XAircraft SuperX

[kloner]

I sent him a part to warranty 3 weeks ago and never heard a word, doesn't reply to emails. my guess is now that they have an actual base of users the problems are starting to rear there ugly faces. I've seen very strange behaviour from this thing, Drew didn't seem to want to hear it. Reminds of robert@. It's all fun and games till it don't work every time in every condition. It could be something as simple as radio or interference problems but instead of this black box having rssi to see if in fact that's the case it's too generic for any putting this back together with enough data to make heads from tails.

the dji controller has basicaly the same thing as black box in the iosd except it's ran from your desktop...... way more data in the logs

 

[Djin]

Try sending him a PM on here, he replied to me when i PM'd him yet my 4 emails went un-answered. I think there may be some email issues

 

[Aerovideo]

Thanks Paul.

I like to buy locally when possible as well, and Drew's input here has been really great. So he has my sale when the time comes. But this thread also had a fair amount of "DJI-MIA" references, so after reading DH106's post, I noted that he hadn't been on in a while.

Hopefully he and the home office can help DH106, because this is literally the first negative report I've read in 100's of posts.

Unfortunately I'm too new to this game to really help - other than to have experienced similar issues with motorcycle wiring. Shorts and cold solder points can be the hardest thing to trace because of the inconsistencies involved. There is currently a post on this forum where a user found that inside the WKM FC a single ESC solder point was not soldered. There was enough contact for it to work perfectly one moment, crash and lose the MR the next. He would have never found the issue if he hadn't opened the box (which I'm assuming most owners don't do).

It would be nice to see this first mentioned problem solved in a timely manner. It seems all these positive posts and successful flights could possibly leave people forgetting how fragile/flaky these systems can be, even for the best pilots and rigs.

But 519 positive posts, and only 1 problem says a lot to me about the quality of this product.

Wow, a faulty solder inside the WKM, that must have been crazy hard to track down.

I really do think DH106's problem is not with the SuperX but actually with his RC Rx going into failsafe of throttle off.

Bad electrical connections usually manifest themselves as flips (one motor shutting off) not all motors shutting off at once. However, it still is quite worrisome that there's no black box recording.

 

[jfro]

Wow, a faulty solder inside the WKM, that must have been crazy hard to track down.

I really do think DH106's problem is not with the SuperX but actually with his RC Rx going into failsafe of throttle off.

Bad electrical connections usually manifest themselves as flips (one motor shutting off) not all motors shutting off at once. However, it still is quite worrisome that there's no black box recording.

I watched his video on losing his MR and finding the solderless joint. If I recall, it was a large loaded up unit, not a small quad. At the end of his video he says he's waiting to see if DJI wants to step up and help out on all the gear he lost.....

Until this incident, all has been positive. I also hope they can pin point with accuracy the root of the problem and hope it's the radio issue. While I feel good about no real issues so far, I also have this little flag in my brain that says, give it more time before you declare it's reliability as there isn't mass usage yet of this FC as far as I can tell....

 

[Aerovideo]

I also have this little flag in my brain that says, give it more time before you declare it's reliability as there isn't mass usage yet of this FC as far as I can tell....

Very good point, until the installed base is much larger it's tough to say what reliability problems may arise. But I do like mine

 

[Av8Chuck]

I've had six different FC's and there's been problems with four of them, some worse than others. I think it kind of goes with the territory. I've had a couple of NAZA's both crashed with one out of control fly away that caused 62 stitches to my face. The NAZA's often wouldn't respond to control commands the way I expect so I don't trust them.

I have not flown the SX very much yet but so far it has performed exactly as expected so I'm gaining confidence and trust with every flight. I don't mind if it crashes as long as I understand why so that I can prevent it from happening again.

I too am concerned that Drew has not been on this forum much since the Holidays. Strong participation from the manufacturer or their reps goes a long way with building trust with their product. That's an important reason for me switching to the SX. That was another pet peeve of mine regarding DJI, most of their reps on RCGroups, which at times was difficult to know who they were, were just fan boys and advocates for selling more NAZA's although it appears that DJI is trying to build a more professional dealer network and not just online stores. I guess time will tell how successful they will be.

I hope that XAircraft has learned something from DJI and recognize the need to develop a strong support network that does more than rely on forum members to sort things out.

 

[X650Mouse]

What! can't Drew go on holidays with his family? he is only a sales agent not the manufacture

Anything urgent you can always go support@xaircraft.com

David

 

[X650Mouse]

I sent him a part to warranty 3 weeks ago and never heard a word, doesn't reply to emails. my guess is now that they have an actual base of users the problems are starting to rear there ugly faces. I've seen very strange behaviour from this thing, Drew didn't seem to want to hear it. Reminds of robert@. It's all fun and games till it don't work every time in every condition. It could be something as simple as radio or interference problems but instead of this black box having rssi to see if in fact that's the case it's too generic for any putting this back together with enough data to make heads from tails.

the dji controller has basicaly the same thing as black box in the iosd except it's ran from your desktop...... way more data in the logs

What part did you send for warranty? what other problems do you see as "raising their ugly head" or are you simply running around yelling the "sky is falling"

David

 

[DH106]

Okay, I've done some testing on my SuperX/radio after the above crash.

I first tested the radio failsafe to check where the channels go when the Rx loses the signal:-
As I remembered setting it up, the critical channel is (on my JR) channel#5 (the 2 pos Gear switch), which on the SuperX you link to the 'normal flight'/'safe return to home' mode toggle. Result:- in failsafe this IS indeed set to 'Safe mode - return to home', so no clue to the crash there. All the other flight channels were set to neutral/center EXCEPT the throttle channel which went to full throttle low.

Finding this, I started to wonder at this low throttle failsafe setting - whether the low throttle would have priority over the 'safe mode' control and perhaps this was the reason for all 4 motors powering off, assuming a radio glitch. So I set up a test rig of the 4 motors (without props!) and did a simulated 'flight'. With the motors turning, I turned off my Tx to simulate a failure. Result:- the SuperX LED turned from green double flashing to red double flashing showing 'safe mode' was active, but the motors KEPT TURNING. Therefore, in 'Safe Mode' the throttle position doesn't matter and the Quad should land itself regardless.

All this leads me to believe that the problem WASN'T a radio failure.

Next, I connected the SuperX to a PC to see whether it had written a Log file of my test simulated 'flight', and sure enough it HAD written a Log (remember, curiously there was no log file after the crash). So this seems to point towards there being a temporary glitch with the SuperX causing the crash as it didn't write a Log file when it should have.

I did some more thinking:- it crashed on the 3rd flight of the day, half way through a LiPo pack. So what was different about this flight?
The first 2 flight were both low level, faily slow speed, but on the crash flight I took it up way high, maybe 400-500 feet plus and did some racing around. My gut feeling now is that the SuperX suffered a temporary 'low temperature' failure.
It's supposed to be temperature rated down to -10C/14F. While we were flying at a fairly chilly +4C/39F temperature at ground level, my thoughts now are that perhaps the SuperX got 'cold soaked' when I took it up high and raced around (wind chill etc). This would account for the motors stopping and the failure to write a log. That's my current theory. I think I'll put the SuperX in the fridge overnight at the weekend - see if there's an issue.

Motopreserve - don't be put off, I still have faith in the SuperX !

 

[Tommy Luhr]

I have done this to!

I had setup safemode switch as failsafe, but i had also setup fmd switch to failsafe by accident. Didn't know that before i run out of range.
I tested the failsafe on the ground by turning of transmitter. Got all the right led flashing, done let's fly.
But the reality in the air there was another world. My scrappy Devo7 only got 300meters when it starts to glitch (orderd a taranis know).
Flying fpv thru my gopro in the gimbal, my front motors turned up fast in view and loosing altitude fast.

Look at this last run in the log http://log.xaircraft.com/#2014_01_11_043120.500_21.1.01.49
You can se that safemode triggers and one sec after the failsafe - manual mode. Then i lost a good hexa.
That wasn't the behavior on the ground.

If Superx had a thing like Naza so we could se that the radio is proper setup in software. Many of this errors don't have to show up.
Mailed to Xaircraft and tell whats happend and they were very fast responding and as i see it, took a lot of time to replay nice and good mails.

Loving my superx, here in sweden we got alot of winds and cold weather (-5 celcius) right know. I have run in this weather and superx is totaly good. Ihave build a miniquad with my naza lite that i have at first.
It's alot nervous behavior on that when it's cold outside. But naza seams to work better on a little quad than a bigger hexa.

My adwise is to setup your transmitter as it was, test this thing over and over again. As i know there are no pattern in the transmitter to wich channel who got the first command to do failsafe mode. Maybe it hipshoots the channels and you got bad luck and got "motors off" before safemode. I don't know but it's worth a try.
Mabye it is the fc and there was a glitch in firmwareupdate or a faulty fc.

 

[X650Mouse]

I have done this to!

I had setup safemode switch as failsafe, but i had also setup fmd switch to failsafe by accident. Didn't know that before i run out of range.
I tested the failsafe on the ground by turning of transmitter. Got all the right led flashing, done let's fly.
But the reality in the air there was another world. My scrappy Devo7 only got 300meters when it starts to glitch (orderd a taranis know).
Flying fpv thru my gopro in the gimbal, my front motors turned up fast in view and loosing altitude fast.

Look at this last run in the log http://log.xaircraft.com/#2014_01_11_043120.500_21.1.01.49
You can se that safemode triggers and one sec after the failsafe - manual mode. Then i lost a good hexa.
That wasn't the behavior on the ground.

If Superx had a thing like Naza so we could se that the radio is proper setup in software. Many of this errors don't have to show up.
Mailed to Xaircraft and tell whats happend and they were very fast responding and as i see it, took a lot of time to replay nice and good mails.

Loving my superx, here in sweden we got alot of winds and cold weather (-5 celcius) right know. I have run in this weather and superx is totaly good. Ihave build a miniquad with my naza lite that i have at first.
It's alot nervous behavior on that when it's cold outside. But naza seams to work better on a little quad than a bigger hexa.

My adwise is to setup your transmitter as it was, test this thing over and over again. As i know there are no pattern in the transmitter to wich channel who got the first command to do failsafe mode. Maybe it hipshoots the channels and you got bad luck and got "motors off" before safemode. I don't know but it's worth a try.
Mabye it is the fc and there was a glitch in firmwareupdate or a faulty fc.

When you get your Taranis you will find a whole world of difference, the FailSafe & Safemode, as SX calls it work flawlessly, RC off or out of range the RX will trigger what ever you want, preferably a RTH command, with SX, throttle commands are ignored as return height is set in the SX software.

Welcome to Taranis. :tennis:

David

 

[Motopreserve]

DH106,

Im certainly not turned off by this one incident (although I sympathize with you!). It sounds like you're methodically working through it - and the idea that the temp up that high could have contributed to the crash seems a sound one. At least worth exploring more...

X650,

I didn't read Kloner's post as 'the sky was falling,' in relation to XAircraft, but a hope that the 'sky' that is DJI style non-support doesn't fall on XAircraft customer's heads. There seems to be no lack of support for XAircraft to succeed, and no doubt that everyone here is rooting for them. But many people at the top of this thread were worried due to previous negative experiences, with either the original XAircraft or DJI. Once burned, twice shy and all that...

I also don't think anyone would begrudge Drew a vacation away from the pesky followers of this hobby! .

But in order to set themselves apart from what has become a proven customer relations turn-off (some might say nightmare based on some DJI threads), seems that an "out of the office" auto-reply would go a long way. Poor communication from DJI seems to be the thing that has gotten the most hair up, and no one wants to see that happen here, with what seems to be a great and worthy competitor to the DJI FC product line.

Just my 2 cents. Don't mean to speak for others.

 

[cabo_wabo]

What happened at 46 seconds on the second graph ? Radio command pitch up and motors go crazy too ?

http://log.xaircraft.com/#2014_01_11_043120.500_21.1.01.49[/URL]
You can se that safemode triggers and one sec after the failsafe - manual mode..

 

[X650Mouse]

Okay, I've done some testing on my SuperX/radio after the above crash.

I first tested the radio failsafe to check where the channels go when the Rx loses the signal:-
As I remembered setting it up, the critical channel is (on my JR) channel#5 (the 2 pos Gear switch), which on the SuperX you link to the 'normal flight'/'safe return to home' mode toggle. Result:- in failsafe this IS indeed set to 'Safe mode - return to home', so no clue to the crash there. All the other flight channels were set to neutral/center EXCEPT the throttle channel which went to full throttle low.

Finding this, I started to wonder at this low throttle failsafe setting - whether the low throttle would have priority over the 'safe mode' control and perhaps this was the reason for all 4 motors powering off, assuming a radio glitch. So I set up a test rig of the 4 motors (without props!) and did a simulated 'flight'. With the motors turning, I turned off my Tx to simulate a failure. Result:- the SuperX LED turned from green double flashing to red double flashing showing 'safe mode' was active, but the motors KEPT TURNING. Therefore, in 'Safe Mode' the throttle position doesn't matter and the Quad should land itself regardless.

All this leads me to believe that the problem WASN'T a radio failure.

Next, I connected the SuperX to a PC to see whether it had written a Log file of my test simulated 'flight', and sure enough it HAD written a Log (remember, curiously there was no log file after the crash). So this seems to point towards there being a temporary glitch with the SuperX causing the crash as it didn't write a Log file when it should have.

I did some more thinking:- it crashed on the 3rd flight of the day, half way through a LiPo pack. So what was different about this flight?
The first 2 flight were both low level, faily slow speed, but on the crash flight I took it up way high, maybe 400-500 feet plus and did some racing around. My gut feeling now is that the SuperX suffered a temporary 'low temperature' failure.
It's supposed to be temperature rated down to -10C/14F. While we were flying at a fairly chilly +4C/39F temperature at ground level, my thoughts now are that perhaps the SuperX got 'cold soaked' when I took it up high and raced around (wind chill etc). This would account for the motors stopping and the failure to write a log. That's my current theory. I think I'll put the SuperX in the fridge overnight at the weekend - see if there's an issue.

Motopreserve - don't be put off, I still have faith in the SuperX !

XAircraft Australia just had some vehicles go on a ship to Antarctica and they experienced lipo cold we'll call it! the chief honcho here at XA Australia is a real nice guy by the name of Anthony Swinbourne you can contact him at email international@xaircraft.com might be worth dropping him a line and sharing experiences, I am sure he is also happy to help out any user in Drew's absence :02.47-tranquillity: bear in mind we are the other side of the pond so sleep whilst your drinking!

David

 

[Tommy Luhr]

What happened at 46 seconds on the second graph ? Radio command pitch up and motors go crazy too ?

Hello! It's the radio inputs, when you see pitch i am telling it to go forward.
Motors were all very underpowerd for my set of gear (this was a dji f550 with 2700grams) and it's kind of windy and cold this day.
Unexpected motorlevels are something that comes with windy and overloaded rig.
Now i am building a Tarot fy690 with 3508 700kv engines and 13:4 propellers. I think that handles the wheight more easy.

 

[Tommy Luhr]

When you get your Taranis you will find a whole world of difference, the FailSafe & Safemode, as SX calls it work flawlessly, RC off or out of range the RX will trigger what ever you want, preferably a RTH command, with SX, throttle commands are ignored as return height is set in the SX software.

Welcome to Taranis. :tennis:

David

When the Taranis comes there will be a new world of learning. But it seams like a good radio with good range.
Do you use the Sbus on the reciver for your SuperX?
I will try to figure that out and use the spare channels for fun stuff.

 

[X650Mouse]

When the Taranis comes there will be a new world of learning. But it seams like a good radio with good range.
Do you use the Sbus on the reciver for your SuperX?
I will try to figure that out and use the spare channels for fun stuff.

Yes using SBUS and binding the X8R mode 4 gives you a full 16 channels, I'm using 12 which allows me to control the gimbals, find it hard to think what I'd use the other 4 channels for!

David

 

[Tommy Luhr]

My thought about all channels is:
7 channel for the Superx if you use gain control (9channel left)
1 for videoswitch
1 for remoteswitch for light
1 for servo with release function for dropping things on buddys gardens
1 for gimbal tilt
1 for retracts
1 for Osd screen display (Hornet osd)

Then we got 3 channels left It is always good to have spare channels when dumb ideas is born

X650Mouse: Do you use the free ports on Superx inputs to work like outpouts from the reciver? As i understand the superx works like that.
This will be some nail biting parts to learn!

 

[X650Mouse]

My thought about all channels is:
7 channel for the Superx if you use gain control (9channel left)
1 for videoswitch
1 for remoteswitch for light
1 for servo with release function for dropping things on buddys gardens
1 for gimbal tilt
1 for retracts
1 for Osd screen display (Hornet osd)

Then we got 3 channels left It is always good to have spare channels when dumb ideas is born

X650Mouse: Do you use the free ports on Superx inputs to work like outpouts from the reciver? As i understand the superx works like that.
This will be some nail biting parts to learn!

We need to ensure this thread doesn't go off topic, as not fair to others, so briefly, with everything on my X650 I am close to TOW therefore can't and don't want other things, I have XA OSD, a 5.8 TX for FPV a 3 axis gimbals with yaw, pitch and roll controlled by the Taranis. flight time with a 6000mah is about 15 minutes, so I don't think I'd use much else in the configuration, I do have another configuration for this vehicle that is much lighter but don't use it much.

No I have not used the 4 channels from the IO, as these channels are replicated 9, 10, 11, 12, on the X8R and think this is a better utilisation, so I'll call it an end now, you can find a very active thread on the Taranis at RCGroups/radios

David

 

[Dax]

After working out my ESC problems it's now airborne and not to bad but, now when I put it in GPS mode it drift slow and greps beyond the 3m. can anyone tell me something to try. do you think I need to recalibrate my GPS?

here is the link to the black box http://log.xaircraft.com/#2014_01_19_114039.250_45.1.05.39