Hello everyone, this is my first post in the community. Last month I purchased a Spark and had a couple of nice flights before the aircraft crashed. Maybe one of you guys had a similar experience and knows what happened. Here is a rundown of what happened: The aircraft was calibrated prior to use and had good GPS reception (between 16-20 satellites). Two previous flights worked fine, on the third and last flight for the day I just wanted to take a few pictures and about 1 minute of video before landing and finishing for that day. When coming in to land the aircraft suddenly started drifting and made erratic and uncommanded movements. I was then briefly able to counter those movements and attempted to land, however the aircraft became completely unresponsive. Shortly after it accelerated quickly backwards and gained altitude. Maximum recorded speed in the flight log was over 35 km/h. While doing so the screen blacked out and only an error message was displayed: In flight: Working IMU encounters  heading exception, please switch to attitude mode if craft behaves abnormally. I tried switching to attitude mode and the return home function, however without any response from the aircraft. Shortly after connection was lost, the aircraft crashed.


Does anyone of you guys have any idea what happened? I opened a case with DJI, but havent heard from them for almost 4 weeks
If anyone from DJI ist reading this, I would appreciate some more information on the analysis and how this case will be handled. This is my case number: CAS-849531-N8J3K7 CRM:0461000000287


Kind regards


Daniel

few questions, not trying to sound mean just common sense questions:

why did you calibrate before usage?  did it ask you to calibrate with an error or did you do it on your own?

what all did you calibrate?  do you calibrate before every flight, or location change or what is the rhythm used?


why would you click return to home if the aircraft cannot maintain itself and is erratic?  thats alot of risk since more simple activities are causing erratic behavior..

i ask because you are not supposed to calibrate anything it unless it asks you, it is in the manual, specially for the compass.  but the IMU as well  should only be calibrated if you have IMU errors or you know exactly what you are doing.  
the spark only has a single compass, and a single IMU and single Gyroscope.  no redudancies to provide referance or prevent drift like higher end aircraft Dji aircraft.   once the spark has bad calibration programmed into it its like its flying blind.. thus return to home function is fairly useless if compass and IMU are wrong its going wherever it wants to and thinks home is, not where home really is..

Hey there, no worries about sounding mean and thanks for your response I calibrated the compass only for two reasons: Firstly upon booting up an error message concerning the compass occurred, which led me to do the calibration. Secondly, that boot up was after a huge change in location, from China to Switzerland (which at that time made me think it might have to do with the error that came up). I did not recalibrate the IMU.

Well, I hit return to home as last measure that I could come up with in that moment. Everything happened within a timeframe of about 20 seconds, from first becoming unresponsive and eratic to heading off into the woods with 35 km/h and a black screen. As nothing else worked and I figured it couldnt get any worse, I tried this as a last attempt to save it. Obviously that didnt work.

Are you on the newest firmware? The 0.600? If yes you are not alone.

daniel1111 Posted at 2017-8-27 12:05
Hey there, no worries about sounding mean and thanks for your response  I calibrated the compass only for two reasons: Firstly upon booting up an error message concerning the compass occurred, which led me to do the calibration. Secondly, that boot up was after a huge change in location, from China to Switzerland (which at that time made me think it might have to do with the error that came up). I did not recalibrate the IMU.

Well, I hit return to home as last measure that I could come up with in that moment. Everything happened within a timeframe of about 20 seconds, from first becoming unresponsive and eratic to heading off into the woods with 35 km/h and a black screen. As nothing else worked and I figured it couldnt get any worse, I tried this as a last attempt to save it. Obviously that didnt work.

well huge geolocation changes should not influence it since it's looking for the same magnetic point as reference, which should not change.. as for it telling you on the app did you try moving it around somewhere else, i found almost anything powered will impact the compass in the spark.  things that can give you weird compass readings tend to contain metal or have energy flowing through it.  as an example, my mavic pro complains to no end about compass error sitting on the hood of my car if have the car running..  but if i move it to the dirt path 25 feet away it's fine.. or if i fly away its fine..    same thing today my GF took my mavic pro out and flew off of a bridge and it complained as expected until it was a few feet away..

i dont have a spark anymore to test more stuff out with them, but i do know that sparks only have a single compass, so you have to be more cautious about improper calibrations.  GPS heading is ignored it uses compass heading..

i suspect that is why you had a flyaway, calibrated it when it actually didn't need it.  it probably did ask you to move away/recalibrate with an error though so DJi needs to be more clear about what is the correct action for the spark specifically..  because the spark has no redundancies for miscalibration unlike how the mavic pro does.   i hope DJi replaces your drone for you for free, i imagine it was a geniune fly away and you did follow instructions i via the app (which are not specific enough or clear enough).  however if they do or you get another spark, before you recalibrate anything, move to a diferant location away from possible interferances, then try again if it is consistantly barking at you even in a clear area then recalibrate..and remeber it shouldnt matter with large geolocation changes..

Sorry for your loss, we will have someone analyze your flight record.Please wait patiently and we will inform you the final analysis.Thanks.

If someone gets a flywaway and DJI replace, do they render the old craft useless, as its serial number etc, I mean if someone finds it could they use it?

i'm gonna stick my phone number on mine in case

I had the same problem contacted DJI support and he thought it was the area in which I was flying. Came home charge the batteries put it up in the air again and all the issues were gone. My suggestion if that ever happens again just bring it right down take it home calibrate the imitation again and I feel that'll take care of your problem. He suggested any problems land it and go to another site and fly.

fans230ab463 Posted at 2017-9-14 06:38
I had the same problem contacted DJI support and he thought it was the area in which I was flying. Came home charge the batteries put it up in the air again and all the issues were gone. My suggestion if that ever happens again just bring it right down take it home calibrate the imitation again and I feel that'll take care of your problem. He suggested any problems land it and go to another site and fly.

Thats a good point - the area you are flying can have a dramatic effect (even though it seems fine at first)  - also if you calibrate in a "bad" area I would imagine it could still be off - Would be nice to be able to drop into a pure ATTI mode in cases like this where you could just manually fly it back and land (without needing the gps or compass) (like on the older Phantoms)

I recently updated the Spark firmware to V 01.00.0900 and had a little issue when flying in fairly close range.  I was about 20' from the controller photographing a river from the other side of the bridge when the craft skewed right.  I countered and it seemed okay.  I attributed that to the river and moving water below.  Then the next day I was flying and at about 200 feet away GPS signal dropped.  The drone took off.  I was at a clear altitude so it was no issue to recover, but it did this a few times on that flight.  Every time it ran away the GPS blipped out.  (I had a clear sky view and over 12 satellites and in rural Maine with no interference).  After landing I plugged into DJI Assistant 2 and tried to refresh the firmware.  Refresh was not successful.  I tried a downgrade and that seemed fine.  I took the craft for a test flight and it performed normally.  I'm not sure if there is a bug in the new software or not, but I'm staying with the .08 version for now.