I have a Spark that appears to be effectively bricked. The current immediate symptoms are that I turn on the Spark, it does it's normal startup routine, sounds fine... then the status LEDs start quickly (fast) flashing yellow. Any battery button function except ON and OFF fail to be recognized. This worked fine before the steps listed below... so yesterday I could reset WiFi, change from remote to smartphone (Samsung S7 Android), etc. without issue. I was able to do press-and-hold for 3 seconds, 6 seconds, and 9 seconds to get all three battery button functions... today that no longer works... I can press and hold the battery for a long time, nothing. But ON and OFF work great... press, press-hold... that works fine for ON and OFF.

Here is what led to the above symptoms...

• Things were fine, all functions were working great. Yesterday I had changed both the WiFi password and SSID for both the Spark itself as well as the Remote Controller... that worked create. So like the Spark had myspark and the remote controller had mysparkrc. Note that I obviously could not see both the Spark's and the remote's SSID at the same time... first I changed the Spark's SSID/password, then I switched to remote and changed its SSID/password.
• Today the Spark started out being paired with the Remote Controller, and my Android phone was paired with the Remote Controller. Therefore only the remote SSID was visible. I wanted to change the Spark password to be longer, so I pressed and held the battery button for 6+ seconds to hear the beeps which disconnected the remote from the Spark and made the Spark's SSID directly visible.
• I then connected the DJI App to the Spark. The remote was still on but was not interfering with anything from what i could see. I probably should have turned it off... but I didn't.
• While the App was connected to the Spark, I went to the App's WiFi settings and changed the password to be 63 characters long. It acccepted it just fine, and it made the change.
• I was able to reconnect to the Spark using the same SSID with the new longer 63 character password. That worked fine at first.
• Next I wanted to change the Remote Controller's password to be 63 characters so I pressed and held Spark battery button for +3 seconds to enter remote/Spark pairing mode. I then pressed the 3 buttons on the remote for it to enter the pairing mode... but it failed. (Or it paired here... I can't remember, and eventualy failed... unfortunatelly I can't remember... )
• I could see the remote controller's WiFi SSID and not the Spark's. I started the App to connect with the remote controller which connected successfully to the controller. I then used the App to change the password to 63 characters... the app reported a failure when I clicked apply, but when I exited the app and tried again, it worked. Not sure what happened here.
  

After the above, I could no longer connect to the Spark via either the remote controller or the smartpone. The Spark SSID never appears. As mentioned above, the Spark's Battery Button functions do not work at all. The Spark starts up just fine, sounds fine, then blinks yellow fast, but nothing works after that... I can only turn it off at that point. ON and OFF work fine. But Battery Functions for pressing and holding for +3 seconds (remote/Spark pairing), +6 seconds (switch from remote to smartphone), and +9 seconds (reset Spark WiFi) all fail to do anything... pressing-and-holding have no effect. No beep is heard, nothing.

I tried using DJI Assistent... from there I tried Refresh Firmware and Reset to Factory Defaults... both features seemed to completely successfully, but nothing changes... battery button functions on the Spark (after it is ON) where you press-and-hold for +3, +6, +9 seconds all fail... nothing is heard when I press and hold.

The only thing I notice is the first time I press and hold, I hear the fan slow down a little bit, then speed up (it's very subtle but I'm not sure if that's normal so that's why I wanted to share that information). That is only the first time. If I press and hold again, nothing happens to the fan noise... stays steady and there is no beep to enter any of those functions.

Even though the Spark enters fast yellow blinking, I tried entering pairing on the remote, but it fails to do anything.

In DJI Assistant, if i click on the WiFi settings, after a few seconds red text will appear saying "Failed to read..." so it does not show me the current SSID/password for the Spark, those fields stay blank in DJI Assistant.

Because the battery button functions all seem related to WiFi, and since the DJI Assistant seems to work fine for firmware refresh and factory reset, it seems like the Spark is somewhat working internally but it seems like WiFi-related functionality is blocked. It makes me wonder if DJI Spark has a separate WiFi module internally which has firmware that might have choked on my long password... that's just a guess... I assume if the App allows me to enter it, 63 characters should be fine.

Does anyone know if there's a "stronger" or "harder" form of true factory reset? Something not dependant on soft button pushes? I'd like to revive the unit if possible. I just picked this up the other day and seems stuck in configuration tasks since initially getting it setup. Finally it was working, I went to make the passwords more secure, and now the Spark seems bricked... almost like it as a whole is not bricked, but as if internally the wifi module is bricked or something.

I hope someone has suggestions. So much time spent setting this thing up and now it's effectivelly broken for unknown reasons.

Thank you.

Could you please try to refresh the firmware of the drone again, then check the WiFi Settings via DJI Assistant 2? If it is the same, please shoot a video about all the issues for better assistance.

DJI Diana Posted at 2017-10-9 02:47
Could you please try to refresh the firmware of the drone again, then check the WiFi Settings via DJI Assistant 2? If it is the same, please shoot a video about all the issues for better assistance.

I used using DJI Assistant 2 many times to both refresh the firmware as well as perform a factory reset, but the problem persists.

DJIUser777 Posted at 2017-10-9 08:15

It sounds strange, could you please provide a video about all of the issues for better assistance? I'd like to forward it to our engineers to check it.

A follow-up on this... I discussed this issue with DJI support who gave me a shipping label to send them the Spark and its remote. They received it and assessed there was some issue and considered my unit under warranty and shipped me a new Spark and new remote which now works fine.

I asked them about the 63 character WiFi password length and they said that a password as long as 63 characters presents some concern and that I should limit the password to be 8 to 16 characters. Once receiving the new Spark/remote, I changed the remote and Spark passwords and SSIDs again, this time the passwords were 16 characters which has been working fine.

Overall the DJI support was very good. The shipping was UPS ground and I figure for a Spark which failed just after purchase as mine had, it would have been nice to see at least a 2-day air label if not overnight. Ground takes a few days, then DJI has the Spark for a few days, then it comes back ground taking another few days. Overall I was without the unit for almost 2 weeks. Not bad but not stellar either. I'm just glad they fixed things and got it back to me.

I've experienced about 7 flights so far... it's a lot of fun, nice video too.