Strange Behavior-Pardon the Newb

deeve · Jan 4, 2018

Hello, I have only flown my Spark a few times. Today it was raining, but I wanted to show a friend how stable it was so I flew it inside. I used the RC sticks to start it up. As soon as it took off the drone started moving forward. Even though the left stick was centered, it kept moving almost hitting a wall, even though collision avoidance was on. If I added backward stick it moved back and would not stop again. I spazzed out and tried to turn it off with the control sticks like you would if it was already landed. The drone ended up crashing into the wall and turning itself off...damaging the blades and giving me a gimbal overload warning.

Not knowing why it happened I removed the blades and saw that one of the locking lugs was broken on one pair. Not sure if that was the crash or somehow from before.

Two questions..Any thoughts on what caused the Spark to move forward and backward, but not stop? Also, suppose I have a drone that goes crazy like that, what should I do?

My setup is a Spark with current firmware and full charged battery and RC. iPhone 7 plus connected via wifi inside my house.

I recalibrated the IMU and compass along with replacing all the blades and it seems fine now but I want to know why it happened. I tried to download the data from Assistant 2 on my Macbook but even though I could get it to connect and see the firmware settings, nothing would download. I do not appear to be alone in this problem though and will try some more things on that.

AeroMirage · Jan 4, 2018

In order to fly indoors there needs to be plenty of light for the IR sensors to function. That and the floor needs to be a pattern that it can 'see'. Without GPS, the only things it has to go by are the forward IR and downward sonar sensors.
If you are going to fly indoors, turn up the lights and put on prop guards.

deeve · Jan 4, 2018

Ahhh. Ok. That makes sense. It wasn’t dark in there but it was dim. Ok. I didn’t put guards on because I was “just going to hover”. Famous last words and lesson learned.

Believe it or not I did read the manual cover to cover but I find myself reading on here or watching videos and going back to reread often. There is a lot of info in that book. I figured the Spark, while not cheap, is not Mavic priced and I know I am going to make some mistakes.

Thank you.
Dave

aviscomi · Jan 5, 2018

One other point in regards to flying indoors...your home WIFI network my cause interference. I have 3 separate WIFI routers within my home running various protocols, thus flying my Spark inside my home isn't enjoyable.