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> I very much doubt there's enough of a data recorder to reconstruct the event, even with a commercial-grade drone. Why do you think that? It's very easy to re

> I very much doubt there's enough of a data recorder to reconstruct the event, even with a commercial-grade drone. Why do you think that? It's very easy to record telemetry data on even hobby level devices. In fact, it's pretty standard if someone uses a ground station. I'd be surprised if a commercial grade drone didn't have that capability.

michaelt 11y ago
In an airliner's black box, there's enough redundancy to keep logging (and tell what happened) even if the main power fails, or the radio link fails, or the main processors' software crashes. I've never seen a drone with data recording that sophisticated.
- matheweis 11y ago
  It gets pretty close; 3DRs SOLO streams "black box data" to the transmitter in addition to logging it onboard the drone, so you get data up to the moment of incident even if the transmitter link fails. It also has a fail safe processor in the hardware that the community is adding I/O functionality to for just this purpose.
Piskvorrr 11y ago
I'm pretty sure it was capable of this; I just don't think many units have this enabled and running, as opposed to the always-on recorders mandated for commercial aviation.
- matheweis 11y ago
  Depends on the drone... The Pixhawk controller (that many of us from the RC / tech community use) can record so much data that it can be overwhelming. The commercial 3D Robotics SOLO uses an updated version of the same controller, and has such data logging enabled continuously. In fact, it -also- streams it continuously to its controller unit; even if you lose the drone there will be enough data in the controller to figure out what happened. 3DR uses that to back their flyaway warranty (if a SOLO flys away or crashes due to a software/hardware fault vs user error, 3DR will replace the entire thing free) (I'm not affiliated with 3DR other than owning a Pixhawk.)

michaelt 11y ago

In an airliner's black box, there's enough redundancy to keep logging (and tell what happened) even if the main power fails, or the radio link fails, or the main processors' software crashes. I've never seen a drone with data recording that sophisticated.

matheweis 11y ago
It gets pretty close; 3DRs SOLO streams "black box data" to the transmitter in addition to logging it onboard the drone, so you get data up to the moment of incident even if the transmitter link fails. It also has a fail safe processor in the hardware that the community is adding I/O functionality to for just this purpose.

Piskvorrr 11y ago

I'm pretty sure it was capable of this; I just don't think many units have this enabled and running, as opposed to the always-on recorders mandated for commercial aviation.

matheweis 11y ago
Depends on the drone... The Pixhawk controller (that many of us from the RC / tech community use) can record so much data that it can be overwhelming. The commercial 3D Robotics SOLO uses an updated version of the same controller, and has such data logging enabled continuously. In fact, it -also- streams it continuously to its controller unit; even if you lose the drone there will be enough data in the controller to figure out what happened. 3DR uses that to back their flyaway warranty (if a SOLO flys away or crashes due to a software/hardware fault vs user error, 3DR will replace the entire thing free) (I'm not affiliated with 3DR other than owning a Pixhawk.)