Need some help.  I recently experienced my mavic pro spinning  uncontrolled and also flashed a gimbal motor overloaded error.  I tried  everything I could on the joysticks to combat the spin, but nothing  would work.  After a few minutes it eventually stopped and I was able to  visually fly home for a safe landing.  The gimbal/camera  was tilted/skewed but luckily I had visual on it.

After  landing and calming down a bit, I turned it back on and did a compass  calibration and a gimbal calibration and flew again without any  issues.

This is now the second time this has  happened.  Symptoms are the same for both flights.  Everything starts  out normal.  Then I start to notice camera/gimbal is less responsive or  skewed in some way.  Then it goes into a dead/uncontrolled spin.  After a  few minutes of pushing the joysticks every which way to combat the  spin, it eventually levels out and I can fly home.  While it's in a dead  spin I see Gimbal Motor Overloaded error flash up, and the gimbal sometimes bouncing between forward and down angles.


Both  times I've taken off from the ground at the beach in loose sandy  areas.  Both times I've gotten it back, done a compass calibration and  gimbal calibration and been good to go again.  The first time it  happened I thought sand got stuck in the gimbal and caused issues.  I  gave it a good cleaning (plus the calibration) and everything was fine  again.  This last time I took off from a more rocky area, but still with  loose sand.  Now that it's happened twice I'm getting paranoid about  flying from the beach.

I have the .dat and flight log from this last flight but it's over 1 MB and I don't know how/where to upload it.  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Hello and good day georgebuley. I am sorry for the inconvenience. May I know what happened prior to the issue? Did you receive an error message on the DJI Go 4 application? If yes, please provide a screenshot for further checking. Please follow this sequence, kindly flash the firmware using DJI Assistant 2. You can download the software here: https://www.dji.com/mavic/info#downloads and follow the video tutorial below. After that, calibrate the IMU and the Gimbal. If the issue persists, please let me know. Thanks for your support.

Sorry to hear you have had a few problems. A few of us have had similar problems. Sometimes it helps to delete  the Go4 App and reinstall it.

You can upload your flight data here. Log viewer. Then just post it on the forum and someone will take a look at it and give some advise.

Hope you can get the problem resolved.

Please provide the .DAT via DropBox. And, the .txt too if you have it. I'll take a look.

Here is the flight log.  Take off was normal.  I went up and straight out and then turned back towards me to take some pictures.  After hovering for a bit taking pictures I noticed the video feed on my phone was shaking/jittery.  I was about to bring it back in when it started to sping uncontrolled @ about 2m 18s.  There was no error messages before that.  All I noticed was the video was a little jittery.  Gimbal Motor Overloaded error flashed at about 2m 36s after already spinning uncontrolled.  I got control back at 4m 28s and flew home.

Here's the files via DropBox:

DJIFlightRecord_2019-04-18_[11-29-49].txt

2019-04-18_11-29-23_FLY093.DAT

georgebuley Posted at 4-26 14:44
Here's the files via DropBox:

DJIFlightRecord_2019-04-18_[11-29-49].txt

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzhfw7cy5plzymg/DJIFlightRecord_2019-04-18_%5B11-29-49%5D.txt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pn0zjore28w7khb/2019-04-18_11-29-23_FLY093.DAT?dl=0

I've never seen something like this before. Don't fully undrstand it but I'm gonna guess there is some kind of intermittent gimbal hardware failure.

The Gimbal:Yaw value should track the Attitude:Yaw value. Here is an example from one of my flights.

Small differences can be see, but, overall Gimbal:Yaw tracks Attitude:YAW.

Your flight looks like this


Gimbal:Yaw is tracking Attitude:Yaw until 130 secs when there is an abrupt separation and the difference becomes about 100°. About 7 secs later it looks like the Gimbal:Yaw returns abruptly to correct value. This is when the rotations that you see started. It's not clear, at least to me, how Attitude:Yaw and Gimbal:Yaw are related at this point.

Did you do something at time 130 secs that would cause the Gimbal to change it's orientation by 100°?

BudWalker Posted at 4-27 06:10
I've never seen something like this before. Don't fully undrstand it but I'm gonna guess there is some kind of intermittent gimbal hardware failure.

The Gimbal:Yaw value should track the Attitude:Yaw value. Here is an example from one of my flights.

It’s slightly easier to see in my DJI GO 4 app.  By 130s I’ve already noticed a problem (noticed jittery video) and am starting to spin uncontrolled.  When it starts spinning it flashed a gimbal motor overloaded error.  On the app it looks like the camera is slamming between full up and full down positions.  Same thing it did last time I had this problem.

Gimbal issues are concerning, but I’m curious what causes the uncontrolled spinning.

I have a few videos from this flight.  The first one shows the jittery video symptom, recorded around 1:40 I think.  The second video starts during the dead spin until I recover.  You can see I briefly get control back a few times but the camera is messed up.

Jittery Video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/82aw1gcrlr036qu/DJI_0077.MOV?dl=0

Mid-Spin:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y25kayu675cpq6b/DJI_0078.MOV?dl=0

georgebuley Posted at 4-27 15:36
It’s slightly easier to see in my DJI GO 4 app.  By 130s I’ve already noticed a problem (noticed jittery video) and am starting to spin uncontrolled.  When it starts spinning it flashed a gimbal motor overloaded error.  On the app it looks like the camera is slamming between full up and full down positions.  Same thing it did last time I had this problem.

Gimbal issues are concerning, but I’m curious what causes the uncontrolled spinning.

The video looks scary...hope DJI support can figure out what is going on with your drone....best of luck.

georgebuley Posted at 4-27 15:36
It’s slightly easier to see in my DJI GO 4 app.  By 130s I’ve already noticed a problem (noticed jittery video) and am starting to spin uncontrolled.  When it starts spinning it flashed a gimbal motor overloaded error.  On the app it looks like the camera is slamming between full up and full down positions.  Same thing it did last time I had this problem.

Gimbal issues are concerning, but I’m curious what causes the uncontrolled spinning.

The short answer is that there is something wrong with the gimbal hardware and/or the data that it produces. The rotation is just an attempt to compensate for the erroneous data.
The roll jitter in your first video can be seen here.


The data is saying that roll was 0° until about 62 secs and then began to oscillate about a 90° mean. The oscillations stop at about 92secs with a roll angle of 137° which is physically impossible.

A video of the first 145 secs would be interesting.

Can you provide the .DAT from the MP? There is more data and at a higher sample rate than the tablet Take a look at
Retrieving a V3 .DAT File from the AC
to see how to retrieve that .DAT.

BudWalker Posted at 4-28 05:53
The short answer is that there is something wrong with the gimbal hardware and/or the data that it produces. The rotation is just an attempt to compensate for the erroneous data.
The roll jitter in your first video can be seen here.
[view_image]

Thanks for looking.  I tried to retrieve the .DAT from the MP through DJI Assistant, but they never loaded.  I just get a spinning wheel.  I'll try again when I get home from work.

The file I pulled I guess was from the DJI GO 4 app that I managed to grab through iTunes.

BudWalker Posted at 4-28 05:53
The short answer is that there is something wrong with the gimbal hardware and/or the data that it produces. The rotation is just an attempt to compensate for the erroneous data.
The roll jitter in your first video can be seen here.
[view_image]

I got the DAT file from the aircraft:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f95qf0 ... 9_19-49-24.DAT?dl=0

There were 3 flight index's from the date in question.  The first one (earliest one) should be the troubled flight.  The second would be turning it back on and just doing a gimbal calibration.  The last would be a perfect flight after the issue and gimbal cal.

georgebuley Posted at 4-29 02:42
I got the DAT file from the aircraft:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f95qf0pf9ws00s3/DJI_ASSISTANT_EXPORT_FILE_2019-04-29_19-49-24.DAT?dl=0

Getting the right onboard .DAT can be tricky. The file created by DJI Assistant 2 (DJI_ASSISTANT_EXPORT_FILE_2019-04-29_19-49-24.DAT) contains FLY095.DAT, FLY096.DAT and FLY097.DAT. Unfortunately, the one we want is FLY093.DAT. The dates presented by Assistant 2 may reflect GMT instead of local.


Installing CsvView or DatCon also installs ExttractDJI which can be used to extract the .DATs inside the .DAT created by Assistant 2. That will allow you to locate FLY093.DAT

BudWalker Posted at 4-29 04:40
Getting the right onboard .DAT can be tricky. The file created by DJI Assistant 2 (DJI_ASSISTANT_EXPORT_FILE_2019-04-29_19-49-24.DAT) contains FLY095.DAT, FLY096.DAT and FLY097.DAT. Unfortunately, the one we want is FLY093.DAT. The dates presented by Assistant 2 may reflect GMT instead of local.

Grr.  Those were the only ones available from that date.  I double-checked last night and now the 3 data files I downloaded aren't even there.  
Any ideas?

georgebuley Posted at 4-30 13:31
Grr.  Those were the only ones available from that date.  I double-checked last night and now the 3 data files I downloaded aren't even there.  
Any ideas?

Yeah, I suspect that your FW is between FW 01.03.0900 and FW 01.04.0300. In which case FLY093.DAT is gone. Check out
Keeping .DATs on the Mavic Pro accessible

BudWalker Posted at 4-30 14:00
Yeah, I suspect that your FW is between FW 01.03.0900 and FW 01.04.0300. In which case FLY093.DAT is gone. Check out
Keeping .DATs on the Mavic Pro accessible

I believe you're right.  That probably explains the gap in flight data from January to April.  Cause I had many flights during then.

I'm on FW 01.04.0400 now so hopefully won't lose anymore flight logs.  Not that I want to see this problem again, but if it happens again maybe we can get to the bottom of it.