Precision Landing almost caused a crash

sparkpilot9000 · Feb 16, 2018

I have 90 flights with my spark for a total of 8 hours many during low-light. Today while performing an automatic return to home, at 30 feet my spark activated precision landing, then at around 16 feet high went full speed in another direction while indicating "looking for precision landing" in another area about 50 feet away. I was able to avoid a crash by quickly intervening with the control sticks. This was at dark (6pm) and has never happened before. According to the flight data I took off and hovered for around 14 seconds before proceeding with my flight. Was the cause of this taking off too fast? I didn't think precision landing worked at night and would not try to work if light was insufficient. I have upload the flight log.

sparkpilot9000 · Feb 16, 2018

Here is a screen shot showing the moment it activated precision landing in another area other than my home point you can see that the aircraft veered away full speed 43ft from the home point with yaw locked in the same direction during the RTH auto-land sequence.

msinger · Feb 16, 2018

sparkpilot9000 said:
Was the cause of this taking off too fast?

Perhaps. But, the issue was most likely caused by poor lighting conditions.

Here's some more information about Precision Landing from the Spark manual:

strobing_nyc · Feb 16, 2018

20% battery you should have landed anyway

ajkm · May 29, 2019

Spark is daytime VFR only...

Buddy411 · May 29, 2019

Machines are stupid. Fly and land manually.

monty.roman · May 30, 2019

this happened to me once when I climbed and took off to the side probably before Spark was able to make a reference picture for precision landing. On returning, the pop up showed up saying "Correcting Aircraft position" and it went for landing in the middle of the road (i flew across it straight after takeoff) so it maybe took the precision landing shot above road when I was already flying sideways.

ChristoffB · May 30, 2019

I don't think DJI's 'fail-safe' measures are always as it should be. I mean, sure, the light was not sufficient for a precision landing, but why then not just pause the landing procedure, or land normally? Surely this is a software error? Same as my spark that came down at full speed when the bottom VPS failed because of fog. Had it just landed at the normal speed I would have been able to avoid a crash...

What I do when my spark's RTH is triggered (normally due to low battery), I keep my finger on the pause button in case it goes rogue, as soon as it is within reach, I hit the pause button en bring it down the last 5 or so meters myself, just in case.

monty.roman · May 31, 2019

ChristoffB said:
What I do when my spark's RTH is triggered (normally due to low battery), I keep my finger on the pause button in case it goes rogue, as soon as it is within reach, I hit the pause button en bring it down the last 5 or so meters myself, just in case.

definitely agree with you - it's better to land it by yourself.

Akuen_527 · May 31, 2019

monty.roman said:
definitely agree with you - it's better to land it by yourself.

Pilot the craft manually, rely on return to home only in actual emergency situations. And as msinger posted in low light conditions you were already asking for trouble.