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Controls lost during low battery warning

Goose

Active Member
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May 29, 2017
Messages
39
Loc
Sydney
Had my first white knuckle excitement today. Decided to have another crack at flying with just the phone (iP7). It behaved much better than the first time, with only the occasional bit of control lag, and full video signal the whole time.

However, I was up at about 30/40m and the battery warning started. So I attempted to bring her down. But suddenly - no controls. It just sat up there. After another minute or so it went into the auto RTH mode and just started descending... on to the roof. I was able to get it to stop the landing before it went into a gutter, but that was all I could communicate with it. No other controls whatsoever. It eventually ran out of battery and dropped the final 30cms perched across the gutter motors off.

I'm done with the phone control. I'm sticking to the remote with the OTG cable.

Given this thing is aimed at "the average joe" consumer for "selfie fun" - it's really not ready for market as it stands. As far as I can tell, everyone on this forum has either had drones before or has an interest in technology and therefore has a chance to problem solve this stuff. The average punter who just wants to do what DJI shows in their sales videos doesn't stand a chance.

Anyway, I'm finding it fun and the video and photo quality is perfectly fine for my use - when paired with the RC unit...

How about you guys, any exciting close calls to share?
 
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Reactions: Dronason and Glen e
Can only agree to you conclusion. Using phone for real time control over wifi is very dependent on the surrounding and cannot be reliable for the duration of flight, there will be lag and glitch.
Remote control is a must and gesture is useless if it can take only low resolution picture and no video.
But it remains a nice compact drone you can have always with you (in comparison with a Phantom).
 
But it remains a nice compact drone you can have always with you (in comparison with a Phantom).

Yeah, that's definitely its key selling point. Even in comparison to the Mavic, people don't seem to be at all perturbed by it due to its toy-like size.
 
Yes, flying the Spark with just w/o a RC is not a pleasant experience. One thing I will note, I was bored the other evening and watched a bunch of the DJI Spark promo videos. I would probably guess that 90% of those videos depict the Spark being flown within 50 meters of the pilot/subject matter.
 
It was. And just after it triggered, it lost directional control. Everything else worked (rec start/stop etc), but no axis input responses.
I think when Spark has a loss of signal, it waits 60sec to reconnect before initiating RTH. If it is a certain distance from the home point, it will fly to the home point and land. If it is low on power, it will just land. Could you have been in one of those situations?
I fly with iOS wifi, but one advatanage of the controller is the increased range over iOS or android. That should result in fewer loss of signal situations. I don't understand how the record button could still function.
 

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