Welcome DJI Spark Pilot!
Jump in and join our free Spark community today!
Sign up

Anyone Else?

Bubbles!!!

Well-Known Member
Join
Jun 13, 2017
Messages
249
Age
25
Haven't seen this in a thread yet (but I haven't read them all).
I was flying, on a not fully charged battery, it'd been a while so they had discharged automatically to about 3/4 full. Decided to go take pics of my roof (installing a new one soon) and didn't feel like charging them.
First battery, no issues, used OTG, everything was perfect.
Didn't turn off the remote, just the drone. Second battery (closer to half than 3/4 full) is where the issues began. I took off, fended off my dog from eating it, then I noticed the app said GPS was good, plenty of signal, but the small white indicators on the right has both zero'd out. Said I had 4.8, but nothing. Having read some fly-away stories I decided I'd better land before it ended up in my neighbors long hair... (I still had distance, home point, everything else there)
Landed no issues, turned it off, turned remote off, decided to not use OTG since it might be the bug, phone is in Airplane mode, turned on only WiFi, connected everything up, flew up again no issues yet.
It was as I was finishing my circle around my house that it said aircraft disconnected in the status bar, I still had complete control though so I started back, and then lost all control about 20ft away. I could move the sticks, but it wouldn't do Anything... It then pulsed a tiny bit, letting me move it a tiny bit then it'd stop again.
5 seconds later the emergency landing warning came on (so it still had enough connection to tell me that....)
It then came down to 2ft above the roof of my house, I went closer (15ft or less away) antennas pointed directly towards it) and it didn't move or do anything, even when I told it to land by holding down the left stick.
From there I climbed on the roof, flipped it over to shut it off, then realized I had an audience...
(It recorded the entire thing surprisingly)
 
  • Like
Reactions: dji_lando
...antennas pointed directly towards it...

The Spark doesn't respond to commands well in this antenna configuration. That may explain part of the problem. Check the manual.
 
Did you set RTH to the outdoor location before taking off the last time ?

Seems like an orderly descent to another previously set home point, then the vps kicked in to stop it going onto the roof.

On every battery change I always shut down the RC and DJI Go 4 and open them again to establish a new connection.
I'm not sure if you left the app on when changing from OTG to wi-fi ?
 
Last edited:
Did you set RTH to the outdoor location before taking off the last time ?

Seems like an orderly descent to another previously set home point, then the vps kicked in to stop it going onto the roof.

On every battery change I always shut down the RC and DJI Go 4 and open them again to establish a new connection.
I'm not sure if you left the app on when changing from OTG to wi-fi ?
The RTH was set before I moved it away from the takeoff location. Also the entire decent (until the point it became critically low) was manual input from me, after that, only the attempt to get it off the roof went through with a small connection.
And the app was reset along with the remote and aircraft for changing from OTG to WiFi.
Seems like the aircraft just didn't like something that day xD I'll fly it again today, same location, and see if anything is different (fully charged batteries)
 
Although antenna orientation will affect range, that short distance wouldn't make any difference, they'd work fine unless folded up. It's more likely you were getting interference from something nearby. Spark making a bad choice of wifi channel, or bluetooth interference. (the spark will usually warn you on the phone if that's happening) It doesn't have to be YOU that's creating the interference. I tried to demo my Spark recently for a group and could NOT get it to take off. Realized everyone had their cell phone with them. Once they all turned off bluetooth I had control back. Strangely I did NOT get a warning on my phone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Bubbles!!!

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
14,600
Messages
118,816
Members
18,012
Latest member
NoeFolk502