Lost Spark - no video footage to help locate

[rearback]

2 days ago i lost my Spark after the battery died. I was racing to make it back but i didnt and drone went into forced landing.
I cant seem to find exact co ordinates to put into a google search and not sure how to view video footage on my android tablet of
its dying moments. If any were saved.
There was definitely some map error as i could not zoom in on my location.
I have downloaded then uploaded to phantom help then pasted link below.
log file .txt of flight in question
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Irresponsible flying got me into this.
No excuses

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

So this would be down to the last visual sighting you had, and the predominant wind direction and speed from that last sighting. Other than that, not sure you can get much out of that log. Perhaps some other expert here will chime in. Were you in an urban or country setting?

As for the video, go to the Editor tab of DJIGo4, then choose Album at the top, then if you have a cached video, it will be in there. Good luck!

 

[rearback]

thanks Northwood Mediaworks . The imagery was quite clear on DJI go MOD app on my android tablet.

Craft did not lose signal until literally last second.

I was positioned on the road with an 8m -10m embankment dropping off either side. Craft was busy with an emergency descend of sorts, had to drop just over 800 ft with 18% batt.
Wind was high but drop speed was quick, at a guess 6MPS . Althou a fast descend usually cuts through any high velocity issues for me, on this day the earth leapt up very quickly and next thing the angle of the road from where i was now obscured direct line of sight with craft.
And so right then- signal to Spark was lost.
Last i saw it looked to be gently touching down , although at an angle it was not a crash, a distant farm house was quite clear in shot.
I cant get at that footage now.
It may not have been recording to android cache but i cant tell. I should know the settings but on this occasion i do not know exactly what DJIGOMOD settings were active
I thought sparkpilots web would have wizards here who could quick stix be able to tell if you can or cannot get footage or any help on this [these] flight record
Thank you fellow pilot for checking it out though

 

[rearback]

thank you for checking my 1st post out Northwood

 

[nilanjan118]

2 days ago i lost my Spark after the battery died. I was racing to make it back but i didnt and drone went into forced landing.
I cant seem to find exact co ordinates to put into a google search and not sure how to view video footage on my android tablet of
its dying moments. If any were saved.
There was definitely some map error as i could not zoom in on my location.
I have downloaded then uploaded to phantom help then pasted link below.
log file .txt of flight in question
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Irresponsible flying got me into this.
No excuses

Hello there. I am no expert here but here's my take on your situation.

Firstly, let me tell you that I always use airdata.com to manage my flight logs.
It has a much better user interface than DJI Flight Log Viewer.
I tried uploading your flight log there and here's what I got.

If you go to the "Notifications" tab, you can clearly see that your GPS signal was weak and you were flying in Atti-mode most of the time. Hence, no coordinates available and no map display.
Don't think this log will be of much use to help locate your drone.

 

[Andre Levite]

Sorry to hear of your loss. Don't give up looking!!

We all "push the envelope once" in a while. Thanks for sharing your cautionary tale

 

[Northwood Mediaworks]

Ya, I would keep looking, if you can tell it touched down gently, even better.

 

[rearback]

thank you for your encouraging words.

 

[rearback]

while walking and looking and searching and thinking i keep wondering if the last image i had of the Spark on the tablets screen was of it settling/ landing with the lense semi cocked to one side [farm house in the background]. Coupled with a very abrupt loss of signal at that moment: is it not possible the Spark had actually landed *** first and softly into one of the small water pools below. Wouldnt that explain abrupt signal loss even if water wasnt evident on the android screen at the moment it landed. Dont know if Spark would transmit images if the battery end of the craft had to be submerged 1st.

Anyhow its killing me not having the little guy and i am considering buying a refurb to replace it and then attempt search and rescue on Spark 1. And get on with my life

 

[Andesclimb]

Hi, I experienced something similar a few weeks ago. The battery % indicator on the screen stopped at 57%. I thought I had enough to safely return, and it fell suddenly from the sky. I searched for almost 15 minutes, because I had it seems bad gps signal and could not exactly get the location. Suddenly I saw that with the "where is my drone", there is an option where you can make your drone beep! It was windy, and without any real hopes I tried it, and heard a very far bip bip, and there it was, in a small wood, stucked between branches!!
I still had thought about my very last possibility if I did not have so much luck: time ago, I put some small reflectant stickers on my Spark, so you can search at night with a headlamp or your car lights or whatever...
Hope that you find your drone!, good luck from Patagonia, southern Chile
Jan

 

[BudWalker]

2 days ago i lost my Spark after the battery died. I was racing to make it back but i didnt and drone went into forced landing.
I cant seem to find exact co ordinates to put into a google search and not sure how to view video footage on my android tablet of
its dying moments. If any were saved.
There was definitely some map error as i could not zoom in on my location.
I have downloaded then uploaded to phantom help then pasted link below.
log file .txt of flight in question
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Irresponsible flying got me into this.
No excuses

There will probably be geo coordinates in the .DAT file that exists on the device running DJI Go app. Look here to see how to retrieve that .DAT file. Then upload to a public sharing site like Dropbox and post a link to the uploaded .DAT

 

[MySpark53]

When opened in a spreadsheet, the csv file downloaded from Phantom help, shows no lat / long entries throughout the flight.




The last 10 seconds have some altitude data including x,y,z axis speeds. Looks like a soft drop.


The visual positioning system (Vps) says only a couple of feet above the ground.

 

[BudWalker]

When opened in a spreadsheet, the csv file downloaded from Phantom help, shows no lat / long entries throughout the flight.
View attachment 7914

View attachment 7912

The last 10 seconds have some altitude data including x,y,z axis speeds. Looks like a soft drop.
View attachment 7916

The visual positioning system (Vps) says only a couple of feet above the ground.
View attachment 7917

The .DAT file recorded on the DGI Go App device is different from the .txt file. The .DAT will almost certainly have GPS data. The reason is that the lat/long data recorded in the .txt is not actually GPS data. It's the result of the FC combining GPS, IMU, and magnetometer data. The .DAT will have the raw GPS data.

 

[BudWalker]

@rearback the .DAT file that you want will have a name that ends with "FLY044.DAT"

 

[MySpark53]

The verbose csv file from PhantomHelp has some GPSapp data. It says you are flying in South Africa, near St. Francis Bay at
-34.138315 24.809965

 

[MySpark53]

The verbose csv says you are working on an Android device when flying the Spark.
The *.DAT files (referred to by 'BudWalker' )on my Android device are a subfolder (MCDatFlightRecords) in the FlightRecord folder of the DJI folder group.

 

[BudWalker]

The verbose csv file from PhantomHelp has some GPSView attachment 7918app data. It says you are flying in South Africa, near St. Francis Bay at
-34.138315 24.809965

I believe those coordinates are referring to the APP.GPS. I.e., the location of the device running the DJI Go App. The raw GPS data in the .DAT should have the Spark's last position.

 

[MySpark53]

I believe those coordinates are referring to the APP.GPS. I.e., the location of the device running the DJI Go App.

yep.....

 

[MySpark53]

The raw GPS data in the .DAT

I tried to create kml files for Google Earth and csv files for spreadsheets with several 'DAT' files from my Spark flight records
(using DatCon to convert DAT to either csv or kml)

but
the approach did not produce Google Earth drone paths from the kml and the DatCom csv did not produce spreadsheet columns containing GPS data.

However, the corresponding FlightRecord 'text' files:
do produce Google Earth path traces with PhantomHelp website uploads
and
the csv in the spreadsheet has GPS data.

 

[Discmanxxx]

Hi, I experienced something similar a few weeks ago. The battery % indicator on the screen stopped at 57%. I thought I had enough to safely return, and it fell suddenly from the sky. I searched for almost 15 minutes, because I had it seems bad gps signal and could not exactly get the location. Suddenly I saw that with the "where is my drone", there is an option where you can make your drone beep! It was windy, and without any real hopes I tried it, and heard a very far bip bip, and there it was, in a small wood, stucked between branches!!
I still had thought about my very last possibility if I did not have so much luck: time ago, I put some small reflectant stickers on my Spark, so you can search at night with a headlamp or your car lights or whatever...
Hope that you find your drone!, good luck from Patagonia, southern Chile
Jan

That's some good info ,I'll be picking up some reflective tape tomarrow.