qq190 cant swim
I took a bad bounce off a slope and ended up in the pool with the qq190. what should i be expecting to replace after something like this? all the electronics? motors too?
Did it plop right in? We were thinking about developing a submarine mode but we thought that developing a drone was enough for now…
During R&D we have had them drop in puddles and end up just fine. Well, the one that we lost in the ocean in Hawaii didn’t survive -but that was an irretrievable situation…. I’m sure if we had jumped off the cliff and into the ocean the drone would have come back – but I don’t know if the pilot would have…
In all honesty though, we conformal coated the electronics in the stack in the middle of the drone to help for situations where the QQ190 drone takes a swim.
What does it mean to have drone electronics conformal coated? It means that there’s a waterproof coating on the electronics to help them be water resistant in the event that the QQ190 gets wet.
The fact that the pool is not salt water is a very good thing because it means that there’s less of a chance of low current conduction that could potentially cause something like ESC FET or FC stm microcontroller failure.
First thing first, you want to absolutely make sure that you get the battery disconnected. Hopefully it ejected during the crash…. That’s one of the reasons that we love the design of the QQ190 because the battery will eject instead of causing massive damage when you crash.
How you crashed your drone can have a big impact into whether or not the motors and ESC survive. For instance if you crash at full throttle you have a much higher chance of frying something versus if you drop the throttle to zero before you impact whatever it is you’re crashing into.
Now for the actual answer to your question:
The QQ190 most likely survived the crash and water immersion fine, but the procedure taken after pulling it out of the drink will impact whether or not it will live to fly another day.
Step 1: Recover drone and make sure your battery is removed.
Step 2:. make sure that the substance that the drone got into was not contaminated with something like salt or mud. If the QQ190 drone got dirty, you can disconnect the camera and battery and give the drone a bath.
We Recommend DE-ionized water, followed by 99% ISO-propyl alcohol. after you clean all of the components you want to give them ample time to dry maybe 24 hours or more.
The reality is that you can completely submerge every part in the alcohol, and as long as it’s dry and evaporated it should not impact the performance of the parts.
What will kill components of a drone when it goes in the water is conduction of electricity in the parts that are not supposed to receive higher than rated voltage levels.
If you crash into salt water and then try to fly it with the saltwater still on the electrical components, the salt and water can create a short between different circuit traces on the circuit board which can cause components to fry due to the over-currents created in a short-circuit situation.
As long as you are able to recover the drone without a short that is evident at the scene of the accident, you should be able to completely clean it. After cleaning, ensure that the QQ190 is completely dry with no residual contaminants on the electrical components such as salt or mud. If it’s clean and didn’t short than there’s a good possibility that the drone will fly again.
One thing to note; if you submerge the motors in alcohol it’s recommended that you re-lubricate the motor bearings with oil before you put them back into service.
Good luck, remember that cleanliness is next to godliness and can be the difference between flying again vs having to replace electrical components.
Let us know what you find, we can get you any replacement parts that you need and if you’d be interested in writing a blog post about the procedure to fix your QQ190, will work with you through every step of the process to get flying again.