Today I flew in the forest with my new Spark drone. When battery discharged to 30% I descent drone and start flying near myself to discharge it to 15-20%. But suddenly it start ascend right into the tree and only my 3-year experience flying P2 helps me to avoid crash. The question is: how to PERMANENTLY disable this RTH bug(feature) so Spark will just start descent like my good old Phantom2 in case of low battery?

You can’t set the failsafe option to hover or land. Hopefully dji will add this features
You can only enable „return to home at current altitude“.
But this is no solution for every situation.

If flying the craft in Gesture mode, the RTH will behave the same way.  If you travel some distance from home point, the craft will engage RTH if/when battery gets low enough, and it will ascend up into the sky (or whatever is above).

Given the contents of the manual and our conversations within this forum, we know what to expect from this "feature" and we can fly safely to avoid these circumstances.

Though I would like to see an alteration of this behavior if in Gesture mode:  I would like to see RTH behave as if the craft were always in proximity of home point.

Charles Adams Posted at 2017-9-4 12:10
If flying the craft in Gesture mode, the RTH will behave the same way.  If you travel some distance from home point, the craft will engage RTH if/when battery gets low enough, and it will ascend up into the sky (or whatever is above).

Given the contents of the manual and our conversations within this forum, we know what to expect from this "feature" and we can fly safely to avoid these circumstances.

This will happen soon I am sure Charles, it has to do as its blatantly obviously something that wasn't thought of in the design of the Spark.

I think pause button can be your best friend in that situation.

Isn't there a 10 second swipe warning on the screen to cancel RTH?

QuanthonyTrang Posted at 2017-9-4 18:05
Isn't there a 10 second swipe warning on the screen to cancel RTH?

There is a means to cancel in the app, but no means if you are flying without app and remote.

Charles Adams Posted at 2017-9-4 18:49
There is a means to cancel in the app, but no means if you are flying without app and remote.

It was always not suggest and not encourage to fly Spark without connecting the app or RC.

Spark doesn't have the feature to set the reaction when the RC signal is lost and smart RTH when remaining battery is only enough for RTH. But you can cancel it when low battery RTH attempts to initiate, you can refer to the manual.

QuanthonyTrang Posted at 2017-9-4 18:05
Isn't there a 10 second swipe warning on the screen to cancel RTH?

I flew in 5 meter of me and watched my drone not screen. When RTH text appears I pressed cancel but it still start to ascend. Anyway, this is craziest feature I've ever seen and I want to disable it. I don't want my drone flying up without my permission or signal lost. DJI please respond!

If you activate the option "RTH at current altitude" it won't fly up. This is not activated in the default settings.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-9-4 23:13
Spark doesn't have the feature to set the reaction when the RC signal is lost and smart RTH when remaining battery is only enough for RTH. But you can cancel it when low battery RTH attempts to initiate, you can refer to the manual.[view_image]

You can cancel it.. when a device is connected. But you can fly without a connected device.

Either Dji will not allow to start without a connected device or dji will change the behavior or add options for failsafe when no device is connected.
A drone that is flying autonomously to a point that was setted several minutes ago and you cant stop it is not the correct solution.

Another question..will it do a rth also when flying indoors?

return to home at current altitude whenever  indoors or otherwise flighing under something

Someday i fly with a smartphone and taking helix quick shoot... suddenly my spark out of range and across under big tree without crash. My spark comeback with RTH, fly high 30m and save from the tree.
I just guess if RTH with current altitude will be crash

Ok. One simple example. Our Spark take off to 2meters in the forest (maybe it's a arch of trees) and we switch it to "active track mode" to follow us. We riding a bicycle. Spark start following us, we put RC in the pocket. When battery discharged to 30% Spark start to ascend right into the trees and crashes because we can't hear "low battery" warning. What will be more safe in this case? Fly up or just land where it is? I think answer is obvious. Why we have this option in Phantom2 and we haven't it now 4 years later? Please follow our request to DJI engineers.

Dirk52 Posted at 2017-9-4 23:42
You can cancel it.. when a device is connected. But you can fly without a connected device.

Either Dji will not allow to start without a connected device or dji will change the behavior or add options for failsafe when no device is connected.

Thanks for your feedback, hope it could be released in the future.
For the question that you asked, it depends. In most case, there is no GPS signal indoor, Homepoint will not be recorded, the drone can not return to home. If there is fine GPS signal, things work like the manual mentions.  And please kindly note that when there is no GPS signal before you take off, the altitude will be limited:

Pashi Posted at 2017-9-5 03:14
Ok. One simple example. Our Spark take off to 2meters in the forest (maybe it's a arch of trees) and we switch it to "active track mode" to follow us. We riding a bicycle. Spark start following us, we put RC in the pocket. When battery discharged to 30% Spark start to ascend right into the trees and crashes because we can't hear "low battery" warning. What will be more safe in this case? Fly up or just land where it is? I think answer is obvious. Why we have this option in Phantom2 and we haven't it now 4 years later? Please follow our request to DJI engineers.

Pashi,

I think the answer has already been provided a couple of times, but you don't seem to be listening.

Maybe if I more specifically point you to the feature, you will understand better.

When you are connected to your Spark in the DJI Go 4 app, go into the settings by hitting the "..." in the upper right hand corner.  Select the "Main Controller Settings" by pressing on the top icon on the left that looks like an icon of a quadcopter.   Once there you should see an option called "RTH at Current Altitude".  If you turn this ON, then the Spark will NOT gain altitude when it does an automatic RTH.  It will stay at it's current altitude when it goes to return to its RTH point.

The other option you could choose would be to turn the "RTH at Current Altitude" OFF and then adjust the "Return-to-Home Altitude" to a height that you determine to be safe for the particular situation you  are in for this particular flight.

Additionally, further down in this menu, there is a "Set Max Flight Altitude".  This is another option you could potentially set to allow you to have further control over the safety of your Spark in a given situation.

In short, I believe that DJI have given you the tools to keep your Spark safe in the situation you described if you will just have a look and adjust them as necessary to your particular situation.

Yes, life can be much easier if one takes the time to read the manual and to get aquainted to a new vessel. ;-)

Kloo Gee, thanks for explaning, it's good that it will not ascend and land if distance is greater than 20 meters but I want totally turn off any automatic features caused by low power. Only FailSafe when signal is lost. Above I explained why - because this feature almost crashes my Spark into the tree.Wachtberger, I had read manual maybe 5 times. But still there's no option that I'm talking about.
Thanks to everybody, I'm waiting for DJI engineer's answer.

I do agree, it would be good for DJI to allow us to control if we want an RTH at all.  Right now, for the battery settings there are 3 thresholds the Spark takes actions upon.  Only the first one is exposed in the DJI Go 4 app right now for the Spark.  If you look in the battery settings, there is a "Low Battery Warning" setting that is defaulted to 30.  This just gives you a warning in the app that the battery is getting low.  Then at 15%, the Spark tries to initiate an RTH, but gives you 10 seconds to cancel it.   If you cancel the auto RTH, then at 10% battery level, the Spark tries to land immediately where it is currently located at.  

It would be good if the DJI Go 4 app interface exposed these additional parameters and allowed a user to choose what action to take at each of them.

p.s. If you are somewhat of a geek, it is possible to change the battery levels these occur at with a small edit to a file that is installed with DJI Assistant 2.  However, this is only for the technical types that are willing to take ownership of what they change.  I'm sure DJI would not be willing provide support if you crashed or lost your drone as a result of changing these parameters.

Kloo Gee Posted at 2017-9-5 06:50
I do agree, it would be good for DJI to allow us to control if we want an RTH at all.  Right now, for the battery settings there are 3 thresholds the Spark takes actions upon.  Only the first one is exposed in the DJI Go 4 app right now for the Spark.  If you look in the battery settings, there is a "Low Battery Warning" setting that is defaulted to 30.  This just gives you a warning in the app that the battery is getting low.  Then at 15%, the Spark tries to initiate an RTH, but gives you 10 seconds to cancel it.   If you cancel the auto RTH, then at 10% battery level, the Spark tries to land immediately where it is currently located at.  

It would be good if the DJI Go 4 app interface exposed these additional parameters and allowed a user to choose what action to take at each of them.

Dji need just to unlock the options like on all other drones.
There you can set low battery, critical battery, hover or land for failsafe, etc.

They have to stop the "spark is a beginner drone and you get what you pay for". When you buy a old P3S (cheaper than the Spark) you can set all these settings, you can even use more intelligent flight modes like waypoints, follow me or ioc.

When i bought my spark I (was so dumb and) believed that the spark owns all the normal modes like ALL the other drones from Dji and you will get the Quickshots mode on top...Unforunately i was wrong. You get a reduced drone.

The title of this thread is totally misleading.  It is not a dangerous feature.  It's a feature you just need to be aware of and then fly the drone by it's particular parameters.  

Kloo Gee, right, already set low battery warning to 15%. Usually I prefer to land my drone at 25%, not less.
Dirk52, you're not right. Spark is amazing piece of hitech and I really love it. It have few cons but seems DJI guys working hard. One thing that very disappointing for me is CE mode in Russia so Spark fly only 100 meters away. I think DJI must give us to decide which mode we want to choose.