Yes, I've managed to crash into water!

I was trying to get quite a straightforward shot which I had done several times before, but the light wasn't as I wanted it.  It was a crane shot above a small pond with waterfalls flowing down rock walls.  The idea being to rise to a level of about 20m while videoing the falls and then getting a view out over the park.

I posted a few days ago that the drone behaved unusually over water, in that it would rise for no apparant reason.

Today i noticed that it took longer than usual to aquire the sats, but eventually it did.  I took off and hovered about 2m above the water and prepared to set the camera.   Suddenly the drone veered off to the left, hit a branch and dropped into about 8 inches of water.

I retreived it and immediately removed the battery.  It was in the water for less than 15 seconds.  I have dried it out with a hairdryer and it is now sitting in the sun with the battery compartment open.

I'm not hopeful of it springing back to life, I dont have that much luck, so assuming the worst, is it worth getting it repaired, or do I just get a new drone?

I'd also be interested in exactly what went wrong.  I'm a reasonably compatant drone pilot, although new to the Mavic Mini.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

Mike

If you can upload the flight data we can see what the status was before the crash to hopefully shed some light and then DJI might be able to help.

How do I access the flight data?

Hi!

I got a Mavic 2 enterprise dual, it also crashed in water. I dried it out, picked it apart, and washed many of the components in 95% ethanol, the drone seem to be working, have not tested it yet, however it successfully calibrates etc. I recommend you to do the same.

I have a question, not reallu related to this topic but I am unable to post in the forums(new member) : my gimbals camera lens got still some "dimm" of the watermarks left, how do I remove the lens of the Mavic 2 enterprise? there is no tutorial of it on google?

Hi Mike, we are very sorry for the crash accident, it is recommended to start a ticket online https://repair.dji.com/repair/index?site=brandsite&from=nav and send in the device for the evaluation and data analysis, our data analysis team will help figure out what happened and provide the proper resolution. Thank you.

Mike, welcome to the club.
I think I take a poll to know how many we are ...

So am I, I drop my drone into my swimming pool ( Yes, Chlorine and sodium system) less than 10 sec I retrived it , soak with fresh stilled water, dried and put it in raw dry rice (I'm in Thailand easy to find raw rice) for 3 day and make sure it really dried.

Unfortunately it 's malfunction, It can Open, Camera work, Gimball work but GPS module broken. Service team in Thailand said you need to  change Mainboard and camera together, total cost around 300US!!! WTF!! So I bought new one instead lol and make the broken one as spare part.

Wish you have a good luck, in Thailand so many drone drown into water and it's normal. I hope you one of them. but not me, sob.

Hi

use this for upload your log > https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

cheers
JJB

I dried it out totally overnight and fired it up this morning.  I was initially encorouged when the motors initialised and the gimble moved around.   However there was no start up sound and when I connected it to my iPad it reported no GPS and a power fault, by all accounts this would be a very expensive repair, so I think I will go down the buy a new one road and use this one for spares.

On a side note, I wonder if anyone else has had any issues with hovering over still water?  I posted a week or so ago that I noticed when hovering at 2m and moving the gimble, the drone would move up or to the side.  It occured to me last night that i was moving the gimble to start my shot while hovering above water at about 2m when it shot off to the side.   On my previous drone I could happily hover above water all day without any problems.

I'm going to have a chat to a drone engineer shortly to see if he can shed any light on what has happened, and I will report back here, it may be something we need to be aware of with Mavic Mini.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/VJUKSC25RVN9R2MWCSBO/#

Ok, here are the flight logs, if someone can make sense of them.

i rarely see people mention the dji refresh program, i purchased this immediately as it seemed like a no brainer for extra peace of mind, am i in the minority of users to have purchased this insurance policy?

You are absolutely right, If i do end up buying a new drone i will buy this with it.

You took off with one bar of gps signal quality. 30s later, just under 3s before the crash the gps again had just one bar of accuracy. This was a simple case of not having a good enough gps reception, probably many trees around? The drone was trying to maintain its position (based on inaccurate gps data), which caused it to hit the branch and then obviously crash.

Ice_2k.  Thanks for that.  Where are you seeing this?   I am looking at between 9 - 10 GPS sats in the moments before the crash where it goes from .7mph to 7mph.  The map on my iPad shows 4 bars in the seconds before crash.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 02:05
https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/VJUKSC25RVN9R2MWCSBO/#

Ok, here are the flight logs, if someone can make sense of them.

Your drone acquired GPS at 4:00 but sat numbers were very low, possibly because obstacles were blocking too much of the sky view?
At 8:04 your sat numbers went down and GPS Health dropped to 1 which would have put the drone in atti mode.
Without GPS position holding, the drone could drift and you had no "brakes".
At 0:16.2 you gave it a burst of right stick which caused the drone to accelerate, but not stop when you went hands-off.
AT 0:32.4 GPS health returned to 4.
At 0:37.0 you gave a burst of full right stick and at 0:37.5 the drone collided with something.

Thanks Labroides

I dont remember giving a burst on the stick, I was manovering slowly to get the optimum position.   I do admit there are a lot of trees in that area and as i pointed out in my original post, it took longer than usual to aquire the satellites.   I suppose this is a situation of 'Lesson Learned'.

Is there a resource where i can learn how to interprate the flight data as you guys have done, for future refrence.   

Thanks for the advice and help.

Hello,
I had your same problem: https://forum.dji.com/thread-209328-1-1.html
The cause was the iron railing which interfered with the compass and I had few satellites.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 02:19
Ice_2k.  Thanks for that.  Where are you seeing this?   I am looking at between 9 - 10 GPS sats in the moments before the crash where it goes from .7mph to 7mph.  The map on my iPad shows 4 bars in the seconds before crash.

number of satellites is not the same as signal quality. If the satellites it's seeing are close to each other (e,g. if the drone can only see satellites directly above it), it will have low accuracy. That's what the gps signal strength bars are showing you.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 02:19
Ice_2k.  Thanks for that.  Where are you seeing this?   I am looking at between 9 - 10 GPS sats in the moments before the crash where it goes from .7mph to 7mph.  The map on my iPad shows 4 bars in the seconds before crash.

Hi Mike , coming to this late but agree with others assessment, have a look at this video will give you a very good explanation how gps works in your drone.

Ice_2k Posted at 3-27 03:47
number of satellites is not the same as signal quality. If the satellites it's seeing are close to each other (e,g. if the drone can only see satellites directly above it), it will have low accuracy. That's what the gps signal strength bars are showing you.

Yes, starting to understand this now.  I have just had a long chat with a drone engineer here in UK and after describing exactly what happened he put it down to  a combination of the gimble facing downwards, poor GPS and a reflective surface below.   A good lesson learned I think.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 05:18
Yes, starting to understand this now.  I have just had a long chat with a drone engineer here in UK and after describing exactly what happened he put it down to  a combination of the gimble facing downwards, poor GPS and a reflective surface below.   A good lesson learned I think.

why would the gimbal's position make any difference?

I think one has to accept the risk of flying with bad GPS and VPS sensor fooled.

The poor drone must have some guidance, if you're not super ready the disaster is around the corner.

hallmark007 Posted at 3-27 05:17
Hi Mike , coming to this late but agree with others assessment, have a look at this video will give you a very good explanation how gps works in your drone.

https://youtu.be/i-CnCM0iEpk

Excellent explanation, thank you!

Ice_2k Posted at 3-27 05:58
why would the gimbal's position make any difference?

Something I have noticed and the engineer seemed to agree.   Adjusting the gimble while hovering over still water causes a problem.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 07:13
Something I have noticed and the engineer seemed to agree.   Adjusting the gimble while hovering over still water causes a problem.

The angle of the camera shouldn't make any difference.
It is independent of the navigation systems of the drone.

Mike Faulkner Posted at 3-27 01:35
I dried it out totally overnight and fired it up this morning.  I was initially encorouged when the motors initialised and the gimble moved around.   However there was no start up sound and when I connected it to my iPad it reported no GPS and a power fault, by all accounts this would be a very expensive repair, so I think I will go down the buy a new one road and use this one for spares.

On a side note, I wonder if anyone else has had any issues with hovering over still water?  I posted a week or so ago that I noticed when hovering at 2m and moving the gimble, the drone would move up or to the side.  It occured to me last night that i was moving the gimble to start my shot while hovering above water at about 2m when it shot off to the side.   On my previous drone I could happily hover above water all day without any problems.

I droped my drone to swimming pool because I hver Mini over pool around 1m. I tried to lift the drone up but in go opposit way..Yes it's go down and drown.

Hi, Are there still people who have crashed their Mavic Mini into the water as of now 01/04/2020 time of this post. I have a good friend and work collegue
who has lost his. Was flying taking the nice shots of the scenary at the beach when his drone dropped out of the sky. When he noticed he tried the return to home, but the drone did not respond. Crashed into the sea, As if it had a mind of his own. Due to the location he was unable to recover it.
His drone was up to date with the firmware updates.

As for myself I own a Mavic 2 zoom and as of now. It is still doing a great job and I have no issues with it.