My helicopter (quadricopter) arrived back today, after undergoing warranty repair. The crash a couple of weeks ago was my fault, but “fortunately” right after it crashed I tried to upgrade the software and it corrupted the firmware. That’s covered by the warranty, and while they had it they fixed everything else.
So it flies fine now, but only in my family room since it’s been raining all day. I’ll have to wait a day or two before I can take it outside.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Richard // Jan 26, 2013 at 9:07 pm
What? No aerial videos of your chair and Derek’s computer repair area?
2 Don // Jan 26, 2013 at 10:55 pm
Or maybe a video of it going up and coming down the stairs?
3 Donna // Jan 27, 2013 at 11:25 am
Yay!
4 Daryl // Jan 27, 2013 at 11:54 am
Don — the stairs are too narrow. For now I’m a little nervous and keeping it at least a couple of feet away from walls.
Richard, I have taken video of said chair and (my) computer repair area, but I don’t think it would be exciting enough to post.
5 Daryl // Jan 27, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Wow! Last night flying it outdoors it suddenly died in mid air and fell out of the sky. Fortunately it didn’t get hurt.
Then today the same thing happened, again without harm. This is not good.
I went online to the forum and found that this is common with the latest firmware upgrades that apparently were put on while it was in for warranty repair. I found the hacker’s instructions to downgrade to the previous version, and so far it is working fine. It’s too windy right now so I’ll have to hold my breath for another day or two before I can know for sure that it is fixed.
6 Dale // Jan 29, 2013 at 6:32 pm
How’s it flying now? Please don’t crash it before I get to see it fly!
7 Don // Jan 29, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Can’t you fly it indoors to see if it’s fixed? Indoors it won’t fall very far. Oh but you don’t have carpet anymore. Ouch.
8 Daryl // Jan 29, 2013 at 9:48 pm
I’ve had it outdoors for some long and high flights (50 feet up), in between windy periods yesterday and today. It flies great now, but there’s still one problem.
Video capture doesn’t work very well. It stops recording for a second or two randomly every few seconds, so the video is jerky. I’m trying to figure out if it’s the firmware version or a problem with my hardware. If it’s not one thing it’s another!
9 Daryl // Jan 29, 2013 at 10:29 pm
Another update: It turns out that the choppy video only occurs when I record directly to my phone, using wifi. If I record to a USB stick plugged into the copter, it records flawlessly.
Maybe trying to send control instructions and download high definition video at the same time, especially at farther distances, is more bandwidth than the wifi can handle…?
Dale, if I come to Yuma with Donna and the weather forecast looks decent (and I haven’t broken it again), maybe I’ll bring it with me.
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