Hi,

So i'm relatively new to the world of drones and have had the spark for 2 weeks. It's been flown 4 times pretty successfully. It's been a learning curve along the way, (e.g. knowing RTH only works when more than 30m else drone lands straight down).

I took it to Norway on a trip and both times the drone has just freaked out in the air and started drifting with no real control before losing signal and myself having to chase after it.

I've uploaded the flight log here

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/3JYS0C7EYVSIY2R5KRFW/

You can see it drifted west, then I regained some control and tried to pilot it back before it just continued to drift before I managed to hit RTH where it just landed where it was. Can someone possibly shed some light on what happened.

There were powerlines nearby, there was a light wind, could that be responsible for taking the drone away out of my control? What should I do in future to prevent a similar situation occuring

Thanks,

Akash

Did you do the compass calibration routine?

Did you do the compass calibration routine whenever you arrived in Norway / at the place you were flying.

I’m not sure what the difference in magnetic declination is between US and Norway but I’m sure it is enough that you should have calibrated your compass. Or if you did what kind of area did you calibrate in.
Compass was the cause of your problems you did get a warning after 25 seconds but continued to fly, resulting in your spark going into Atti mode , difficult to control although you did try, in Atti mode your spark will continue to drift with the wind maintaining horizontal level but continuing yaw error making it hard to control.
You were lucky that the area you were flying was quite open or at least the area your spark drifted to was open, pressing RTH in Atti mode will have no effect as there is no gps so Aircraft doesn’t know where it is so won’t know where homepoint is.
What happened was battery dropped to critical and your spark preformed a forced landing. Considering everything I’m rather impressed with how all this worked out , it’s now good to know that when battery runs to critical spark will just land.

Glad nobody was hurt. Should be a required training mode prior to first use or a manual to read... oh wait. ;)
I see people just "get a drone" and do nothing to educate themselves on operation of it and then wonder why someone got hurt or "it just flew away".
Have to laugh at stuff like this; *derp*. Sit down and read the manual, watch some videos on YouTube! Lots of very good instruction and training available!

LX2000 Posted at 2017-10-2 06:20
Did you do the compass calibration routine whenever you arrived in Norway / at the place you were flying.

I did one in Norway but the city before, not at this location, so is it good routine to calibrate the compass at the start of every flight?

djiuser_KTGNT1D Posted at 2017-10-2 07:12
I did one in Norway but the city before, not at this location, so is it good routine to calibrate the compass at the start of every flight?

You will get varying replies to this answer.  Prepare yourself for it.  

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-10-2 06:54
I’m not sure what the difference in magnetic declination is between US and Norway but I’m sure it is enough that you should have calibrated your compass. Or if you did what kind of area did you calibrate in.
Compass was the cause of your problems you did get a warning after 25 seconds but continued to fly, resulting in your spark going into Atti mode , difficult to control although you did try, in Atti mode your spark will continue to drift with the wind maintaining horizontal level but continuing yaw error making it hard to control.
You were lucky that the area you were flying was quite open or at least the area your spark drifted to was open, pressing RTH in Atti mode will have no effect as there is no gps so Aircraft doesn’t know where it is so won’t know where homepoint is.

Thank you for this response. It actually makes sense. I did calibrate in the city "Oslo" however this was another town. I take it you should calibrate the drone before every flight? It was unusual because when taking off the status of the compass was good so I thought nothing off it. Thank you for explaining ATTI mode, it makes sense why it carried on drifting. And yes I deliberately try choose wide open areas as I'm very much still a beginner.

I can't say I was overly calm when dealing with this situation, I did have a big degree of luck. Lesson learnt. I'm a bit confused why the compass error caused ATTI mode, wouldn't the GPS connection remain intact so the drone would know it's position?

Bob Brown Posted at 2017-10-2 07:04
Glad nobody was hurt. Should be a required training mode prior to first use or a manual to read... oh wait. ;)
I see people just "get a drone" and do nothing to educate themselves on operation of it and then wonder why someone got hurt or "it just flew away".
Have to laugh at stuff like this; *derp*. Sit down and read the manual, watch some videos on YouTube! Lots of very good instruction and training available!

The drone was deliberately chosen to be flown in a wide open area. And I have read the manual initially but I will admit from a beginners point of view, the learning curve is steep. My basic understanding was after recording to RTH location, if the signal is lost for 3 seconds or more, the drone would return. But as it's been pointed out, the compass rendered that useless When taking off, there was no compass warning initially so I assumed it was fine.

You have mentioned YouTube as a resource, do you mind sharing any particularly good channels?

djiuser_KTGNT1D Posted at 2017-10-2 07:12
I did one in Norway but the city before, not at this location, so is it good routine to calibrate the compass at the start of every flight?

No it’s not, but when you do it it needs careful attention and if not carried out right can have similar consequences to what you had.
You can check before you fly to see if compass heading is same as Aircraft this is usually a good sign that you have good compass.
Small red triangle in bottom left hand corner should be pointing to the same heading as spark. You should also hover at low altitude for a short time to make sure everything is ok.
Once you have a good compass you will almost never have to calibrate unless you move as you did to and area with great or good difference in magnetic declination.

djiuser_KTGNT1D Posted at 2017-10-2 07:21
Thank you for this response. It actually makes sense. I did calibrate in the city "Oslo" however this was another town. I take it you should calibrate the drone before every flight? It was unusual because when taking off the status of the compass was good so I thought nothing off it. Thank you for explaining ATTI mode, it makes sense why it carried on drifting. And yes I deliberately try choose wide open areas as I'm very much still a beginner.

I can't say I was overly calm when dealing with this situation, I did have a big degree of luck. Lesson learnt. I'm a bit confused why the compass error caused ATTI mode, wouldn't the GPS connection remain intact so the drone would know it's position?

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.

djiuser_KTGNT1D Posted at 2017-10-2 07:21
Thank you for this response. It actually makes sense. I did calibrate in the city "Oslo" however this was another town. I take it you should calibrate the drone before every flight? It was unusual because when taking off the status of the compass was good so I thought nothing off it. Thank you for explaining ATTI mode, it makes sense why it carried on drifting. And yes I deliberately try choose wide open areas as I'm very much still a beginner.

I can't say I was overly calm when dealing with this situation, I did have a big degree of luck. Lesson learnt. I'm a bit confused why the compass error caused ATTI mode, wouldn't the GPS connection remain intact so the drone would know it's position?

You will see my answer about calibration in post number 10.

hallmark007 Posted at 2017-10-2 07:32
You will see my answer about calibration in post number 10.

My reply: there are suddenly a LOT of reports about this on this forum, which coincide with the latest mandatory update.

And yet, we are still debating about compass calibrations, powerlines, etc...

This reminds me of the falling Sparks, which were supposedly caused by all sorts of user errors, until all of a sudden the problem almost disappeared following the latest firmware. How curious...

When checking spark heading is same as on map, it will only look the same if compass display is locked. It could point  differently  if not.

Bright Spark Posted at 2017-10-2 09:30
When checking spark heading is same as on map, it will only look the same if compass display is locked. It could point  differently  if not.

Yeah that was the advice received earlier too, will definitely try this next time!

Please check if you are in a place without GPS signal. If yes, the drone might drift when the vision system was invalid. And powerlines and concrete might influence the compass, we suggest flying the drone in a wide and broad area.
If you had compass error, please first calibrate the compass and try again, if the error message persists even after the compass calibration, please check if there was an impact damage to the drone before, and I would recommend sending your flight data to our support and start a data analysis.

I'm still in awe that people actually buy this as acceptable, that the most sensitive navigation system (compass) should virtually knock them all down.

And i am still in awe that people think a drone can still navigate with only GPS and no compass. Without compass the drone doesn't know the exact yaw position, as the IMU sensors always have an error and sometimes a drift... it only knows where it's location is, and where it needs to go. It is like facing yourself north, closing your eyes, turn a few times around, and then someone tells you to go 5 steps north... Good luck woth that :-)

When checking the orientation of the two red arrows prior to take off, although they will both indicate the same heading if all is well, they at a quick glance may appear to vary depending on whether you have the map locked to the compass or not.

I don't know why my earlier post has been reposted in its original form!

LX2000 Posted at 2017-10-8 23:33
And i am still in awe that people think a drone can still navigate with only GPS and no compass. Without compass the drone doesn't know the exact yaw position, as the IMU sensors always have an error and sometimes a drift... it only knows where it's location is, and where it needs to go. It is like facing yourself north, closing your eyes, turn a few times around, and then someone tells you to go 5 steps north... Good luck woth that :-)

There's an easy solution for that which I've detailed several times.
Without repeating all the details (calculations, error corrections, recursive action etc.) you CAN tell your direction with GPS alone - as long as you're moving.
So if the compass fails, GPS should not be dumped. There's useful information there you can use. Instead, the drone should not just stand there - it should initiate a short flight in the direction of its nose, while collecting GPS, and then it can calculate its current direction from GPS alone. Based on that, it can orient itself.

Are you still in awe?