up the space to prevent problems with the connector disconnecting spontaneously. My question is... it that metal retainer part of the original design or is it a later revision added due to problems with the sensor and sd card connections?
