Hi,
I recently bought a second hand Spark. It flew beautifully until my 4 year old son pushed a button causing it unexpectedly to try to autoland, I panicked, it hit a tree and fell to the ground from about 5 metres!
There was no obvious physical damage apart from a couple of cracked propellers which I replaced.
However, I now have a number of problems with it.
The obstacle avoidance is continuously detecting phantom obstacles. This seems to happen in bright sun but happens irrespective of what direction it's pointing and continuously. It will refuse to fly forward unless OA is disabled. The problem goes away in the evening when overcast so brightness seems to be a factor.
The other problem is the compass. The interference bar on the app is up and down from yellow to green continuously with the drone stationary in the middle of the garden far from any metal, electrical items etc. Calibrating the compass fails every time. In flight I get warnings about compass problems and I've noticed the yaw tends to slowly drift.
Reading around the forums it seems the compass and front facing sensors are on the same board. I've taken the lid off, removed the front sensor board and reseated the connectors but no improvement. I've calibrated the IMU, done a factory reset, reloaded the firmware, removed the SD card. None of this has helped. I've not degaussed the compass but I've no reason to believe it's been exposed to strong magnets and this wouldn't explain the OA problem.
It all seems to point to the front sensor board, I can get a replacement from China for £15 but it's over a month for delivery. Is there anything I've overlooked before I order one?
Many thanks,
Tim
I recently bought a second hand Spark. It flew beautifully until my 4 year old son pushed a button causing it unexpectedly to try to autoland, I panicked, it hit a tree and fell to the ground from about 5 metres!
There was no obvious physical damage apart from a couple of cracked propellers which I replaced.
However, I now have a number of problems with it.
The obstacle avoidance is continuously detecting phantom obstacles. This seems to happen in bright sun but happens irrespective of what direction it's pointing and continuously. It will refuse to fly forward unless OA is disabled. The problem goes away in the evening when overcast so brightness seems to be a factor.
The other problem is the compass. The interference bar on the app is up and down from yellow to green continuously with the drone stationary in the middle of the garden far from any metal, electrical items etc. Calibrating the compass fails every time. In flight I get warnings about compass problems and I've noticed the yaw tends to slowly drift.
Reading around the forums it seems the compass and front facing sensors are on the same board. I've taken the lid off, removed the front sensor board and reseated the connectors but no improvement. I've calibrated the IMU, done a factory reset, reloaded the firmware, removed the SD card. None of this has helped. I've not degaussed the compass but I've no reason to believe it's been exposed to strong magnets and this wouldn't explain the OA problem.
It all seems to point to the front sensor board, I can get a replacement from China for £15 but it's over a month for delivery. Is there anything I've overlooked before I order one?
Many thanks,
Tim
