Hi guys!Recently purchased my first drone
Noticed today after my flight it had a gimbal overload error message, and since then it looks like the gimbal is really crooked?
Can somebody please tell me why this has happened and how I fix it

Hello!
some blow? some accident? When you made that photo, the spark was on? If it was not, then try turning it on.
Best regards.

Hey, I only owned a spark for a short period of time but mine did the exact same thing when turned off. Whenever I turned it on it would level.

I did some research and it turns out that they can sit crooked when turned off and it’s normal so nothing to worry about

Maybe you should look at getting a gimbal cover for around $5ish that helps it sit level and avoid damage when turned off.

Enjoy your flying

Mine looks pretty the same way when it's turned off.

Perfectly normal when it's turned off. Buy a gimbal cover so you'll be sure it's protected when it's off.

Hello and good day GTAN. Thank you for the inquiry. If the DJI Spark is powered off gimbal will position itself that way. Just a friendly reminder to use a gimbal protector for your drone when not in use for additional security and protection on your drone's gimbal. If you have any other concerns or inquiries. Please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help you. Thank you.

DJI Stephen Posted at 1-19 11:04
Hello and good day GTAN. Thank you for the inquiry. If the DJI Spark is powered off gimbal will position itself that way. Just a friendly reminder to use a gimbal protector for your drone when not in use for additional security and protection on your drone's gimbal. If you have any other concerns or inquiries. Please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help you. Thank you.

You guys should really include the gimbal protector with the drone. Especially for people that can't buy one on the internet cause they don't sell these thing where I'm from.

It is normal right? It stay like that when it was not power on

BTW welcome to the forum GTAN!

darkfull1 Posted at 1-19 17:22
You guys should really include the gimbal protector with the drone. Especially for people that can't buy one on the internet cause they don't sell these thing where I'm from.

Does Aliexpress not sell items like that to your location?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/-/32952283451.html

darkfull1 Posted at 1-19 17:22
You guys should really include the gimbal protector with the drone. Especially for people that can't buy one on the internet cause they don't sell these thing where I'm from.

Hello and good day darkfull1. Thank you for the information you have shared with us and thank you for your support.

Lysak2003 Posted at 1-20 07:12
Does Aliexpress not sell items like that to your location?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/-/32952283451.html

Some are deliverable if you have a credit card and a lot of people don't. You can buy some DJI product in the store but often not the accessories.

darkfull1 Posted at 1-20 12:14
Some are deliverable if you have a credit card and a lot of people don't. You can buy some DJI product in the store but often not the accessories.

It's quite sad situation now, but it might change in  near future. Here in Ukraine five years earlier we had very poor circulation of credit cards. Currently it's everywhere.

DJI Benji Posted at 1-19 02:50
Hey, I only owned a spark for a short period of time but mine did the exact same thing when turned off. Whenever I turned it on it would level.

I did some research and it turns out that they can sit crooked when turned off and it’s normal so nothing to worry about

Thank you Definitely just a worried noob

DJI Stephen Posted at 1-19 11:04
Hello and good day GTAN. Thank you for the inquiry. If the DJI Spark is powered off gimbal will position itself that way. Just a friendly reminder to use a gimbal protector for your drone when not in use for additional security and protection on your drone's gimbal. If you have any other concerns or inquiries. Please feel free to post it here at DJI Forum. We are here to help you. Thank you.

Thanks Stephen! Do you have a link or recommendation for the gimbal protector?

jacksonnai Posted at 1-20 04:21
BTW welcome to the forum GTAN!

Thank you

GTAN Posted at 1-20 16:59
Thank you

You're welcome CTAN!

Just go to Amazon and search DJI Spark gimbal cover....

I also recommend one of these to protect from a battery coming loose in flight.

Always leave the gimbal cover on until just before powering on for flight.  If you forget and power up with it on you will get a Gimbal Overload message and you will have to power off, remove the cover, and power back up to clear the message.

i made the Cam face right a bit by placing the protecter wrong and forcing the cam to the right
so becareful
and try the gimbal axes adjustments in the app for yaw and up n down

GTAN Posted at 1-20 16:58
Thanks Stephen! Do you have a link or recommendation for the gimbal protector?

Hello and good day GTAN. Thank you for the inquiry. I will post a link where you can see the overview and the specification of the PolarPro Spark Lens Cover/Gimbal Lock for your DJI Spark. I hope this helps. Thank you.

https://store.dji.com/product/po ... t-v2&position=0

GTAN Posted at 1-20 16:58
Thanks Stephen! Do you have a link or recommendation for the gimbal protector?

https://www.amazon.com/Helistar-Compatible-Replacement-Applicable-Transparent/dp/B0744KPR7T

Lysak2003 Posted at 1-20 13:19
It's quite sad situation now, but it might change in  near future. Here in Ukraine five years earlier we had very poor circulation of credit cards. Currently it's everywhere.

I know but I don't think people will buy more on aliexpress or other Chinese online distributor since now there will be a tax on what you buy online. The tax is ok I think the problem is that sometimes in order to get the tax they take about 20$ more for the procedure. For a 3$ object 20$+tax is not that interesting.

For the credit card thing a lot of people don't need one or can't get one. Here you need to be eligible to get a credit card. We use card but not credits one that you can use in the store but not online. For example I'm the only one in my household that has one and a lot of my friend don't have one either.

darkfull1 Posted at 1-22 07:35
I know but I don't think people will buy more on aliexpress or other Chinese online distributor since now there will be a tax on what you buy online. The tax is ok I think the problem is that sometimes in order to get the tax they take about 20$ more for the procedure. For a 3$ object 20$+tax is not that interesting.

For the credit card thing a lot of people don't need one or can't get one. Here you need to be eligible to get a credit card. We use card but not credits one that you can use in the store but not online. For example I'm the only one in my household that has one and a lot of my friend don't have one either.

in Ukraine we are obliged to pay 30% tax when  price of the thing that you buy is more than 160$. For instance, if Spark costs 400$, you will need to pay (400-160)/100*30=72$ as tax. Plus you have to pay for delivery approximately 5$ per kilo. In that way, Spark from USA will be cost for me at about 480$. And all our cards we can use as for offline as for  online. Think that your country will be the same soon.

Lysak2003 Posted at 1-22 08:42
in Ukraine we are obliged to pay 30% tax when  price of the thing that you buy is more than 160$. For instance, if Spark costs 400$, you will need to pay (400-160)/100*30=72$ as tax. Plus you have to pay for delivery approximately 5$ per kilo. In that way, Spark from USA will be cost for me at about 480$. And all our cards we can use as for offline as for  online. Think that your country will be the same soon.

Here it was tax + 20$ processing  for order over 60$ .But now it's tax for everything you buy outside the country so when you buy online you get the tax and sometime the 20$ processing for things that are less than 60$.

I'm not against the tax but the 20$ processing is very frustrating.

darkfull1 Posted at 1-23 15:42
Here it was tax + 20$ processing  for order over 60$ .But now it's tax for everything you buy outside the country so when you buy online you get the tax and sometime the 20$ processing for things that are less than 60$.

I'm not against the tax but the 20$ processing is very frustrating.

Looks like it's getting worse with tax in your country. In recent time we had 300$ out of tax limit either. Now it's 160$. Maybe if we look in that way, we should prepare for the tough time. Once I needed to buy some spare parts for a car, and price was over 500$ in USA and over $1000 in Ukraine. I found one reliable person in USA and fill his address when buying. After it arrived to him, he opened the packaging and slightly dirty up these parts so they looked as used. After that he sent it to me as a "gift". Castom had no question, I paid only for delivery. I know with Chinise staff with price about 1 to 10$ it's not so smart but anyway.

Just an obligatory disclaimer that I am not responsible for any damages that may result to your equipment including PC, drone, or other devices that could be affected by these scripts. Please understand what you are doing and how these tools work before just running commands on your PC and/or your drone.  This worked well for my DJI Spark and it should work for other drones that do not have Gimbal Calibration in their Go Fly App.  Documentation related to the DJI Firmware Tools can be found on the github page here: https://github.com/o-gs/dji-firmware-tools/blob/master/README.md

My Story
If you find yourself with a tilted or drifting horizon or basically a gimbal that just won’t stay level this will be your fix.  Below you will read what happened to me and the steps that were able to successfully fix the problem.

I recently lost a propeller (aftermarket set) about 3 seconds after take off and my Spark took off at an angle and lodged straight in a tree. I recovered my bird and upon inspection 2 of my other propellers had damage but otherwise appeared fine so I went to Amazon and ordered some Genuine DJI Spark Propellers. You can get them from Amazon by clicking here..  My current propellers at the time were an aftermarket set along with some aftermarket spares.  I have seen other people have a lot of luck with aftermarket propellers, but it is no longer worth it to me to risk an expensive drone by saving $5 on propellers.

A few days later I received the new genuine propellers, installed them, and while I was doing my pre-flight checks I noticed that my camera wasn’t level.  I adjusted the gimbal roll for my first time ever and it appeared level.  After take off everything was still level however I quickly noticed after getting to my desired location to record some footage that my gimbal was out of level again.  I adjusted it again and soon learned that after any yaw or roll movements that my gimbal was not going back to level and during extended roll movements I could watch the tilt grow more and more!  I landed my Spark and returned to my place where I could do a good IMU calibration and compass calibration as those were some suggestions I found in my initial search.  I then did some motions with the Spark in my hand and found the issue was still happening.  I hunted the Go Fly App for the ability to do the gimbal calibration which some other model DJI Drones appear to have, but had no luck finding it with the Spark.  I posted to Reddit asking for suggestions and was directed to the video by Brian linked to at the beginning of this post.

My Tilted Horizon
Tilted horizon on DJI Spark

Needless to say it worked and wanted to give back and document in writing for those that like to follow written directions. Below you will find the procedure to calibrate the gimbal for a DJI Spark and likely other DJI drones that do not have the option in the DJI App.  I don’t wish this problem on anyone, but if you happen to find yourself with it hopefully this will help.  The DJI Firmware Tools are written in Python which is a high level programming language and can be used on any major operating system such as Windows, Linux, or even Mac.  The instructions below are for Windows but they can easily be adopted for other operating systems.

After The Fix
Level Gimbal on my DJI Spark

What is needed:
DJI Drone (Spark is used in this example)
PC (Windows 10, Mac, or Linux)
Micro USB Cable
Python 3.7.0: https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.0/python-3.7.0-amd64.exe (Windows Version)
DJI Firmware Tools: https://github.com/o-gs/dji-firmware-tools/archive/master.zip
pyserial: Download pyserial-3.4.tar.gz from https://pypi.org/project/pyserial/#files
7zip: https://www.7-zip.org/a/7z1900.exe (Any archive tool capable of opening .tar.gz files will work)
A level surface for calibration
Download and Install Python
Download the Python 3.7.0 installation linked above.  Any version of Python 3 should work, but 3.7.0 is documented and linked to for this tutorial.  I chose to install Python with a ‘Custom Installation’ to C:\DJI\python\  and Add Python to environment variables which allows it be ran by just typing ‘python’ in the command line. Python is easy to run because you just type ‘python’ however I used a short path C:\DJI for all of these extractions so that it is easy to navigate to from the command line which we will be doing shortly.

Download & Extract pyserial
The pyserial archive is a .tar.gz file.  This is a tarball archive (.tar extension) with GNU Zip (.gz extension) which is basically a different type of zip archive that Windows does not natively support. Because of this you will need to use 7zip, which is linked above, or another compatible utility to extract the pyserial files. After installing 7zip or another compatible tool just open the pyserial-3.4.tar.gz file.  Because of the way .tar.gz files are archived you will go through a few folder levels before you get to the actual needed content folder.  I extracted the meat and potatoes of pyserial to C:\DJI\pyserial

Download & Extract DJI Firmware Tools
I extracted the DJI Firmware Tools folder dji-firmware-tools-master contents using 7zip to C:\DJI\firmware-tools Make sure you review the README.md file to understand what these tools do and how they operate!

Connect your DJI Spark and Find the COM Port
Place your Spark on a level surface, power it on, and connect via a Micro USB cable to the port beside of your SD Card slot.  There is no need to connect the controller.



To find the COM port your USB connection is using press the Win+X keys (The ‘Win’ key or Windows Key is usually between Ctrl and Alt on the left side of your keyboard with the Windows logo on it) to open the Power Users menu and select Device Manager. Expand the Ports (COM & LPT) section and you should see USB Serial Device (COM#). If there are multiple devices you can disconnect and reconnect the Spark to see which device disappears and reappears.  Note the COM port number because you will need it later.  You can now close the Device Manager.

Find DJI Spark COM Port in Device Manager

Install pyserial
Now we need to open an Administrator Command Prompt or PowerShell Session.  Press Win+X keys to open the Power Users menu and select Command Prompt (Admin) or Windows PowerShell (Admin) and accept the User Account Control warning about making changes to your device.

Once you are in Command Prompt or PowerShell we need to navigate to the pyserial folder we just extracted and install pyserial.  to do this use these commands.  If you extracted to a different folder you will need to substitute that folder in the commands below.

cd c:\DJI\pyserial
python setup.py install
Calibrate the Gimbal
Now for the moment of truth!  We need to navigate to the DJI Firmware Tools folder and execute the commands to get our gimbal recalibrated.  Staying in the Administrator Command Prompt or PowerShell session we will now run the following commands to calibrate.

cd c:\DJI\firmware-tools
python comm_og_service_tool.py com3 SPARK GimbalCalib JointCoarse
python comm_og_service_tool.py com3 SPARK GimbalCalib LinearHall
During each of the the comm_og_service_tool.py commands your gimbal will bounce around and then hopefully finish with a Summary ending in “result: Pass”.

Test & Fly
Hopefully your calibration was successful.  Disconnect the Micro USB and connect your remote along with your phone or tablet.  Your picture should now be level.  I attempted some motions with the drone in my hand and everything looked good.  Next I preformed my pre-flight check and took it up for a quick test flight to verify everything was working as it should and let out a big sigh of relief.