My spark dropped out of the sky today and I am not sure why. I was flying with the controller and iphone I always have. I was about 5 min into my flight at about 110 ft, had not received any error messages prior, and was not making any agressive manuvers. I was actually just about to do a slow pan left and I received an error in yellow that said something along the lines of max motor speed reached. At that point I decided to bring it back home and it just started to drop out of the sky.
Here is the flight log, can anyone provide any inisght on what might have happened? Issues start about 4:40 into flight.  I am concerned about putting the drone back up until I figure it out.

http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/4LQZ23C3CPH1O0ZIKT73/

Appreciate any help!

I am fairly sure it was due to gravity.

Was the battery in the Spark?

S-e-ven Posted at 2018-2-11 10:05
Was the battery in the Spark?

Yes it did not lose power and was still flashing when i got to it.

You have snow in your area, how cold was/is it?
Any ice on the rotors?
Nice pictures, btw!

Sorry, I should have asked, not my job to publish your pictures.

There was snow on the ground but it was not snowing at all. Temp was about 28 F which i know is below recommended range but i have not had any issues prior even in colder temps. Battery was warm and i thought gtg.

was there any fog or similar? the air too moist?

Hiya,

Interesting case to analyse. I did not see any error msg in the file, your "error in yellow that said something along the lines of max motor speed reached" is not there.
When you replay your flight in the Go app do you see that message?

Btw, do you have mode 2 for the controls as default? just asking to be sure that i watch the right columns in the flight file

cheers JJB

JJBspark Posted at 2018-2-11 12:59
Hiya,

Interesting case to analyse. I did not see any error msg in the file, your "error in yellow that said something along the lines of max motor speed reached" is not there.

Hi JJB - The error message in yellow does not show on the DJI4 app when i replay it even though i know i read it before it went down.  It displayed something about max motor speed reached ,  it looked stable so i started to bring it back, and the message displayed a second time and it just started coming down.

Yes i use mode 2 for my controller setup

dj_dread Posted at 2018-2-11 12:06
was there any fog or similar? the air too moist?

no fog and did not seem moist in the air

Here is the video of it coming down today....that is the fun part right

"...max motor speed reached...", the ESC (Electronic Speed Control) might overheat and therefore, could not supply enough power to the motors to keep the AC in position. Spark is small and compact. Components that generates much heat, i.e. CPU, ESC and etc, are placed very close to each other inside a very tight airframe. Furthermore, there is not much/enough air intake vents to cool the heated components. This may be a major design fault in Spark, I think.

As the components heated up, all sorts of weird things can happen, e.g. signal breaking up, lost control, suddenly lost power and drop to the ground, flyaways and etc. These problems are often reported in this forum nearly everyday.
As I have suggested in other post, DJI should recall ALL the Spark. It is dangerous to fly. Will consumers continue to buy an iPhone/Android, that constantly crashes, black screen, hangup, overheated CPU and batteries??? An uncontrollable Drone is much more dangerous than using a defect mobile phone. DJI should look into the design fault (if any) in Spark and give each DJI Spark supporters a good replacement.

Ricky Aerial Photography Posted at 2018-2-11 17:23
"...max motor speed reached...", the ESC (Electronic Speed Control) might overheat and therefore, could not supply enough power to the motors to keep the AC in position. Spark is small and compact. Components that generates much heat, i.e. CPU, ESC and etc, are placed very close to each other inside a very tight airframe. Furthermore, there is not much/enough air intake vents to cool the heated components. This may be a major design fault in Spark, I think.

As the components heated up, all sorts of weird things can happen, e.g. signal breaking up, lost control, suddenly lost power and drop to the ground, flyaways and etc. These problems are often reported in this forum nearly everyday.

It was -4 C so would the ESC still overheat when it's that cold out?  

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-11 16:13
Here is the video of it coming down today....that is the fun part right
https://youtu.be/rTvtp6lIcNo

Thats what made me ask for "ice on the rotors"
The record does show a quick descend. No warnings, though
Plus a motor overload (Spark trying to keep up with running motors quicker), no warning either

Ricky Aerial Photography Posted at 2018-2-11 17:23
"...max motor speed reached...", the ESC (Electronic Speed Control) might overheat and therefore, could not supply enough power to the motors to keep the AC in position. Spark is small and compact. Components that generates much heat, i.e. CPU, ESC and etc, are placed very close to each other inside a very tight airframe. Furthermore, there is not much/enough air intake vents to cool the heated components. This may be a major design fault in Spark, I think.

As the components heated up, all sorts of weird things can happen, e.g. signal breaking up, lost control, suddenly lost power and drop to the ground, flyaways and etc. These problems are often reported in this forum nearly everyday.

10-15A, in the last part of the flight

I think, the battery 'caught a flu' ;-)

Ricky Aerial Photography Posted at 2018-2-11 17:23
"...max motor speed reached...", the ESC (Electronic Speed Control) might overheat and therefore, could not supply enough power to the motors to keep the AC in position. Spark is small and compact. Components that generates much heat, i.e. CPU, ESC and etc, are placed very close to each other inside a very tight airframe. Furthermore, there is not much/enough air intake vents to cool the heated components. This may be a major design fault in Spark, I think.

As the components heated up, all sorts of weird things can happen, e.g. signal breaking up, lost control, suddenly lost power and drop to the ground, flyaways and etc. These problems are often reported in this forum nearly everyday.

ESCs in Spark are below the motors in the arms. Pretty much the best place for cooling. They also tend to die very early in a lifetime of an AC in case they are bad.

eYeSkYeYe Posted at 2018-2-11 10:02
I am fairly sure it was due to gravity.

I am sorry to hear about this case. Please contact our support to start a ticket and send your drone in, we will help to make data analysis for this crash and find out the reason. Here’s the link to contact us: http://www.dji.com/support. We will do our best to help this out.

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-11 18:24
It was -4 C so would the ESC still overheat when it's that cold out?

If it's overheating when the ambient temperature is below zero Celsius, I'd be really anxious about flying it in the summer

Most probably the props frozed up with the condensation and that reduced the lift, increasing motor speed leading to "max motor error" which will reduce the power output of the motors and caused the spark to descend quickly.

DJT_MVSP Posted at 2018-2-12 07:32
Most probably the props frozed up with the condensation and that reduced the lift, increasing motor speed leading to "max motor error" which will reduce the power output of the motors and caused the spark to descend quickly.

Appreciate the response MVSP but It seemed pretty dry out when I was flying. There was no snow and i did not notice any mist or it being moist in the air.

In the flight file a error "isNotEnoughForce" is set to True, end of the flight. (high current is drawn from the battery)
Same for the error "isFanCurrentInAbnormalState", set to True at 2018/02/11 17:12:33.

But i see that the RC controls are 100% all directions end of the flight, why full throttle down ? if you want to stop the descend it should read 100% up.

cheers JJB

JJBspark Posted at 2018-2-12 08:05
In the flight file a error "isNotEnoughForce" is set to True, end of the flight. (high current is drawn from the battery)
Same for the error "isFanCurrentInAbnormalState", set to True at 2018/02/11 17:12:33.

Hello.... need a beta tester for this sexy software?

Blériot53 Posted at 2018-2-12 00:39
If it's overheating when the ambient temperature is below zero Celsius, I'd be really anxious about flying it in the summer

It's definitely a reason to set up for a repair.

JJBspark Posted at 2018-2-12 08:05
In the flight file a error "isNotEnoughForce" is set to True, end of the flight. (high current is drawn from the battery)
Same for the error "isFanCurrentInAbnormalState", set to True at 2018/02/11 17:12:33.

At the end of the flight i pulled both sticks down and inwards to kill the motor.  Prior to that I was trying to control and ascent was up at 100% Once it kept dropping i started to aim into a yard because it was going to land on a house.  once over the yard and down to like 20ft I killed the engines.

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-12 09:27
At the end of the flight i pulled both sticks down and inwards to kill the motor.  Prior to that I was trying to control and ascent was up at 100% Once it kept dropping i started to aim into a yard because it was going to land on a house.  once over the yard and down to like 20ft I killed the engines.

This response is for JBB

DJI-Mark Posted at 2018-2-12 08:14
It's definitely a reason to set up for a repair.

Hi DJI Mark -

I appreciate you chiming in and appreciate your help for sure but am not super stoked to have to send my bird back in already.  The order process and customer service was painful. I ordered on 12/29 expecting one day before it shipped as the site said and it took two weeks to get the drone.  Once it arrived it was missing the microSD card which i just received at the end of last week.  And just under a month after arrival it looks like i need to send it in.  I love DJI products but man this has been a horrible experience for someone that was so geeked to be getting a new bird.

I have two questions:
Do i just fill out this to get started? http://www.dji.com/support?
Do you have any idea how long i may be without my drone so I can plan?

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-12 09:43
Hi DJI Mark -

I appreciate you chiming in and appreciate your help for sure but am not super stoked to have to send my bird back in already.  The order process and customer service was painful. I ordered on 12/29 expecting one day before it shipped as the site said and it took two weeks to get the drone.  Once it arrived it was missing the microSD card which i just received at the end of last week.  And just under a month after arrival it looks like i need to send it in.  I love DJI products but man this has been a horrible experience for someone that was so geeked to be getting a new bird.

Please click on the Repair Services area on that webpage. It will  then open up to Online Repair Request. You will then be guided through the process. Time frame wise, I do not have a timeline but I know that there is no backlog so it should be a quick process.

DJI-Mark Posted at 2018-2-12 15:52
Please click on the Repair Services area on that webpage. It will  then open up to Online Repair Request. You will then be guided through the process. Time frame wise, I do not have a timeline but I know that there is no backlog so it should be a quick process.

Great, thank you DJI Mark

When looking at the logs, I came across the same exact changes in status that you did in regards to changing values for "isNotEnoughForce" and "isFanCurrentinAbnormalState".

The interesting thing that I noticed was that on the same exact line in the log file as the "isNotEnoughForce" value changes from False to True, the "CUSTOM.isVideo" value goes from blank to "Recording".  This occurs at "2018/02/11 17:12:52"

I also noticed that at the same exact time the "isFanCurrentInAbnormalState" value changes from false to true, the value for "HOME.heightLimitStatus" changes from "NonLimit" to "AvoidGround".  Note that this event occurs about 18 seconds (2018/02/11 17:12:34) before the other event.

I'm not sure exactly what these things mean, but it seems like there is a good chance they may be related to the sudden altitude loss of the aircraft.

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-11 16:13
Here is the video of it coming down today....that is the fun part right
https://youtu.be/rTvtp6lIcNo

Hi,
As you was not far away during the more or less controlled drop, did you hear the Spark motors screaming louder like at full climb?
Did you tested the Spark after when dry and a fresh battery?

eYeSkYeYe Posted at 2018-2-11 10:02
I am fairly sure it was due to gravity.

That's a good guess.....

frankengels Posted at 2018-2-13 10:39
Hi,
As you was not far away during the more or less controlled drop, did you hear the Spark motors screaming louder like at full climb?
Did you tested the Spark after when dry and a fresh battery?

No, I could hear it but i would not say it was screaming. It sounded more or less like when the power is increasing, but nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary.
It did not look like it got moisture in it, even though it landed in some deep snow. All appeared external and I wiped it off immediately and then when I got home i dried it pretty well, took the props off, and let it sit out with a fan on it just in case. I then took it out and put it back up in my backyard. I have a good amount of space in case there was another incident.  After making sure it was behaving normally i took it up to 155 ft and flew it for 10 min. The temp was a little warmer but still below 0 C.  I did not put it in sport mode but covered over 1500 ft and ascended and descended a few times. All seemed normal.  It is supposed to warm up this weekend to around 6 C tomorrow  so I am going to try to get out in a field and throw on sport mode.

JJLMSU Posted at 2018-2-14 19:42
No, I could hear it but i would not say it was screaming. It sounded more or less like when the power is increasing, but nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary.
It did not look like it got moisture in it, even though it landed in some deep snow. All appeared external and I wiped it off immediately and then when I got home i dried it pretty well, took the props off, and let it sit out with a fan on it just in case. I then took it out and put it back up in my backyard. I have a good amount of space in case there was another incident.  After making sure it was behaving normally i took it up to 155 ft and flew it for 10 min. The temp was a little warmer but still below 0 C.  I did not put it in sport mode but covered over 1500 ft and ascended and descended a few times. All seemed normal.  It is supposed to warm up this weekend to around 6 C tomorrow  so I am going to try to get out in a field and throw on sport mode.

If I am correctly interpreting the all the information of this thread, I would go for Propeller Icing.

Here a picture of Propeller Icing of my Mavic Pro. The ice was only on the propellers, nowhere on the body nor moisture.
(was aware that this could happen, prepared and did only a very short flight)

certainly it was ice on the propellers..  Spark was trying as hard as it could to stay up but just couldn't..

while you have this problem, always check the left botton circular map to see if the SPARK maintains the horizon in a straight line . This is indicated in GREEN color. If it doesnt appear to be straight during flight, IMU and thereafter compass calibration is recommended.

LouisP Posted at 2018-2-15 12:16
certainly it was ice on the propellers..  Spark was trying as hard as it could to stay up but just couldn't..

Yeah sure, we can install the de-icing accessory from DJI.