Dear DJI,

Can you please consider adding Advanced Vission Settings to the Spark, such as those found on the Mavic Pro?

I'd like the option to disable Smart Landing, where the aircraft descends at 0.3m/s. Currently - if the visual sensor fails, for whatever reason, the aircraft becomes locked in the 'Automatic Landing' mode and there is no way to override this. In this circumstance, the aircraft is stranded at altitude until the battery drains, where it will then fall to the ground.

There needs to be a way for a pilot to manually override these Smart Landing settings in flight and fly the aircraft home in such scenarios.

Now it doesn't have the button for Smart Landing at present. We suggest landing the drone by manual for this case.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-7-26 03:28
Now it doesn't have the button for Smart Landing at present. We suggest landing the drone by manual for this case.

"We suggest landing the drone manually"

Thor - if you had read my post, you'll understand that the pilot cannot land the drone manually.

That is the whole point of my post here. Once the VPS fails, and Spark enters Automatic Landing Mode, it cannot be cancelled - and will likely hover in a slow descent and drop to the ground when the battery runs out.

With the current firmware, if Spark enters a fog patch or cloud, the VPS fails and the drone is stranded in mid air until it runs out of battery. If the drone then falls from the sky causing serious injury, presumably DJI will be held accountable (given that the pilot has no control over the drone in these circumstances).

Perhaps DJI could only trigger Automatic Landing mode with constant full stick down and when within 0.3m of the ground. That way, the system can be cancelled by releasing full stick down, giving back control to the pilot.

Thank you for your consideration.

MachTwo Posted at 2017-8-9 10:51
"We suggest landing the drone manually"

Thor - if you had read my post, you'll understand that the pilot cannot land the drone manually.

i come to learn that DJi basically wont do really anything we want.. nor do they seem to understand on front end what we mean.  landing protection is vital especially in less than ideal conditions like fog, clouds or sometimes erratic changes in environment like flying in rugged mountains.   i flown my spark in a light morning fog while it didn't trigger auto landing it im sure it was very close.   i was 100 feet up and it suddenly detected the ground as being 5 feet down, VPS was activated.  then it suddenly cleared..

i will put my money on the spark 2 will be a hardware clone of spark1, which these features turned on...since they exist in firmware already...    even if this feature is available in the modded dji go 4 app, and all it does is fix broke identifiers and flips a toggle on and apparently works.. i can't confirm it.   i haven't flown my spark in a cloud yet with modded app running to test it, but, some clouds coming in a couple days and i'm feeling lucky and edgy..  i will fly my spark into them, my friend has a fairly large field and no aircraft fly below 10,000 AGL.  i just hope they aren't storm clouds and are just...clouds..

MachTwo Posted at 2017-8-9 10:51
"We suggest landing the drone manually"

Thor - if you had read my post, you'll understand that the pilot cannot land the drone manually.

Could you please sync your flight record first so I can check more about this.
Because according to your description, the drone enters Auto Landing Mode when VPS fails, the drone can not be used at night.

Yes the data is synced - the flight in question is Jul 26th, 2017 07:44AM.

Does the drone store flight logs (blackbox) - or are these only stored for the previous flight?

An easy way to reproduce the issue is to fly the Spark into fog/cloud.

LOL  its like DJi doesn't even understand their own aircraft.     today i was flying and i guess a bee or something landed on my VPS and my spark entered landing mode, i couldn't cancel it..  it was out like 2,200+ feet away and tried to land behind some houses or trees where my signal was RIP, luckily for me watever covered my sensor flew away and it suddenly exited auto landing mode.. and just in time, my signal was beginning to die.   other day i was flying in some rain, i know DJi will say dont do it that, obviously..  but i did and VPS was triggered, luckily it thought i was too far away to land being it was flickering between 20 and 30 feet on VPS thing showing distance below..  again, should be some extra protection against it if it did..  even if its common sense logic type stuff like going 30 mph and 200 feet up and suddenly ur half a foot off the ground doing 30, should be common sense logic engineered into it..

i mean i can trigger landing mode flying over trees too close as well..  we have nasty hornets or wasps live not far off from where i fly, they sometimes land on my spark on the battery pack..  they sometimes go nuts and attack my spark and its like open air blender, and when that happens i get hornet or wasp guts all over my spark the 3D obstacle avoidance sensors get triggered as well, that's annoying its also annoying when wasps crawl under my spark and cover the vps and it lands..

Keep in mind that you can go full trottle up and change direction in automatic landing mode to find a better place to land.
And like the manual says don't fly in extreme weather like fog, rain ,snow and wind > 10 m/s

Interesting #1 post, not very good for users heartbeat...

Jos A Posted at 2018-6-6 22:57
Keep in mind that you can go full trottle up and change direction in automatic landing mode to find a better place to land.
And like the manual says don't fly in extreme weather like fog, rain ,snow and wind > 10 m/s

Hmm... Jos A says that you can override auto landing by going up and changing directions. Which means that you can control Spark manually in Automatic Landing mode with VPS disabled.  
MatchTwo complains that you cannot.

Which statement is true?
I never tried it since my VPS was always functioning well while autolanding and I always could use manual controls to change the hight or the direction while auto-landing. It saved me few times.

I don't know about disabled VPS autolanding but the information given in this thread is inconsistent.

On top of that DJI support seem not to understand simple question asked in plain English :-).

So which one is it - can you manually override autolanding when VPS is disabled or you can't?

I recommend to switch all the above OFF for a perfect landing even though you may loose GPS signal.