I have created 3 samples that demonstrate a problem or a strange behavior of the the Mavic mini gimbal. ( at least my MM gimbal ).

Sample 1 taken with 0.200 firmware and both sample 2 and 3 are from today with the 0.300 firmawre.
MM version: CE
Phone connected to the remote : Iphone XR
App version ( all three samples ) 1.03
Temperture : 18+ C
Wind 4-5 m/s


What can be the problem ? did any of you see something similar to that ?
Most of the time the gimball seems to be fine.

Hi, thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the inconvenience. May I please ask if the drone experience any hard landings? Also, can you please try to calibrate the gimbal to see if the problem persists? Please keep us posted. Thank you!

DJI Gamora Posted at 12-7 16:10
Hi, thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the inconvenience. May I please ask if the drone experience any hard landings? Also, can you please try to calibrate the gimbal to see if the problem persists? Please keep us posted. Thank you!

No crash landing, no crash at all.
I will calibrate the gimbal. Any how I saw some posts in mavic pro forum were some users has this problem.
Must say beside that particular issue, videos are crisp clear.

DJI Gamora Posted at 12-7 16:10
Hi, thank you for reaching out and we do apologize for the inconvenience. May I please ask if the drone experience any hard landings? Also, can you please try to calibrate the gimbal to see if the problem persists? Please keep us posted. Thank you!

Digging some more.
Many DJI Mavic users regardless of a specific model are complaining about this.
That been said, I allowed the "Upward gimbal rotation" option from the advance gimbal settings menu.
As shown in the attached videos, it seems like the gimble return to it's 0 horizontal point..
any suggestions ?

Yes I had exactly the same problem and did an DoA exchange......
I saw that the gimbal is not mounted exactely in the middle,
soit can get in touch with the housing which can effort such an issue...

Heavenone Posted at 12-8 05:45
Yes I had exactly the same problem and did an DoA exchange......
I saw that the gimbal is not mounted exactely in the middle,
soit can get in touch with the housing which can effort such an issue...

What is DoA? I tried google with too many weird results.

InspektorGadjet Posted at 12-8 10:00
What is DoA? I tried google with too many weird results.

Dead on arrival,

Anyhow, I watched all my videos from the last two weeks.
The gimbal problem started upon allowing "upward gimbal rotation" from the gimbal advance menu. There is no problem with the  videos I took before enabling  this option.
I will disable it and test again.

the1shark Posted at 12-7 21:25
No crash landing, no crash at all.
I will calibrate the gimbal. Any how I saw some posts in mavic pro forum were some users has this problem.
Must say beside that particular issue, videos are crisp clear.

Thank you for the additional information. Did you already perform the gimbal calibration? You can try also to disable the "Upward gimbal rotation" to see if the problem persists.  If the problem persists after the calibration. I will highly recommend you to send your drone to us for further evaluation, You may refer to the link below. Thank you for your understanding and support!

https://www.dji.com/support

DJI Gamora Posted at 12-8 14:44
Thank you for the additional information. Did you already perform the gimbal calibration? You can try also to disable the "Upward gimbal rotation" to see if the problem persists.  If the problem persists after the calibration. I will highly recommend you to send your drone to us for further evaluation, You may refer to the link below. Thank you for your understanding and support!

https://www.dji.com/support

As I mentioned , I watched all my previous videos before enablaling the "Upward gimbal rotation" option and they looked fine.
I will test it on the coming weekend since it is a rainy week and basicaly I don''t have the time to test it before the weekend..

the1shark Posted at 12-8 12:37
Dead on arrival,

Anyhow, I watched all my videos from the last two weeks.

Interesting to know, will try to test this myself.

I'm having this exact same issue with my Mavic Mini. No hard landings or crashes. It happens with no wind at low and higher altitudes.

I am not experiencing this issue, with or without "Upward Gimball Rotation" enabled. Model is FCC on latest firmware. And I have rotated the gimball all the way up while the option was enabled.

the1shark Posted at 12-8 23:18
As I mentioned , I watched all my previous videos before enablaling the "Upward gimbal rotation" option and they looked fine.
I will test it on the coming weekend since it is a rainy week and basicaly I don''t have the time to test it before the weekend..

Please let us know the updates on the said issue for us to help you further. Thank you!

same problem i was fliying inside, so the gimbal was looking down, then the gimbal was stucked, so i change the battery, problem was solved, but i was thinking why this happened .

DJI Gamora Posted at 12-13 14:18
Please let us know the updates on the said issue for us to help you further. Thank you!

I will but the weather here is not good for flying.
In the meantime, my impression is that I'm not the only one having this problem..
Other claims thier "Upward Gimbal" option is disable ..

I found an explanation to the problem I described at the top of this thread. Take a look at this youtube video 6:10


The drone does this intentionally to make sure that the props stays out of the frame. It also might explains why all my videos with "allow upward gimbal rotation" option disabled were fine and why I started to see  this gimbal jumps after enabling this option. That's said, It seems that in some cases the tilt of the drone combined with head wind will cause this gimbal jump even when the "allow gimbal upward rotation" is disabled.

The "Allow gimbal upward rotation" option only applies to how much can *you* move the gimball. If you disable that option and set the gimball to 0 degrees (straight forward) and then start flying forward, the drone will still tilt the gimbal up beyond 0 degrees to maintain the "real" horizontal view you set before the drone had to pitch forward. That said, I disagree with the guy in the video. I think it's much better for the drone to automatically pitch the gimball down rather than allow props to be visible in the videos, considering this drone is targeted to beginners, many of who will have no idea how to remove props from a video.

Ice_2k Posted at 12-16 12:51
The "Allow gimbal upward rotation" option only applies to how much can *you* move the gimball. If you disable that option and set the gimball to 0 degrees (straight forward) and then start flying forward, the drone will still tilt the gimbal up beyond 0 degrees to maintain the "real" horizontal view you set before the drone had to pitch forward. That said, I disagree with the guy in the video. I think it's much better for the drone to automatically pitch the gimball down rather than allow props to be visible in the videos, considering this drone is targeted to beginners, many of who will have no idea how to remove props from a video.

What was important to me was to understand if this is a failure in my gimbal or a "work as designed" case.
Seems like a "work as design" and as I understand this, the more the gimbal pitched high it is more likely to  happen.

I don't know what to say... in your video it seems to happen quite sudden even in situations when there's not much wind (sample 3 in your original post, the bushes are hardly moving). I don't think this "no props in video" protection is what's happening in your case. Unless maybe you already had the gimball tilted almost all the way up and it just couldn't compensate anymore for an additional small pitch.

Ice_2k Posted at 12-16 13:36
I don't know what to say... in your video it seems to happen quite sudden even in situations when there's not much wind (sample 3 in your original post, the bushes are hardly moving). I don't think this "no props in video" protection is what's happening in your case. Unless maybe you already had the gimball tilted almost all the way up and it just couldn't compensate anymore for an additional small pitch.

The gimbal was tilted above 0 degree that is for sure. As I said the "allow upward gimbal rotation" option was enable.
I agree that the conditions were not extreme, certainly not the ones that should have caused props to apear in the frame but I can't tell what was the drone angle, it might be the cause for the gimbal fast moving. It also might be a software glitch or an inaccurate data from the IMU which is esponsible for the drone angle.

the1shark Posted at 12-17 06:50
The gimbal was tilted above 0 degree that is for sure. As I said the "allow upward gimbal rotation" option was enable.
I agree that the conditions were not extreme, certainly not the ones that should have caused props to apear in the frame but I can't tell what was the drone angle, it might be the cause for the gimbal fast moving. It also might be a software glitch or an inaccurate data from the IMU which is esponsible for the drone angle.

I have the allow upward gimbal rotation set to enable. Have always had it that way and I do not have that issue. I would think that if it was a "by design" nature, I would be seeing that as well, but I'm not.

JodyB Posted at 12-17 07:12
I have the allow upward gimbal rotation set to enable. Have always had it that way and I do not have that issue. I would think that if it was a "by design" nature, I would be seeing that as well, but I'm not.

I think you would also have to actually be tilting the gimbal upwards, simply having the option enabled would not be enough. You would then have to be in a situation that requires the drone to tilt forward, making it unable to tilt the gimbal even higher.

I'm my video where a friend of mine were playing around with our drones, mine the mavic mini and his the Spark, at some points I am trying to capture his drone in the video. At time stamp 4:40 you can see I rotate the camera full up and it does not drop any at all and the props are not visible. I didn't edit the video in any way either.

Ice_2k Posted at 12-17 07:22
I think you would also have to actually be tilting the gimbal upwards, simply having the option enabled would not be enough. You would then have to be in a situation that requires the drone to tilt forward, making it unable to tilt the gimbal even higher.

Thats what I'm talking about when I said that. I do not have that issue and I use the upward gimbal rotation quite often. I don't have any captured video of forward movement of the drone while full up on the gimbal, but I have done it and do not see the issue.

the1shark Posted at 12-16 12:42
I found an explanation to the problem I described at the top of this thread. Take a look at this youtube video 6:10

Thinking about this some more, I'm pretty sure that guy is wrong about the Mini reframing the shot intentionally to prevent props in the shot.
Tilting the gimbal to its maximum up position still doesn't get the props in the shot. The thing that he experienced was wind so powerful (and tiny drone) that the Mini had to pitch down so much that the gimbal physically couldn't "look up" that much for it to compensate. There is no software trickery going on to prevent props in the shot, there's just the software trickery pitching the drone down to fight the wind.

JodyB Posted at 12-17 07:28
Thats what I'm talking about when I said that. I do not have that issue and I use the upward gimbal rotation quite often. I don't have any captured video of forward movement of the drone while full up on the gimbal, but I have done it and do not see the issue.

I'm pretty sure you would see the camera tilt down if you were to start flying forwards while looking upwards at your friend's Spark

Ice_2k Posted at 12-17 07:42
I'm pretty sure you would see the camera tilt down if you were to start flying forwards while looking upwards at your friend's Spark

Again, I have done those maneuvers. Just don't have the video to show you. I'm not seeing that issue in full up gimbal rotation with any directional movement. Either forward, backward or strafing left or right.

Are you saying you can tilt the gimbal all the way up while hovering, then start flying forward and the horizon line would not move?

I’m saying that compared to the examples the OP gave, I can tilt the camera all the way up, move in any direction I want and the camera will not jump like that. The horizon will obviously move as the gimbal can go no further up. But I have not experienced the camera to jump like in the examples given.

ok, that I can agree with

Ice_2k Posted at 12-17 08:22
ok, that I can agree with

No worries man, I think we may have been talking about two different things there. It's all good

If what I wrote as the OP creates the impression that this problem is constantly happening then no.
It rarely happens, but it does happen and I guess it also happens to quite a few users who does not  notice it  (at least yet) because of it's rarity.

Okay, I've been able to do plenty of testing and here's what I've found. When in flight and in P mode, if you switch to Sport mode the gimbal automatically pitches downward slightly like the issue we've noted. However, if you start off in Sport mode the gimbal will randomly pitch down still. I've refreshed my firmware and recalibrated the gimbal, IMU, and compass and still experience the random downward tilt of the gimbal. You don't have to be flying at high speeds or turning, the flick of the gimbal appears completely random. Wind does not have an impact on it, nor does the enabling or disabling of the upward gimbal option in the menu. This happens each time I take the drone out to fly, it's not some one off occurrence.  I've since ordered a second MM and will test it out once it arrives this week. If there are no issues, I'll be returning my current one. Will keep everyone posted.

Those are the symptoms that I was noticing from the OP. Of the three videos, none of them depict the MM moving very quickly. In fact, it was moving at a slow rate of speed, with the camera, what looked to be to me, straight forward. With the last video, the mini traveling backwards and the drop happened twice. I don't think that is normal behavior though.

I've since returned my Mavic Mini and received a replacement. I haven't experienced the issue with the new Mini.

i had 7 jumps of the gimbal today, no wind, no speed, no nothing, i will upload only 3 of them

WooZie Posted at 12-22 10:48
i had 7 jumps of the gimbal today, no wind, no speed, no nothing, i will upload only 3 of them

Yep
They will tell you :
"we are sorry that you are having a problem with your drone"
And then they will tell you to:
1. Calibrate IMU / Compass
2. Refresh your firmware (honestly the stupid thing I ever heard)
3. Fly somewhere else
4. Fly it in a different day
5. Not fly it when it's too cold/worm/when the humidity is too high/low
6. It's a "User error" - that's my favorite..
But they will never admit there is a problem with your drone.
Mine is doing the same. I guess it's a firmware issue related to a wrong angle calculation reported by the IMU. The gimbal then does this intentionally to make sure the props stays out of the frame.
Since there is no strange tilt , strong wind or crazy movement in your videos nor in mines, it has to be some firmware  error causing the IMU to report inaccurate data.
But you have to remember this "IT IS A USER ERROR" (I am truly sorry for my cynicism)

this drone was changed and tested by dji because the original drone which i bought was destroyed  when it fell off the sky with a "motor blocked" error

i am not sure if it is hardware problem or software issue, if it is a sw issue could be fixed in the firmware update, but if it is a hw issue cannot. So i don't know what to do....to return to them or not

I also encountered this issue. At first it was in P mode but it happened more often in S mode. Practically no wind. No crashes. Gimbal was in a 90° position pointing down.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UWxwXn28YvEHg6lhsMThQDon0AVCadfZ/view?usp=sharing