I really love and loved my Phantom 4, I had it in the closet for about a year and today or last night I updated the firmware to the latest version.

This morning I took it out to take some pictures of an event. I was abit weary about flying over people so I decided not to but fly straight up, tilt the camera and come right back down.

I initated the props and off I went to about 10m, then all of a sudden the P4 flys erratically without touching the controller. So I immediately tried to take it down, turned off the aircraft and controller and then restarted the aircraft and controller. Second time round, I managed to go about 25m and came back down, OK.

About 2 hours later, a friend of mine was fascinated with the drone and wanted a go.

I set all things up and he did a basic lift-off, back and forward and then went abit higher and then BAAM, without touching the controller, the P4 goes mad, hits the wall, crashes and I frantically try to turn off the motors, but the damage was already done.

Thank GOD, nobody was hit or hurt. I have flown my P4 many times, so what just happened? I am out of warranty, but this thing cost me €1600 with 3 batteries, 1 battery is already dead.

Did this happen to anyone else recently?

Regards
DJI-RAY

Hi Ray, how close were you to the wall when you started the drone?
Could it have been partially blocking GPS signals?  One of the common problems with flyaway and erratic behaviour is sudden connection to additional GPS satellites, the drone gets a better signal and believes it's out of position, tries to correct and OOOPS where did that wall come from...

Plank! Posted at 2018-6-14 23:33
Hi Ray, how close were you to the wall when you started the drone?
Could it have been partially blocking GPS signals?  One of the common problems with flyaway and erratic behaviour is sudden connection to additional GPS satellites, the drone gets a better signal and believes it's out of position, tries to correct and OOOPS where did that wall come from...

I was outside, the wall was about 3m away. I have lifted off from near walls before without problems.

Plank! Posted at 2018-6-14 23:33
Hi Ray, how close were you to the wall when you started the drone?
Could it have been partially blocking GPS signals?  One of the common problems with flyaway and erratic behaviour is sudden connection to additional GPS satellites, the drone gets a better signal and believes it's out of position, tries to correct and OOOPS where did that wall come from...

That does seem to be what happened here.

The wall probably had some steel in it that affected the compass.

If you upload the logs then we might be able to work it out...
http://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/upload/

Hi RAY, we're sorry for hearing the accident. I'm afraid that data analysis is not available if the unit has been out of warranty. Charge repair service might be applied, please kindly note and understand.

I wouldn't be particularly concerned about the wall or GPS.
Those things don't make the Phantom zoom away as you described.
Neither does updating firmware.
Without flight data you are only going to get people making guesses and most are going to be quite wrong.
If you want to know what actually happened, go to the link in post #5 and upload your flight record.
Come back and post a link to the report it shows.

One important question:  What was the surface you launched from?
Was it reinforced concrete perhaps?
Messing up your compass by launching from a steel or reinforced concrete surface does cause the symptoms you describe.