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- Nov 3, 2017
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Hi All - I'm well into this on the DJI forum/support, but figured I'd post here too as a heads up of something to watch out for, and/or to give those who enjoy troubleshooting something to chew on 
Just got back from my first trip with the new-ish Spark, and ran into some issues flying in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
The scariest issue was when she was well within range (flying almost directly overhead at 50-ish ft altitude), then started a rapid/uncommanded climb through about 82 ft. I was pushing full down on the left stick during most of this climb, had connection, GPS, and live video feed (was watching the altitude climb in real time throughout), but it did not respond to any stick movements whatsoever. At 82 ft, I hit RTH out of desperation, and thankfully, she responded as expected thereafter - climbing to assigned RTH altitude and landing normally. (climb begins at about 2:53, RTH pressed about 3:05).
.DAT here:
Dropbox - 2017-12-09 18_10_29-0BMCE67001003T.dat
Log viewer here:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
Granted, I knew from flying closer to our resort earlier that day that interference in this area was absolutely savage. We had walked down the beach to this location (about 500 yards from our resort in the hopes it would be better - this location was inbetween resorts, and much further out on the water (end of pier w/no electronics on it save for our phones). Still encountered a couple of split second disconnects with go 4 citing interference as the issue, but drone always returned to hover as expected, and controller reconnected immediately without a problem.
Obviously, the scary part is that is was climbing all on its own - while fully connected to the RC, but ignoring the RC's commands. Disconnects due to interference I can understand, but not responding while connected, and ESPECIALLY not simply returning to hover when it decides to either disconnect or ignore RC commands is unacceptable. All I could think of was 'what if that thing had only been 5 ft off the ground and decided to fly forward/backward/sideways on its own instead of straight up...?'. So, we went ALL the way out on the pier to get as far away from anyone else (only 2 other people on the beach at the time) as we could and tried again with a different battery. This time the flight went perfectly for 12 minutes, but as I was certainly not going to risk ruining anyone else's vacation by flying a rogue drone into their head, Sparky was grounded for the rest of the trip unless we were in a relatively secluded/unpopulated area like this one.
In case it helps, the issues we were experiencing earlier when closer to the resort were mainly failure to maintain altitude problems, but nothing as pronounced/uncontrollable as this. Instead of hovering after takeoff, it would move up and down by itself about 18 inches repeatedly. Touch the sticks, it'd stop doing it/respond appropriately, but let let them go again and it was back to the 18 inch up and down thing. It did this both near our resort AND when we tried it again latter in the week when were out on a private island quite far away from any possible interference/people (I can upload those logs too if they'd help, but didn't want any confusion with the original/most serious issue).
So....thoughts? Can interference be strong enough to send phantom (no pun intended) signals to our drones such that they believe those signals are coming from the controller itself, or does my Spark have deeper issues?
Original DJI forum thread URL in case you'd like to see the comments so far:
Spark does the DR - scary issues...
Just got back from my first trip with the new-ish Spark, and ran into some issues flying in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.
The scariest issue was when she was well within range (flying almost directly overhead at 50-ish ft altitude), then started a rapid/uncommanded climb through about 82 ft. I was pushing full down on the left stick during most of this climb, had connection, GPS, and live video feed (was watching the altitude climb in real time throughout), but it did not respond to any stick movements whatsoever. At 82 ft, I hit RTH out of desperation, and thankfully, she responded as expected thereafter - climbing to assigned RTH altitude and landing normally. (climb begins at about 2:53, RTH pressed about 3:05).
.DAT here:
Dropbox - 2017-12-09 18_10_29-0BMCE67001003T.dat
Log viewer here:
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
Granted, I knew from flying closer to our resort earlier that day that interference in this area was absolutely savage. We had walked down the beach to this location (about 500 yards from our resort in the hopes it would be better - this location was inbetween resorts, and much further out on the water (end of pier w/no electronics on it save for our phones). Still encountered a couple of split second disconnects with go 4 citing interference as the issue, but drone always returned to hover as expected, and controller reconnected immediately without a problem.
Obviously, the scary part is that is was climbing all on its own - while fully connected to the RC, but ignoring the RC's commands. Disconnects due to interference I can understand, but not responding while connected, and ESPECIALLY not simply returning to hover when it decides to either disconnect or ignore RC commands is unacceptable. All I could think of was 'what if that thing had only been 5 ft off the ground and decided to fly forward/backward/sideways on its own instead of straight up...?'. So, we went ALL the way out on the pier to get as far away from anyone else (only 2 other people on the beach at the time) as we could and tried again with a different battery. This time the flight went perfectly for 12 minutes, but as I was certainly not going to risk ruining anyone else's vacation by flying a rogue drone into their head, Sparky was grounded for the rest of the trip unless we were in a relatively secluded/unpopulated area like this one.
In case it helps, the issues we were experiencing earlier when closer to the resort were mainly failure to maintain altitude problems, but nothing as pronounced/uncontrollable as this. Instead of hovering after takeoff, it would move up and down by itself about 18 inches repeatedly. Touch the sticks, it'd stop doing it/respond appropriately, but let let them go again and it was back to the 18 inch up and down thing. It did this both near our resort AND when we tried it again latter in the week when were out on a private island quite far away from any possible interference/people (I can upload those logs too if they'd help, but didn't want any confusion with the original/most serious issue).
So....thoughts? Can interference be strong enough to send phantom (no pun intended) signals to our drones such that they believe those signals are coming from the controller itself, or does my Spark have deeper issues?
Original DJI forum thread URL in case you'd like to see the comments so far:
Spark does the DR - scary issues...
