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Gimbal obstructed
1751 7 2017-5-7
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Ant11223
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United States
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Hi everyone

My name is Anthony and I've been an avid drone pilot and builder for about 5 years. Since September I've been saving up for a Mavic Pro and on May 6th, I finally got to place an order and received my Mavic the next day. (Just a brief intro)

The problem:
First before everything, I updated my Mavic to the latest firmware. I made my first flight indoors since it was late and it was too dark to fly outside. I had a good size area to just take off and hover and move forwards and backwards. The Mavic was in ATTI mode so there were no downward sensors working at the moment so I knew I had to compensate for he drift on my own. The Mavic was only a meter off the ground, moving slowly forward, when it started to slowly drift to the right, I compensated by rolling left but the Mavic completely ingnored my stick inputs and kept going into the wall. I banked left completly but it ignored my input for about a second then it flew completely left into another wall. I performed an emergency shutdown by pulling both sticks together. I inspected the Mavic and found no physical damage. I turned it off and back on again and I got the "gimbal obstructed" error but there was nothing there jamming the gimbal. After looking all over the internet for a fix, but found nothing. These are the troubleshoots I took:

1) downgrading
2) upgrading
3) turning the Mavic on its side and upside
4) calibrating the vision positioning system
5) fresh battery
6) checking to make sure the tabs are in place, they are

I haven't found any solution but I have noticed something interesting, I can still see a camera feed perfectly fine on the app, but looking at the gimbal initiation, I noticed the camera only moves up and down (pitch) and doesn't roll or yaw. I'll post a video of what I mean below. If anyone knows anything, please help me out.
https://youtu.be/KaXLKc2HWyw
2017-5-7
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Mcflying
Second Officer
Flight distance : 243753 ft
Netherlands
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Hi Anthony,

I started reading your post.
My name is Anthony and I've been an avid drone pilot and builder for etcetc. I made my first flight indoors since it was late,........
and the only thing i was thinking NOOOOOOOOOOO,........Never fly indoors, it kills gimbals!!
And the rest is history.

The gimbal is a delicate thing on the Mavic sorry but my judgement is that it needs to be repaired.
2017-5-7
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DJI Mindy
Administrator
Flight distance : 7 ft
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Just as mentioned above, I would suggest you to send it in for further evaluation.
2017-5-9
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MickRennie
lvl.1
United Kingdom
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Hi Anthony,

I had exactly the same issue. As advised by the DJI online support team I sent it in for repair nearly 2 weeks ago,  but they have still not finished assessing it! They are not the quickest or the best at keeping you updated, as we already know.

Fingers crossed I get it back soon, I need it for a holiday in August.
2017-5-9
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DroneFlying
Captain
Flight distance : 10774613 ft
United States
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Have you tried calibrating the gimbal? That's one thing you didn't include in your list, so I'm guessing not and it may be worth a try before sending it anywhere.

And for that matter, have you tried flying it (outdoors) to see if the gimbal works correctly while in flight? I'd suggest trying that before sending it back to DJI, as you're likely to be waiting a month to get it back and with or without Care Refresh you're going to be spending some money. And speaking of which, do you have Care Refresh? Because that can make a big difference in how large a bill you get from DJI.

If something is broken and you don't have Care Refresh then another option is Thunder Drones. I haven't had the need / opportunity to do business with them myself, but they're reputable, likely to get your Mavic back faster, and may do get it back to you at a better price. If nothing else, you should contact them and provide all the information requested and you can probably get a ballpark figure for how much a repair would cost.
2017-5-9
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fans37904417
lvl.3
Flight distance : 1113484 ft
United States
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Most likely the ribbon cable was damaged during the crash. There are two cable assemblies in the gimbal. The ribbon cable handles all signals controlling the motion of the gimbal. The metallic stranded LVDS cables handles the video.

I've heard if you send it back to DJI they will most likely just replace the whole gimbal assembly at close to $400. This would likely take 3 weeks for repair.

You can have a repair facility like Thunderdrones or Fix-a-crash repair it and it'll run around $40 for the cable and $100 in labor. These options usually are able to turn around the repair much quicker.

2017-5-9
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Ant11223
New
United States
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I appreciate the amount of responses I have gotten, I have tried to troubleshoot other ways such as a gimbal calibration but it always fails at 5%.
I've sent the mavic already and it will get delivered today. It frustrating a worrying and i hope DJI finds the actual issue. If I know for certain it was a pilot error then I will take full responsibility, however, in this case i had no control of my Mavic since it did not respond to my controls and therefore crashed. It was it's first flight, didn't last more than 45 seconds. Really hope it falls under warranty.
2017-5-15
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Ruben Torres
New

Dominican Republic
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The gimbal on my mavic pro was making weird clicks on start up, and would show the gimbal obstructed error. I noticed how it moved on start up and realized that the ribbon was getting stuck on one of the plate corner, so I fixed it to camera in a way to prevent it from getting stuck, problem solved!
2018-5-14
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