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Dji Spark took off and now is lost

Remnants of the "YAW Error, compass error and other error "bundle".
Just commonly referred to as the YAW Error.
Spark starts getting this error for no particular reason.
Yet few have posted too much wild wind is the cause.
YAW Error leads to a compass error since they work hand in hand and spawn even more errors till the Spark just gives up.
had that happen to me in Switzerland .... tons of yaw errors in the flight record,
I got lucky and it crashed nearby (instead of the river), to where I could barely retrieve it .... with just 1 broken prop. The wind was less 10mph ... and like your bird, it just wildly
flew off .... no control, of course it went into Atti mode at the very beginning. I’ve had no problems back in the US.
 
had that happen to me in Switzerland .... tons of yaw errors in the flight record,
I got lucky and it crashed nearby (instead of the river), to where I could barely retrieve it .... with just 1 broken prop. The wind was less 10mph ... and like your bird, it just wildly
flew off .... no control, of course it went into Atti mode at the very beginning. I’ve had no problems back in the US.

Lucky. Glad you were able to get it back. I'm just in the middle of emailing with DJI. I sent them all my info and they will look at everything and decide what's gonna happen. Hopefully will hear from them soon.
 
Lucky. Glad you were able to get it back. I'm just in the middle of emailing with DJI. I sent them all my info and they will look at everything and decide what's gonna happen. Hopefully will hear from them soon.
Good Luck
 
I was just reading about a similar incident somewhere else, and a wise contributor stated it like this:

the incident occurs when there is a difference in GPS derived velocity and IMU derived velocity

The explanation continued that radical changes in pitch may potentially cause this to happen... and wind can certainly be a player in this respect.

I am very particular about wind speed and wind elevations before I fly. So far, so good. I've had ATTI mode once because of this, I am fairly certain. Apps like UAV Forecast, Windy, can give you a pretty fair assessment of the wind speeds where you will be flying.

Hope your drone turns up or you get a replacement. Its all a learning experience. I've had two fly-aways with a toy class drone. Both could have been prevented if I had prior wisdom!
 
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By the way, you were flying in controlled airspace plus a seaplane base airspace and Muskoka airport airspace. I would strongly recommend you avoid doing so. You could buy two mavic pro 2s for the price of the fine. Look into Airmap or Drone Pilot Canada apps... best protect yourself and the rest of us too. Thanks

 
By the way, you were flying in controlled airspace plus a seaplane base airspace and Muskoka airport airspace. I would strongly recommend you avoid doing so. You could buy two mavic pro 2s for the price of the fine. Look into Airmap or Drone Pilot Canada apps... best protect yourself and the rest of us too. Thanks
I like the UAV forecast app. Is there a guide on how to set it up for optimal flight settings? It's got lots of options. What would be max gust of wind suggested?

I have the AirMap app now. Thanks. When I was taking off the drone said to be cautious but never not allowed me to take off like in some other areas.
 
By the way, you were flying in controlled airspace plus a seaplane base airspace and Muskoka airport airspace. I would strongly recommend you avoid doing so. You could buy two mavic pro 2s for the price of the fine. Look into Airmap or Drone Pilot Canada apps... best protect yourself and the rest of us too. Thanks

Also, since the drone was a gift, if DJI won't be able to help with a replacement unit, I won't be buying a drone any time soon. I canny afford $500+ for one especially if these fly aways happen as often as what I've seen on here and other forums.
 
I wish that DJI would admit there is a problem! I have had the same thing happen to except I was lucky that it reconnected. They always blame it on operator error, which in most cases is a load of BS. This problem has happened many many times to a whole lot of people. There are many who are afraid to fly their spark because they can't afford to lose it. It's a problem with the IMU is my thinking, but DJI won't admit it.
 
I wish that DJI would admit there is a problem! I have had the same thing happen to except I was lucky that it reconnected. They always blame it on operator error, which in most cases is a load of BS. This problem has happened many many times to a whole lot of people. There are many who are afraid to fly their spark because they can't afford to lose it. It's a problem with the IMU is my thinking, but DJI won't admit it.
I just got an email from them. They offered me a free replacement!!! I'm so relieved. I really did not want to spend $500 on another drone. But as you said I will now be paranoid when it comes to flying it again thinking it will randomly just take off. [emoji848]
 
Glad to hear it. If you follow a strict pre flight checklist every time, you can avoid mishaps like you’ve experienced. Please take heed regarding the no fly zones, each time someone gets caught it ends up in the media and we all eventually take the hit. Fly safe. Get your cert too.
 
So, what was the wind direction and speed while you were flying? What is the max distance Spark can fly on 70% battery? What were your settings for RTH, critical battery level? See where I'm going?
 
FWIW, pitch, yaw, and roll combine to describe the direction the craft is facing and in what orientation. It has nothing to do with its elevation or position on the map. GPS signals are all about position and elevation. pitch/yaw/roll are all detected locally by the compass in the craft.

So a "yaw error" probably has nothing to do with the GPS. This sounds like either a compass calibration problem, magnetic interference, or a hardware failure. (could be a software failure too, unless there's fusion hardware in the compass, the software has to take the 9 axis information from the x/y/z compasses and combine them to create an actual compass bearing)

I've read a few people's accounts of being a bit manic (in my opinion) about re-calibrating their compass before every flight, or every time they go to a different location. My personal take on it is you should recalibrate your compass once a year as well as every time you make a significant change in your location. (flying in another city or state for example) But knowing what I do about compass fusion (and it's a bit of a geometry headache to do) I really don't see how it could be getting serious errors from being out of calibration. My calibrations usually only adjust by a few degrees in the x, y, and z axis. The only significant change problem is range errors, and any halfway intelligent fusion code should be able to detect when a sensor has gone out of range and simply adjust the scaling for that sensr to compensate. (all that turning over you do when calibrating the compass is ONLY being done to find the + and - max ranges for the three compasses, the software assumes the exact middle between + and - is the center - which is usually zero) You may lose a dozen degrees of accuracy, but you can still fly on that, and it's infinitely better than just throwing up your hands and saying "I give up! no more readings for you!"

At any rate, you SHOULD have been able to just let go of the sticks and it should have stopped moving. Compass says NOTHING about velocity or elevation - it doesn't matter if the compass readings are totally off the wall if you're not moving. But if RTH has been activated, a bad compass will make it very challenging for your spark to return to you. The compass and GPS will basically get in a fight, and you will probably see the spark start flying in a spiral.

It would be nice if the spark would have a tolerance level for bad compass readings, and at some point during RTH say "ok clearly the compass is not agreeing with the GPS, and the GPS is MUCH more trustworthy, so we're just going to stop listening to the compass for now." It should then be able to, by GPS alone, find its way to within a dozen or so feet of the home point, and set down. Once it's OVER the home point, the compass doesn't matter anymore because nobody cares what direction the quad is facing when it lands. I've read two account of people getting into a location that had magnetic interference and both of them reported the same problem, RTH was driving their spark in circles/spirals, and this is totally what I would expect to see happen. It's like a donkey walking toward a carrot being held out in front of them on a stick. If the rider holds the carrot off a bit to the right, the donkey will continue to turn right a little as they walk, and the path traveled will be a circle. Compass calibration errors cannot generate a straight flight unless the compass has been physically reoriented. AFAIK it's soldered down on the motherboard (or otherwise fixed in position), so that's not possible.

At the end of the day, my first suspicion on fly-away is always going to be "you didn't wait for a new home point to be set before taking off, and after RTH somehow got triggered, it tried to go to the last known home point, which was where you last flew, which may have been miles away from your current location, and to it just took off in that direction" DJI could patch for this - it's not too hard to calculate distance with GPS (yes it varies but the variance is KNOWN and can be adjusted for) so the software really ought to look and say "ok we want to RTH but home is 14 miles from here, there's no way in hell we're going to make it" and take some other course of action. WHAT else to do is of course the pickle, and I suspect is the reason they haven't made that change - I can't imagine what would be a good alternative.... you can't just land.

Inertial guidance maybe? That would be cool to see on a drone. Fighter jets use that for example, but they're using accelerometers and compasses that are SEVERAL orders of magnitude more accurate, and the calibrations they go through are absolutely insane. I don't know if "consumer grade" hardware could pull off inertial guidance good enough to RTH a spark without GPS. The limited flight time and fairly relaxed flights might be enough to make it practical? discuss?

(seguay - the military calibrates its accelerometers by taking them deep underground in a big cave where they BOLT the units onto a chunk of exposed bedrock then everyone leaves the cave and they start calibrations remotely, as the gyroscopes are calibrated by sensing the rotation of the earth - that's pretty hard-core!)

Background on that: the compass is NOT just a compass, and it's NOT just single axis. A proper compass is 9 DOF - 3-axis compass, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis accelerometer. The compass readings are actually taken from the gyroscopes, which are corrected by readings from recently known orientation, which is updated from the acceperometers and being slowly tweaked by the compasses. It's quite a production. Inertial guidance works in a similar way, but lacks the self-correcting input, leading to drift over time. It's perfect when you start, but as you fly it slowly gets less accurate, and the more you flop around the faster it can lose accuracy. Inertial guidance is great because it's always got a position for you, unlike a GPS that updates once per second usually, so a GPS is usually used to keep the inertial guidance accurate the same way the compass keeps the gyro accurate. 15 minutes of mostly-level and slow-turning flight is actually pretty easy to stay on top of, even for consumer-grade sensors. (probably not workable on a racing quad though!)

I wonder if anyone at DJI is reading this?
 
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The sad part of the spark drone taken off is DJI knows about this issue and refuses to take them off the market! They also refuse to fix the problem? I don't no if it is software or why the spark Drones flys off like that but but I guess if they did fix the issue they would not keep make millions off this drone. If you catch my drift? My drone took off about 8 months back and all I got was bull **** from them trying to discourage me from pursuing it any further. But I didn't stop when I'm right I'll push the issue if I'm wrong I just let it go... hope you get some kind of resolution from DJI? Spelling dont count. But give me a thumbs up if you like or a thumbs down? Take care let me no if I can help in any way?
 
On the flight log and "end of the red line" (yellow symbol) is this where the Spark is most likely to be ?????
 
The sad part of the spark drone taken off is DJI knows about this issue and refuses to take them off the market! They also refuse to fix the problem? I don't no if it is software or why the spark Drones flys off like that but but I guess if they did fix the issue they would not keep make millions off this drone. If you catch my drift? My drone took off about 8 months back and all I got was bull **** from them trying to discourage me from pursuing it any further. But I didn't stop when I'm right I'll push the issue if I'm wrong I just let it go... hope you get some kind of resolution from DJI? Spelling dont count. But give me a thumbs up if you like or a thumbs down? Take care let me no if I can help in any way?
Luckily they're replacing the spark for me. So now I'm just waiting for the email to say it's been shipped. But I'll be a lot more paranoid next time I fly. It's good customer service that they did replace it, buy like you said if lots of people have this issue, they need to do something about it. I was in the wide open with no trees, power lines or anything around, and it just took off. Very weird.
 
On the flight log and "end of the red line" (yellow symbol) is this where the Spark is most likely to be ?????
That's what I was thinking too. But then the "find my drone" option in the app pointed that it was much further across the road somewhete in the bushes. I spent few hours looking but no luck. I also know it still had 70% of battery left when it took off so I have a feeling it flew much further than that.
 
FWIW, pitch, yaw, and roll combine to describe the direction the craft is facing and in what orientation. It has nothing to do with its elevation or position on the map. GPS signals are all about position and elevation. pitch/yaw/roll are all detected locally by the compass in the craft.

So a "yaw error" probably has nothing to do with the GPS. This sounds like either a compass calibration problem, magnetic interference, or a hardware failure. (could be a software failure too, unless there's fusion hardware in the compass, the software has to take the 9 axis information from the x/y/z compasses and combine them to create an actual compass bearing)

I've read a few people's accounts of being a bit manic (in my opinion) about re-calibrating their compass before every flight, or every time they go to a different location. My personal take on it is you should recalibrate your compass once a year as well as every time you make a significant change in your location. (flying in another city or state for example) But knowing what I do about compass fusion (and it's a bit of a geometry headache to do) I really don't see how it could be getting serious errors from being out of calibration. My calibrations usually only adjust by a few degrees in the x, y, and z axis. The only significant change problem is range errors, and any halfway intelligent fusion code should be able to detect when a sensor has gone out of range and simply adjust the scaling for that sensr to compensate. (all that turning over you do when calibrating the compass is ONLY being done to find the + and - max ranges for the three compasses, the software assumes the exact middle between + and - is the center - which is usually zero) You may lose a dozen degrees of accuracy, but you can still fly on that, and it's infinitely better than just throwing up your hands and saying "I give up! no more readings for you!"

At any rate, you SHOULD have been able to just let go of the sticks and it should have stopped moving. Compass says NOTHING about velocity or elevation - it doesn't matter if the compass readings are totally off the wall if you're not moving. But if RTH has been activated, a bad compass will make it very challenging for your spark to return to you. The compass and GPS will basically get in a fight, and you will probably see the spark start flying in a spiral.

It would be nice if the spark would have a tolerance level for bad compass readings, and at some point during RTH say "ok clearly the compass is not agreeing with the GPS, and the GPS is MUCH more trustworthy, so we're just going to stop listening to the compass for now." It should then be able to, by GPS alone, find its way to within a dozen or so feet of the home point, and set down. Once it's OVER the home point, the compass doesn't matter anymore because nobody cares what direction the quad is facing when it lands. I've read two account of people getting into a location that had magnetic interference and both of them reported the same problem, RTH was driving their spark in circles/spirals, and this is totally what I would expect to see happen. It's like a donkey walking toward a carrot being held out in front of them on a stick. If the rider holds the carrot off a bit to the right, the donkey will continue to turn right a little as they walk, and the path traveled will be a circle. Compass calibration errors cannot generate a straight flight unless the compass has been physically reoriented. AFAIK it's soldered down on the motherboard (or otherwise fixed in position), so that's not possible.

At the end of the day, my first suspicion on fly-away is always going to be "you didn't wait for a new home point to be set before taking off, and after RTH somehow got triggered, it tried to go to the last known home point, which was where you last flew, which may have been miles away from your current location, and to it just took off in that direction" DJI could patch for this - it's not too hard to calculate distance with GPS (yes it varies but the variance is KNOWN and can be adjusted for) so the software really ought to look and say "ok we want to RTH but home is 14 miles from here, there's no way in hell we're going to make it" and take some other course of action. WHAT else to do is of course the pickle, and I suspect is the reason they haven't made that change - I can't imagine what would be a good alternative.... you can't just land.

Inertial guidance maybe? That would be cool to see on a drone. Fighter jets use that for example, but they're using accelerometers and compasses that are SEVERAL orders of magnitude more accurate, and the calibrations they go through are absolutely insane. I don't know if "consumer grade" hardware could pull off inertial guidance good enough to RTH a spark without GPS. The limited flight time and fairly relaxed flights might be enough to make it practical? discuss?

(seguay - the military calibrates its accelerometers by taking them deep underground in a big cave where they BOLT the units onto a chunk of exposed bedrock then everyone leaves the cave and they start calibrations remotely, as the gyroscopes are calibrated by sensing the rotation of the earth - that's pretty hard-core!)

Background on that: the compass is NOT just a compass, and it's NOT just single axis. A proper compass is 9 DOF - 3-axis compass, 3-axis gyroscope, and 3-axis accelerometer. The compass readings are actually taken from the gyroscopes, which are corrected by readings from recently known orientation, which is updated from the acceperometers and being slowly tweaked by the compasses. It's quite a production. Inertial guidance works in a similar way, but lacks the self-correcting input, leading to drift over time. It's perfect when you start, but as you fly it slowly gets less accurate, and the more you flop around the faster it can lose accuracy. Inertial guidance is great because it's always got a position for you, unlike a GPS that updates once per second usually, so a GPS is usually used to keep the inertial guidance accurate the same way the compass keeps the gyro accurate. 15 minutes of mostly-level and slow-turning flight is actually pretty easy to stay on top of, even for consumer-grade sensors. (probably not workable on a racing quad though!)

I wonder if anyone at DJI is reading this?
You know your stuff!
 
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