I had not flown my spark for several months and I have a project to do with it this weekend so I charged everything up and did a couple of test flights in my yard last Thursday and everything went fine.

Today I took everything out to shoot some video for my neighborhood organization to use on their website.

I turned on the spark and the RC and connected my iPad to the RC wifi just like normal.
But the LED on the RC did not turn green and the RC was beeping loudly... I have never had that happen before.
The strange thing is I saw the spark's video on my iPad and I could even make the spark take off and land using the iPad, but the RC sticks did nothing at all.

I verified that the iPad was connected to the RC and not directly to the spark (I have never done that).
I rebooted everything multible times and tried several times to re-pair the spark and the rc and that never seemed to be successful.

And then the problem went away.. led turned green and I started to fly... I did have several inflight disconnects.. but it always connected back up (thank god)

Then I moved to a different location a few blocks away.. put on a fresh battery and powered everything up.. same problem..
red LED and beeping.. but it cleard up after a few seconds.
Again I flew and again I had a couple of in flight disconnects.

So,,  I go home, fire it all up again to look at the video I shot and download some clips...
And, everything appears to be fine.

What is happening?   Is my RC defective?  Was it interference even though it happened in two different locations?
Could the interference be coming from me since I fly with the iPad but I have my iPhone in my pocket.
How is it that I could control it from the phone connected to the RC.. but not from the RC... it had to actually be connected to the spark for the phone to control it.

Ok.. last question and I'll shut up. Is there a way to force reset the RC and to install a fresh copy of the firmware if there is no update.

Thanks
Louis Poche
poche@noline.com

Have you had bluetooth active, phone, watch, .....?

S-e-ven Posted at 11-9 18:52
Have you had bluetooth active, phone, watch, .....?

Yes.. as a matter of fact I bought an apple watch a few weeks ago...
But, I don't think that was it.... a little more research...

The remoted started beeping as soon as it was turned on.. so it probably wasn't trying to even talk to the spark yet.  Beeping was more likely a warning of something not being right on bootup..
Someone suggested to do a stick calibration.. and when I tried to do that it was very difficult to get it to work.. I rebooted a few times and finally was able to calibrate the sticks..

Maybe sitting idle for several months, the sticks got a bit of crap in them...
Will try to fly again tomorrow, and if I have any problem like this again I will try putting my phone and watch into airplane mode to see if that has any effect .

I suggested you do a rest on both the Spark and RC by pressing the power button on both RC and the Spark for 9 seconds, you can rest the RC first and the Spark second or vice versa.

I know from experience that the Smartwatches or other smartphones cause interference with the Spark.

LouisP Posted at 11-9 19:39
Yes.. as a matter of fact I bought an apple watch a few weeks ago...
But, I don't think that was it.... a little more research...

Try the rest and I hope it fixes the issue.

dronespilot Posted at 11-9 20:32
Try the rest and I hope it fixes the issue.

Tried to fly today but was in a no fly zone because of a stupid NFL game five miles away.
But with the spark and the RC powered up I got no errors or beeping..
Fingers crossed that calibrating the joysticks is what was my problem.

LouisP Posted at 11-10 18:19
Tried to fly today but was in a no fly zone because of a stupid NFL game five miles away.
But with the spark and the RC powered up I got no errors or beeping..
Fingers crossed that calibrating the joysticks is what was my problem.

Glad it's fixed!