After browsing through my flight logs to see what happened when Sparky went in to ATI mode or behaved abnormal, I keept finding this error message.
First of I'm flying in Canada and our restrictions are harsh how ever they have been eased up since the last revision by Transport Canada (as of late June 2017). Dji's restrictions do not reflect these changes btw.
I was flying miles away from any no fly zone, in an wide open space with good GPS lock with no interference. Each flight (all of 8) had sudden GPS loss and or compass errors including a need to calibrate the IMU.
This happened all with the latest firmware and all accessories up to date.
Could there be a bug in the ''no fly zone' part of the software that keeps crashing our drones?
Anyone else with similar experience?

something similar happend to my spark yesterday. i was not far away to a no-fly-zone and spark lost GPS mid-air turning to ATTI mode and drifting away at approx. 21 km/h. there was no chance for me to gain back control over it. I lost it. This is definitely some kind of a bug. This should not happen! I don't understand why it loses GPS in mid-air with no obstacles around it?!

I wouldn't think twice if there was a weak gps signal but 16-19 and a sudden drop for no apparent reason seams odd.
Did you find your spark?

Idk i flew near a no fly zone and while still in the air a pop up came in screen with 2 check boxes i remember the one saying something about accepting full responsibility it was definitely NFZ the spark was fine

This was my situation: from one second to the next it lost GPS signal mid-air: I lost the drone and could not find it. it was drifting away to fast at this altitude. after one minute i lost signal to remote because it was to far away. this has to be a bug!

Ciesnik even in atti mode u couldnt take over and just fly using map or visual sight???

It was drifting away to fast to gain back control over it. here is the picture:

I am used to fly in ATI mode (practicing indoors in a large hall with no gps) how ever experiencing ATI outdoors with a bit of wind even can be quiet challenging. The wind can move her fast enough that your best efforts to drive her back are fruitless.

Practice practice it will def come in handy

according to this screenshot from android device that I used for live preview it flew around 360 meters in 60 seconds when it was drifting away in atti mode...

I don't know why this flight route (after losing GPS) is not shown when playing back the flight record?!

Same happened to me. Open field, definately no no fly zone, no metal , nothing around regarding interfences.on previous thread i reported this to dji. I send all my logs to dji diana. So far haven't received any feedback. Still waiting.

Dji ? I think all the issues regarding spark behaviour have got to do with above. Please  let engineers maybe consider this as priority number one.

Hello. My Spark had too face the purcharge roblems you are reporting. However since i installed the new firmware (i flight 2 times since that) i get zero errors. Have you installed the new firmware? Did you have that problems after that?

i have performed the update just 2 days ago to the latest firmware on all batteries, controller, spark and app. it was the latest firmware.

15 satellites in sight and the next second it loses GPS signal?! this is definitely an issue.

First off warning about NFZ have nothing to do with loosing gps or mag interference. If you want to upload your log to link below I will have a look at them. Just follow instructions and come back here and post link . Might give you a better understanding of what happened.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-29 23:40
15 satellites in sight and the next second it loses GPS signal?! this is definitely an issue.

Although you read 15 sats, if you look at your bar graph which is your true reading, you will see in pic 1 low bars , in 2/3 no bars so no gps.

If you want to upload your logs to link below I will have a look at them. Just click on link and follow instructions, then come back and post link to your upload.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Ok, here is the uploaded flight log:

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/FP73BIFPA00TA7ZFVXO7/

Your drone started to have compass problems and yaw problems at 23s and 3min43s. When this type of error occur , the drone will exit gps mode and go to atti mode. When the drone go to Atti midflight at 100m altitude, wind will blow away it like its nothing.

Did you calibrate drone before flight or just take off?

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-30 02:31
Ok, here is the uploaded flight log:

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/FP73BIFPA00TA7ZFVXO7/

Ok first off a couple of seconds you received compass warning , you would have been best to land at this stage, you were only feet away from homepoint, you could have well picked up this interference from the ground, it's unlikely you picked it up at 17 ft.

So you were flying with bad compass heading, i.e. Not the same heading as gps, at 3.40 your spark went into Atti mode, this is most likely caused by to much magnetic interference and bad compass heading and results in what you see as magnetic yaw, spark gps is designed to quit or give up at this stage your spark goes into Atti mode.

You don't mention what end result of your flight was, did you lose your spark or did you recover. Your flight log ends early, so no way of knowing.

You can avoid this happening with some simple preparation, I will leave link below.


https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... &fromuid=260008

Did you see a compass error warning on dji go app at 23s of flight?

yes, there was a short warning at 23s which disappeared immediately and all was green in the app.
I calibrated the compass the flight before, because the app was asking for it. The DJI instructions say to only calibrate the compass if the app tells you to do so.

The flight recording ends suddenly because I lost signal to the Spark and lost sight as well as it was flying away. I did not recover the Spark - I lost it. There are only to options what might have happend after I lost the signal: 1. Spark went into landing mode. According to the documentation it descends at 3 m/s. As it was 52m high - it needed to approx. 17-18 seconds to reach the ground. At the same time it was drifting away over water. So, most probably it landed on the water. 2. option is: landing was not initiated until certain battery level was reached. This would result in the Spark flying away a few Kilometers until it started to land somewhere. Impossible to track and recover it by feet.

The drone is lost for now. I had a sticker on it with my name and address. Only hope is that someone will find it and contact me. But if it landed on water, then it is gone forever.

It still feels to me that this behaviour should not occur when the app tells you all is good and green and the next second it loses everything and switches gps positioning off. I am not a pro. This is my first drone. I read all documentation and watched several hours of tutorials about drones before flying one. Did my checklist, kept the firmware up-to-date and then something like this happens? This is clearly a bug in my honest opinion.

Spark is considered to be the mass market drone - and one for beginners. But, this behaviour sets me off. Some days ago, I was reading the articles about Spark flying away and that DJI is investigating this issue. Therefore, I was already afraid this might happen to me, too. And yesterday, it did happen to me!  What a disappointment. I totally lost trust in this product.

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-30 05:33
yes, there was a short warning at 23s which disappeared immediately and all was green in the app.
I calibrated the compass the flight before, because the app was asking for it. The DJI instructions say to only calibrate the compass if the app tells you to do so.

It flew away because of bad compass, I don't know about any bug , but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

The difficulty you have is your drone is lost so no way of getting the dat file to see exactly what caused this , but it was bad compass that eventually caused the problem with your spark.

You should now sync your flight to dji cloud, start a case with dji, get a case number and try to contact a moderator here.

I have seen here warranty offered for similar,  but in the two cases I've seen both had their spark and returned to dji, you may be offered 30% discount on account of loosing your spark, unless you find in the meantime. But you never know it's worth putting your case forward and try get mod to help.

I wish you luck and hope something works out for you.

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-30 05:33
yes, there was a short warning at 23s which disappeared immediately and all was green in the app.
I calibrated the compass the flight before, because the app was asking for it. The DJI instructions say to only calibrate the compass if the app tells you to do so.

Just one thing when you see compass error check small triangle on map left hand lower corner, if the heading is different to heading of aircraft then you should land immediately.

I know it doesn't help now, but maybe sometime in the future.

The heading oof the arrow and the Spark was matching fine. I am putting together a video from the cache synced to the flight record playback.
Thanks for the advice so far. How to open a case with DJI? Did not find the option on their website somehow...

Here is the video of the final flight of the Spark:

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-30 06:56
The heading oof the arrow and the Spark was matching fine. I am putting together a video from the cache synced to the flight record playback.
Thanks for the advice so far. How to open a case with DJI? Did not find the option on their website somehow...

support.europe@dji.com

Thanks, I submitted an email to technical support.

Ciesnik sorry for your loss.
I dislike how the NFZ error is being brushed under the table though, it seems to be a common culprit that leads to more trouble when flying.

Could you refer the tutorial video and send us the flight log for analysis? Thank you in advance.

ciesnik Posted at 2017-7-29 21:13
something similar happend to my spark yesterday. i was not far away to a no-fly-zone and spark lost GPS mid-air turning to ATTI mode and drifting away at approx. 21 km/h. there was no chance for me to gain back control over it. I lost it. This is definitely some kind of a bug. This should not happen! I don't understand why it loses GPS in mid-air with no obstacles around it?!

May I have your case number for further follow-up? Please PM me if applicable.

DJI Susan Posted at 2017-8-1 01:46
May I have your case number for further follow-up? Please PM me if applicable.

I sent you a PM with the details..

Something similar happened to me this morning. First flight perfectly normal (I have had well over 100 flights in total), landed, changed battery and took off again and suddenly I started getting yaw error, speed error, compass error and then weak gps, imu heading exception in other words, I got the works! ;-).  It was only about 40m away and 50s into the flight, when the first speed error came up. I still seemed to have some control and started to get my bearings, being at the beach it was possible to see via the video feed which way it was heading and I got it back. Strangely enough, the errors lasted for about 2 minutes and the last 3 minutes of the flight before I got it back there were none, I could land it normally.
I had a chat session with support and the guy told me to refresh the firmware and re-calibrate the compass and IMU. Tested it in my backyard and it behaves ok, however, I really don't think that will fix the issue and I am not at all comfortable to fly again.....

fansb181213c Posted at 2017-10-24 20:27
Something similar happened to me this morning. First flight perfectly normal (I have had well over 100 flights in total), landed, changed battery and took off again and suddenly I started getting yaw error, speed error, compass error and then weak gps, imu heading exception in other words, I got the works! ;-).  It was only about 40m away and 50s into the flight, when the first speed error came up. I still seemed to have some control and started to get my bearings, being at the beach it was possible to see via the video feed which way it was heading and I got it back. Strangely enough, the errors lasted for about 2 minutes and the last 3 minutes of the flight before I got it back there were none, I could land it normally.
I had a chat session with support and the guy told me to refresh the firmware and re-calibrate the compass and IMU. Tested it in my backyard and it behaves ok, however, I really don't think that will fix the issue and I am not at all comfortable to fly again.....

Just to verify, did you see all those yaw error, speed error, compass error and then weak GPS messages on DJI GO 4 app? If there is compass error, please try to calibrate the compass after cooling the drone down, and if there is weak GPS signal, please also try to change another place.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-25 01:10
Just to verify, did you see all those yaw error, speed error, compass error and then weak GPS messages on DJI GO 4 app? If there is compass error, please try to calibrate the compass after cooling the drone down, and if there is weak GPS signal, please also try to change another place.

1st error at 68m weak gps signal, followed by compass error, exit gp-gps mode, warning inflight imu encounters heading exception, more weak gps errors as the flight progresses. All these show when I replay the flight in DJI Go4. I had 18 satellites showing and full signal strength in green, it then blanked out, still showing 18 sats but the bars just in grey. I attempted to fly back visually and after 2 minutes the GPS locked again. This was the second flight that morning from the same location, the first about 10min with no errors at all.
Quite scary as I was at the beach and could have easily lost it if it had flown out to sea.
Really shattered my confidence and put up my heart rate quite a lot ;-).

The speed and yaw errors show up in airdata but not on Go4

Two things come to mind.

1. You can get magnetic interference in a wide open field with nothing apparently there if there is something underground. There is a big field in one of the parks where I fly and I have noticed that there is one area in particular where if I try to take off from I get compass interference. If I just move a few meters away from it it goes away.

2. A high KP Index - could also be a possible reason for GPS reception failure.

fansb181213c Posted at 2017-10-25 02:46
1st error at 68m weak gps signal, followed by compass error, exit gp-gps mode, warning inflight imu encounters heading exception, more weak gps errors as the flight progresses. All these show when I replay the flight in DJI Go4. I had 18 satellites showing and full signal strength in green, it then blanked out, still showing 18 sats but the bars just in grey. I attempted to fly back visually and after 2 minutes the GPS locked again. This was the second flight that morning from the same location, the first about 10min with no errors at all.
Quite scary as I was at the beach and could have easily lost it if it had flown out to sea.
Really shattered my confidence and put up my heart rate quite a lot ;-).

Why would a compass error disable GPS?
Orientation (compass data) and position (GPS data) are different but related.
When the Spark is moving and getting position information from the GPS that tells the Spark that it is travelling in a different direction from what it's getting from compass data, The Spark programming can't work with the data conflict.
The solution is to drop data from one source and since the Spark can't fly without a compass but can without GPS, it's the GPS data that gets dropped.

There have been some compass problems with Sparks lately or your issue may have been related to something you did.
I'd be curious about when and where you calibrated it and where you launched from as these may be relevant factors.
You can also see the flight data to learn more and perhaps solve the mystery of your incident.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-10-25 09:41
Why would a compass error disable GPS?
Orientation (compass data) and position (GPS data) are different but related.
When the Spark is moving and getting position information from the GPS that tells the Spark that it is travelling in a different direction from what it's getting from compass data, The Spark programming can't work with the data conflict.

Because spark does not have dual IMUs and compasses, it can only check GPS against the compass and vice versa.  Spark flying on bad compass data is better than flying on bad GPS data (ever seen what your GPS does when it gets close to a signal interference?) so when it gets conflicting information between the GPS and compass, it has to ignore the GPS data in order to ensure stable/safe flight.  By going into ATTI mode, it actually reduces the chance of a flyaway.  

Spark switching to ATTI mode mid-flight is particularly challenging if you are flying out of line-of-sight and high up.  You will not get updated location info from the map, and it will be hard to keep orientation at a high altitude in order to return to home.  

The most likely reason that you get the RTH passes through no-fly-zone warning when this happens is that the when the AC switches out of GPS mode, it probably defaults the location to 0,0, so any airport between you and 0N, 0W will trigger it.   

I just remembered that I have a video from when this happened to me, luckily i had just taken off and was able to bring it right back down and reset the AC.  Maybe I'll stick it up on YouTube and post it here.

TexasAerials Posted at 2017-10-25 10:07
Because spark does not have dual IMUs and compasses, it can only check GPS against the compass and vice versa.  Spark flying on bad compass data is better than flying on bad GPS data (ever seen what your GPS does when it gets close to a signal interference?) so when it gets conflicting information between the GPS and compass, it has to ignore the GPS data in order to ensure stable/safe flight.  By going into ATTI mode, it actually reduces the chance of a flyaway.  

Spark switching to ATTI mode mid-flight is particularly challenging if you are flying out of line-of-sight and high up.  You will not get updated location info from the map, and it will be hard to keep orientation at a high altitude in order to return to home.  

Yeah do put your video up might help understand what happens.

I won't go into the details again, because it angers the gods. But Spark (like anything with a GPS) can tell its direction from GPS alone if it's moving - if that procedure was programmed into its firmware. It can use it to fly back home, or at least get closer to home so that the pilot can find it more easily if it doesn't make it all the way. And in the meantime, the pilot sees where the craft is, all the way.
All it has to do when the compass is gone is initiate a few short flights to get oriented based on GPS, and fix itself when needed on the way home. Of course, it would have to be programmed into the firmware... but no additional hardware is necessary.
There's no sense in throwing away GPS data because the compass is gone.