Bye bye Sparkie!

[madant68]

Same thing happened to me last December: sudden disconnection. I found it, though, in perfect shape... without the battery! A mystery. Since then I pay special attention the battery clicks into place correctly and never lose sight of the wifi signal strength. I fact, I've never been able to fly farther than 600 m.

You can buy on eBay a battery fastener which stops the battery from falling off

 

[stuartforrest]

We got our new spark replaced by DJI when it did the same on its second flight. GPS and hovering overhead then suddenly disconnected and f**cked off! We send the logs and got a new one.

 

[AlanMS]

Lol, sounds familiar I hope DJI are kind enough to replace mine

 

[Sparksupersonic]

I think the main differences between Atti and GPS when flying manually are drift due to wind and braking distances. So in Atti you have to be more cautious to avoid obstacles. Correct me if i'm wrong.

That’s what I’ve understood as far as the flying itself goes. What I’m uncertain of is what is available to use on the remote besides the controls if anything, video feed on your screen? Small directional map in the corner? I assume the map in the corner wouldn’t be on or updating and be useless as it wouldn’t be using gps to know needed info for that display.

 

[Davebrmc]

Well it just happened, and seems it was progressively getting worse. Was out flying today when for no reason it went into atti mode even though the app said it had a GPS lock and was green. Thought best to fly it back low as it just didnt feel right and then she took off at speed, managed to get it down but would not even hover, GPS lock still green, got multiple errors for compass and yaw errors.

Got onto DJI and they requested to re-flash the firmware and re-set the RC, then calibrate the compass, everything went smoothly doing these, DJI said give a a go now, put her in the air and same thing, less than a minute into flight and compass errors and back to atti mode. DJI took a look at the logs and confirmed everything I said including having GPS locked in.

DJI said it needs to be returned to the factory to be assessed, bugger, will be out of the air for quite some time me thinks.

 

[AlanMS]

Hello Dave,
Thanks for the post, it seems to be a very common problem. I am glad you were able to get it back home safely. I hope the flight withdrawals aren't too bad whilst they sort it out at DJI. It does give me some hope that my bad experience might have a happier ending though...

 

[ExcitingHeadgear]

The Spark is becoming very famous for it's GPS unit failures . It indicates " Weak GPS " but it really means that the GPS is somehow sending bad data to the IMU. Unfortunately DJI doesn't want to admit that it's selling a product that's faulty.

For what it's worth I started getting the Weak GPS message on my Phantom 3 Advanced as well, no rhyme or reason for it. It flew a couple years just fine with no crashes, but whenever I tried to fly it in the last year or so I'd often get strange errors like that.

 

[dalefletcher1]

Hello Dave,
Thanks for the post, it seems to be a very common problem. I am glad you were able to get it back home safely. I hope the flight withdrawals aren't too bad whilst they sort it out at DJI. It does give me some hope that my bad experience might have a happier ending though...

I hope it all works out for you Alan! I would be stressed to no end if this happened to me! Make sure you post the outcome! Good Luck!