So my Spark landed on roof today...

Was flying just above max altitude of 400 ft when I hit a local cloud. My fault I guess. The ultrasonic sensor picked up this cloud and gave me the error "Ultrasonic Sensor Error" and started what i thought was the Return to Home function. But noooo, it was the land straight down function that you cant pause or abort. When it was nearing some houses i tried everything I could to get it to stop: clicking pause on the controller, moving the sticks, clicking the x- for abort in the DJI Go 4 App, but nothing helped. I threw myself into the car and drove after it, only around 50-70 meter away. I parked my car and was somewhat relieved I still had a video feed and GPS position from the drone, but not too happy about it beeing stuck in the gutter on some roof...

I was able to collect it after risking my limb and climbing onto this strangers house, but it all couldve been avoided if there was some manual override button... Why doesnt the big red pause button on the controller actually pause what its doing? Why couldnt I control it? What do I do the next time this happens? In the screenshot you can see it doesnt have a GPS signal. I dont know if this happened during flight, or due to signal interferance from the metal gutter its lying in...

When I got home I cleaned it and tested it. Not a single scratch and everything is working fine so +1 for durability...

I would say the altitude got messed up when you hit the cloud and the Spark thought it was lower than it was, hence the auto landing. It does mention about not flying in fog in the manual. I'm guessing this was the same thing.

So if it does go haywire due to clouds, there is no way to override its autoland?

If you wish some more insight on what has happened and how you could have resolved it, you may consider uploading your flightrecord here http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/ and share the link with us.

l3rum Posted at 2017-12-24 15:24
So if it does go haywire due to clouds, there is no way to override its autoland?

Hi, sir. Please avoid flying through cloud and fog for better flight performance. And users may find it difficult to land their drones while doing this. Thanks for your understanding.

It may not stop autolanding mode, but you can normally fly it minimum vertically .
Like in the critical battery landing mode.
Where also you can stop it from going down, by using the control to rise the altitude.
But in case you did not use/are not using the controler sticks, it will land where it is, from what ever height it thinks it has to.