Neo Fly Away

Neo
1

Hi.

I have had the Neo since September as a new recruit to the world. I tend to read and research everything and go slowly slowly seeing how things work. I was so impressed with the Neo I bought an Avata 2 but haven’t flown it much yet until I am fully happy with the Neo

However

In the space of a few days I had 2 Fly Aways while using the RC-N3 controller.

The first only had 8 or 9 Satellites . Home Point was updated. It gave a No Satellite Positioning message then started flying backwards then off to the side before crashing into me

The second one was much worse

18 to 20 satellites, Home Point updated and hovering 90 ft above my head (above Home) until it went bonkers.

at 180 degrees through a 360 yaw I got a No Satellite Positioning message (dropped to 8 satellites then back to 11 then 15 in 0.5 of a second)

When it completed the 360 and I centred the yaw the motors went mad then it shot off in the direction it was pointing when the Satellite loss message came up.

It reached 52.6 mph before it hit something solid . Outright dangerous

Despite it heading away from Home (as it was always above Home) it went into Go Home mode as it was flying away from Home ! . Hitting Cancel didn’t stop it

I see there is a lot more data in the Offline Log Reader .

It clearly was fully out of control as Normal mode restricts it to 6 m/s (about 13.4 mph)

There seem to be lots of Fly Aways on the Neo with the Controller

I have sent all the data to DJI

Is there anything else I can do or pull from the logs that proves they have a serious safety issue with the Neo flown from a controller ?

Thanks in advance for any help and advice

2

Can you share your TXT flight logs here?

3

Hi, thanks

I uploaded to Wetransfer so see if this works

Neo Fly Away Flight Record

Flight less than 2 minutes

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That file is empty (0 bytes).

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5

Try this.

It showed 0 bites inFinder but after opening in a text editor 5.9 Mb

Neo Flight Record attempt 2

6

The second upload worked. Thanks!

The only error I see in the flight log is “No satellite positioning. Fly with caution.” at 0m 52s. Despite that message, the log shows the drone continued using GPS for positioning (OSD.isGPSUsed).

Everything seems to have been going as expected until 1m 19.6s. At that point, the drone began flying away as you described. Unfortunately, I don’t see anything in the flight log data that explains why this might have happened.

Please keep us updated once you hear back from DJI. I’m interested to hear what DJI has to say about this incident.

7

Thanks for having a look.

I also asked on the UK Grey Arrows Drone Club. The suggested I use Air Data to let others look at the logs. I shared your Flight Log Viewer as well

Whether it’s relevant ot not they pointed out a big battery voltage drop at 1:25 and Composs error at 1:23

I’ll let you know what happens

8

The voltage drop was likely caused by the sudden increase in speed, as shown in the Flight Reader chart below. You can observe a similar spike in battery voltage while the battery is under more load during takeoff at the beginning of the flight.

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One notable factor is the “Satellite positioning signal weak” message that appeared early in both flights. If you encounter this message when flying your Neo in the future, it would probably be best to land and restart the drone to ensure a stable flight.

9

Thanks Mike. Makes sense :+1:

Assuming they replace the Neo it will be confined to Quick Shots and phone control and maybe a FPV crash test dummy :rofl:

I liked drone experience so much when I bought the Neo, I bought an Avata 2 which I am only just using now.

I’ll probably buy a Mini soon as well to do anything I might have done with the Neo and a Controller. I’m not prepared to risk that happening avain as its a danger to others.

For info this is the unedited video of what it looked like for real https://youtu.be/FARoiwc7SNA?si=j2Vev3X7yxqHY1Fy

10

The .txt log file indicates the Neo was pointing -162.2 at launch. Also indicated is that when the Neo reached 90 feet it was not directly overhead. Are these correct?

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1 Like
11

Hi @BudWalker.

No this puzzled me when I saw the map at first. It was directly above my head untill it went mad.

I am assuming it looks like it is over water as it gains height due to parallax (?).

The satellite image of the map was not taken from directly above my head. The sataliite would have been far away and at an angle to me so the higher the drone was, it would give the appearance of it moving away from me.

If the mapping satellite had been directly above my head as well you wouldn’t see this effect

12

The video shows it was pointed at about 64.5 at launch.

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1 Like
13

So this is the reply from DJI a few paras down.

It’s good they will replace it FOC and I have accepted their kind offer but I have gone back to them to look at it again as I’m just not happy it should have behaved like that if it was simply being beside water.

Why they picked out 22 seconds is a mystery as the drone kept climbing until 31 seconds when it reached 27 meters high and didn’t go out of control untill 1:19 immediately after I centred Yaw

I am fairly persistent so won’t let them away quitely :wink:

DJI Reply;
" We have now received results of the data analysis for the flyaway case and please inform us, on how you wish to proceed in regards to your remote controller.

The result is as follows:

1. The aircraft worked under GPS mode;

2. Flight Time T=00:22, Relative Height H=8.4 m, Distance to Home Point D=5.2 m, The aircraft stayed close to the water. Drift of aircraft and accidents due to ineffective positioning of aircraft on the water surface.

3. The incident coordinate: 36.6227207, 29.0998615;

4. The DJI Neo user manual has instructions that the aircraft cannot be flown over water; Please keep the water at least 10m above the surface to fly.

According to the analysis, the incident was caused by improper operation, please pay attention to the flight environment.

We understand that it takes time to familiarize yourself with your Neo. Considering your experience with DJI’s products, we would like to make a special gesture and offer you a free replacement for this case.

For safe flights in the future, we kindly recommend paying close attention to your flight environment and maintaining a minimum distance of 3 meters when flying over bodies of water."

14

Given @msinger’s observation that the Neo was actually pointed 64.5 it’s likely that the launch site was geomagnetically distorted. Looking at the video I would bet the pier has some steel; both understructure as well as bolts through the wood planks. These bolts appear to pass through the launch site

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1 Like
15

Fair point :+1:

So a launch from the hand would have been better ?. Or better still on proper terra firma. In hindsight there was no reason for me to launch from there.

Every day is a school day :wink:

16

Probably. A good practice is to check that the heading indicator shown on the display agrees with the actual heading. In this case the heading indicator would have been pointing -162.2.

2 Likes
17

Thanks. Great tip :ok_hand:

18

That’s such an underrated tip!

@BudWalker have you ever seen a scenario where this issue was caused by something within the drone itself (firmware/hardware)? The cases I’ve seen usually involve a nearby magnetic metal source as the likely culprit. However, I know you’ve researched many of these cases in greater detail than I have.

1 Like
19

Not exactly. I have seen cases where the drone was powered up and initialized in a geomagnetically distorted location - e.g the hood of a car. And, then moved to a clean launch site. The problem is that it can take up to a minute or more for the Flight Controller to change over to the magnetometer data obtained at the clean site.

2 Likes
20

The replacement Neo is in its way

DJI say I can’t speak to their Data Analysis team (but that may be a language barrier !), but they said their Technical Department can phone me. I said yes.

Mikes theory about the compass being almost 180 degrees out , and @BudWalker theory probably because I took off from a steel pier covered in wood sounds like a contributory factor

DJI haven’t identified that (to me). The drone was stable in ascent and yaw then shot off so I’m curious what they say about why it shot off. If the compass was 180 degree out and if surrounding water confused the sensors that’s all well and good . Hopefully they will have a view on what then happened or can feed it back to their development team. There should be some failsafe in there