Today I went to the nearby forest to get a shot at my home from 100m altitude.
Found a clearing there. But the spark was in opti mode and would not go higher than 5 meters.
How do I get it up where it can see the satellites? (Sport mode did not help).

You didn't have GPS only because you were in a forest? That is strange in my view. Nevertheless you could take off outside the forest and then fly over it, or is there a problem with that?

you could also go to the clearing and launch and fly from there.  remember that the forest may cause you to loose GPS and flying in ATTI mode must be taken seriously with 110% of your attention.

Yes, the catch is that I can't get over 5 meters because I can't get into gps mode, and I can't get to gps mode because I can't get over 5 meters.

There are houses around the forest. I can’t legally fly nearer than 150 meters to them.
The forest is about 200 x 400 meters.

I'm confident in flying manually, but the spark loves to interfere.
There is a path through the forest, where it is easier to get a gps lock. But it
almost got hit by a fast bicycle there, because it refused to move away from the path.
I always have OA disabled. But I forgot that I had used tripod mode earlier, which forces OA ON
and leaves it there after exit. I still forget that.

Wachtberger Posted at 2017-10-10 08:31
You didn't have GPS only because you were in a forest? That is strange in my view. Nevertheless you could take off outside the forest and then fly over it, or is there a problem with that?

naaa, that is a lot the case if to close to trees.
I was surprised, too.
I have the idea, that the GPS of the Spark is looking for specific sat's, first.
And after it found on of 'em, it knows the others, it has to look for.
Sometimes it helps, to switch on the phone GPS!

heliman Posted at 2017-10-10 09:02
There are houses around the forest. I can’t legally fly nearer than 150 meters to them.
The forest is about 200 x 400 meters.

Try with Phone-GPS on.
Seems to help the Spark to know where it is.
And set the RTH on the phone, then!

Allright, more details.
The clearing was a muddy hole, so I hand lauched the spark and flew it to the middle of the clearing.
Plan was to go straight up, get a gps fix, set homepoint, and continue to 100 meters.
But I was stuck at max 5 meters, in opti mode. Not enough satellites.
The trees are not tall, maybe 10-15 meters.
I will try the phone gps trick. Thanks1

"The trees are not tall, maybe 10-15 meters."

It's 2 to 3 times higher, as your flight altitude.
And how narrow is the "hole" in the forest?
Which sets the angle for GPS positioning.
I do not know for sure, but our Spark (all DJI drones?)  need "a couple" of GPS AND a couple of Glonass Satellites.
Thats why we need 9 , methinks, before we get the "green GPS" shown.
Anyway, today my Spark needed almost 2 minutes on the ground to get the GPS "Go"
One open side, a lake, 50m to the next trees.
But behind 2m to a forest.
So you may have to give it some more time.

S-e-ven Posted at 2017-10-10 09:05
naaa, that is a lot the case if to close to trees.
I was surprised, too.
I have the idea, that the GPS of the Spark is looking for specific sat's, first.

“I have the idea, that the GPS of the Spark is looking for specific sat's, first. ” - This is interesting, can you tell more about it?
According to mine and shared by others  experience there are units that are pretty quick in getting a GPS signal while for others it is very slow and this is not so much influenced by the environment.

I've tried with phone GPS and it did not work until the aircraft received a good GPS signal.

Ok for all of the above. But I can only report that not too long ago I have been flying in a dense forest where the space above my Spark was completely covered by tree branches. Nevertheless it had good GPS all the time I was flying there. I only crashed it into a tree flying backwards (no harm to Spark done) because I was too much focussed on my tablet screen for the action I was filming.

djiuser_gjLUHKA Posted at 2017-10-10 11:11
“I have the idea, that the GPS of the Spark is looking for specific sat's, first. ” - This is interesting, can you tell more about it?
According to mine and shared by others  experience there are units that are pretty quick in getting a GPS signal while for others it is very slow and this is not so much influenced by the environment.

Difficult, for me, to explain my thoughts.
GPS works mostly useful already with 4 sats, but if all 4 are close to each other and only on one side of the GPS receiver, it is not good enough for a RTH. Even if my phone tells me exactly my position, the drone wants "more", a second system, glonass, plus the one or the other extra sat.
Looking at the 9 sats, I think we get a weakish green GPS flight with 4 plus 5 sats from both systems.
But looking also on the fact that even a stabil 14+ sat flight can become a "no GPS" experience in a second, I think the CPU is eliminating sometimes sats with double signals if there are to many reflections and not enough input from all sides.
Which can happen easily between trees and even over water, if in a valley or such.

But maybe this are only weird thoughts and I am overthinking this.

Sorry, the limit will be activated automatically when there is no GPS signal, and you can not switch the drone to ATTI mode, so now maybe only move around to see if there is a place with fine GPS signal nearby could help.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-10 20:31
Sorry, the limit will be activated automatically when there is no GPS signal, and you can not switch the drone to ATTI mode, so now maybe only move around to see if there is a place with fine GPS signal nearby could help.

"No GPS signal"

DJI-Thor, how comes that our phones often, even in flight mode, still can pick our position precise, then?
Isn't it more a "not enough sats" kind of GPS signal?
Where "not enough" is a number, DJI has set for some/safety reasons?

I would also really like to understand how a drone in the air can get in a "no-GPS" -Situation, even if the GPS in the phone in flight modus just 50m below gives/finds a position for a RTH-point setting

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-10 20:31
Sorry, the limit will be activated automatically when there is no GPS signal, and you can not switch the drone to ATTI mode, so now maybe only move around to see if there is a place with fine GPS signal nearby could help.

Regarding the vision system of Spark I don’t understand well the following specifications:
Altitude Range        0-26 ft (0 - 8 m)
Operating Range        0-98 ft (0 - 30 m)
Can you explain with some example?

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-10 20:31
Sorry, the limit will be activated automatically when there is no GPS signal, and you can not switch the drone to ATTI mode, so now maybe only move around to see if there is a place with fine GPS signal nearby could help.

I'd also like to know why my $30 sat nav acquires a compass & GPS lock in 2-5 seconds, NEVER drops the lock whenever I'm in heavy traffic, surrounded by metal cars, various sources of magnetic interference & countless wifi signals. yet my $700 top brand DJI Spark, in an open field, loses all sense of direction & position & drifts off..with 16-18 sats visible?! .

It doesn't take a technician (which I am by the way, by trade) to figure out there is a serious issue with the Sparks as LOTS of people, myself included, are seeing this problem.

DJI really need to acknowledge & address this issue.

I tried again. With no phone gps trick, because I don’t see what I can do other than allowing the go app to use the iphone gps.
After hoverings around for 2 1/2 minute, limited at 5 m. altitude, the gps woke up, and I could continue ascending.
I stand in the black circle at the south side of the clearing.

I LOVE that picture - it was worth the effort.

According to the doc, max altitude is restricted to 5m when GPS signal is weak and Vision System is activated, but it goes to 30m when Vision System is inactivated.
I have not tried that (I have not been in a situation with no GPS and no ceiling) but something you could try.

heliman Posted at 2017-10-11 05:22
I tried again. With no phone gps trick, because I don’t see what I can do other than allowing the go app to use the iphone gps.
After hoverings around for 2 1/2 minute, limited at 5 m. altitude, the gps woke up, and I could continue ascending.
I stand in the black circle at the south side of the clearing.

Great picture!

Just for the record. The shot I was going for is this one, from 100 meters up.
I wanted to see my home, which is about 500 meters ahead. Flying in urban areas is not allowed.

heliman Posted at 2017-10-11 05:22
I tried again. With no phone gps trick, because I don’t see what I can do other than allowing the go app to use the iphone gps.
After hoverings around for 2 1/2 minute, limited at 5 m. altitude, the gps woke up, and I could continue ascending.
I stand in the black circle at the south side of the clearing.

WOW!... Great picture... Congrats!...

Heliman, please pay attention to the message from the app and I would recommend you fly your spark with a good GPS signal.

heliman Posted at 2017-10-11 05:22
I tried again. With no phone gps trick, because I don’t see what I can do other than allowing the go app to use the iphone gps.
After hoverings around for 2 1/2 minute, limited at 5 m. altitude, the gps woke up, and I could continue ascending.
I stand in the black circle at the south side of the clearing.

So the "clearing" is a 10m hole in a forest.
With my own GPS experience with the Spark and the trees around ~10(+) m high, I do not wonder that you did not get a quick GPS signal. Thick "green stuff" like this, around and over the Spark, seems to massivly disturb a good GPS signal


Btw: Nice Pictures ;-)

Yes, nice pictures!

Thanks. The spark is the first rc aircraft I own, which has gps or vision system. I can fly safely without it.
There ought to be a way to tell the spark that.
Fortunately the gps found a lock.

I bought the spark because my helicopters vibrate too much for a camera.
That’s where the spark shines!

And it shines bright for me :-)

heliman Posted at 2017-10-10 09:02
Yes, the catch is that I can't get over 5 meters because I can't get into gps mode, and I can't get to gps mode because I can't get over 5 meters.

There are houses around the forest. I can’t legally fly nearer than 150 meters to them.

In my experience such "holes" are not good places to fly from.

1. You will either not get a good GPS lock at all, or it will take a very long time.
    I wouldn't fly from such a place with less than 10 sats, otherwise your RTH may fail.

2. Even if you do manage to get enough sats to lock on and set, verify and/or reset your RTH point you will not see your drone once it goes past the first few trees and after that you are also likely to either have poor radio connection or lose it altogether (hence having a good sat lock and RTH point set).

I only moved it 2 meters from my position and could see it all the time, so I had no need for gps or opti.

I set home point when over the trees up and gps good, so I could get it back if it got out of sight or range.
The gps has not yet let me down under open sky.

"The gps has not yet let me down under open sky"

Oh, you will get there.

S-e-ven Posted at 2017-10-10 22:13
"No GPS signal"

DJI-Thor, how comes that our phones often, even in flight mode, still can pick our position precise, then?

If it is the environment issue, when the drone can not detect the GPS signal, it will switch to ATTI mode. For the most cases, if the drone suddenly turns to no GPS signal, it might due to the signal shielded, compass interference, or interference region like military region, and it is the GPS module's error.

ped078 Posted at 2017-10-10 22:48
I'd also like to know why my $30 sat nav acquires a compass & GPS lock in 2-5 seconds, NEVER drops the lock whenever I'm in heavy traffic, surrounded by metal cars, various sources of magnetic interference & countless wifi signals. yet my $700 top brand DJI Spark, in an open field, loses all sense of direction & position & drifts off..with 16-18 sats visible?! .

It doesn't take a technician (which I am by the way, by trade) to figure out there is a serious issue with the Sparks as LOTS of people, myself included, are seeing this problem.

Please refer to my answer on 30#. If it drops during flight, please try to ascend the drone manually to see if it regians the signal.

djiuser_gjLUHKA Posted at 2017-10-10 22:29
Regarding the vision system of Spark I don’t understand well the following specifications:
Altitude Range        0-26 ft (0 - 8 m)
Operating Range        0-98 ft (0 - 30 m)

Altitude range is the measurement altitude that the VPS; operating range is the accurate hovering range for VPS.

DJI Thor Posted at 2017-10-13 00:10
Please refer to my answer on 30#. If it drops during flight, please try to ascend the drone manually to see if it regians the signal.

Hi, it wasn't a remedy I was after, it was an inquiry as to why it's doing it in the first place.

Today I flew two batteries, taking off from the same spot in the forest.
Very little of the sky is visible from the takeoff point.
But getting gps lock and automatic home point was done in no time.

Worst case was the first flight, where there still was 97% battery left when both gps lock and homepoint was ready.
On the next flight, both things happpened while the battery indicator said 100%
I’m impressed.