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New DJI Spark Flaw - Return to home failed! :)
1723 7 2019-9-16
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aw.847.aw
lvl.1
Flight distance : 17848 ft
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Hey all!

Here mostly to vent my frustrations and see what support /advice / help I can actually get from anyone including DJI. Thus far my experience with DJI has been very poor to say the least. Anyways, I picked up a Spark 2 weeks ago. After spending hours on the impossible known buggy android update that apparently can brick your controller, I managed to get the unit and everything flying and functioning....

11th flight in on this particular unit, I went to go take some quick shots for a client but figured I'd do a warm up flight first. Set home point (yes actually heard the lady say home point set and saw confirmation on screen), and took off. I got 500m distance away at only a few meters height down the driveway... lost signal hard and the screen went black and white. Attempted to get return to home to kick in for a few agonizing minutes or at least get the thing started in the right direction home as I had a feeling it was going down due to glitching and not indicating returning to home ran out to find the thing and long story short the thing is gone somewhere in a swamp or sourrounding farm field either it landed itself or just came down hard. I used the find my drone function and as expected had zero luck finding my unit in or around the area where the last gps call out came from.

I've read that the spark gps modules are weak compared to the most of the other DJI units and the fact that my unit didn't make it back to the homepoint or seemingly try to make it home is extremely concerning and makes me wonder if I ended up with a lemon unit or the Sparks hardware itself is inherently flawed. I've started a warranty claim after an excruciating hour and a half on the phone and 2 dropped calls while on hold but I'm not holding my breath due to some of the horror stories I've heard. Do you guys think I should hold out for a warranty replacement, try my luck with purchasing another new unit, or just buckle down and go for the mavic pro and pray and hope this doesn't happen again?

The real kicker was, some local police actually came by and stopped to ask why I was suspiciously on the side of this random country road rooting around in other peoples ditches and fields, I told them I dropped my phone while on a walk as to not arouse suspicion and get landed with a few unsafe UAV operator BS citations/trespass tickets. I've had zero issues in the past with any of my phantoms, and quite literally this is pretty close to the worst case scenario that could happen here, a return to home fly away with an unknown destination. Despite all this, I feel I'm extremely fortunate that the craft gave up during a rural flight amongst 100 acre farm properties and not in the busy neighbourhood with houses all crammed together where I was flying in last night.

*closing note - this being one of my most unforseen, sktechy, and potentially devastating rc incidents in my 25 years of RC, has opened my my eyes to these crafts even with multiple previous years of other multirotor and dji projucts. These sort of instances really beg the question, why arent there failsafes in place for these crafts if the soft failsafes won't kick in properly? It'd be much better to essentially knock the units out of the sky in place in a controlled fashion as opposed have to run the risk of having them wander off for good if their RTH function ins't working, in this apparent return to home flyaway situation (or whatever you want to call it)?

2019-9-16
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Gimpy
Second Officer
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RTH generally works well, though there are circumstances where it can fail for various reasons. It's difficult to have an opinion on your specific case without knowing more about what happened, though. If you retrieve the flight log from your phone, post it to PhantomHelp using these instructions, and then post a link to it here we may be able to shed more light on what happened.
2019-9-16
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DJI Diana
Administrator
Flight distance : 2408 ft

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Hi, we're sorry for the unpleasant experience. Could you tell us your case number? We'd like to check the exact status and try our best to help. We tried to check it using your Forum account but it seems that we can't see any information. Thank you in advance.
2019-9-16
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aw.847.aw
lvl.1
Flight distance : 17848 ft
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My case number is CAS-3557966-T8P9W5
2019-9-18
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aw.847.aw
lvl.1
Flight distance : 17848 ft
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Update-- all spark users beware!!!!! , I've done some digging and it seems that there are multiple cases of faulty GPS modules on certain Spark units, this was confirmed by my flight log by customer support.
Customer support referenced powerlines in the vicinity of my flight?? and said the GPS module went wacko AND HAS REFUSED TO REPLACE THE UNIT. I've flown a phantom 3 and 4 hundreds of times at that exact location and no bug outs whatsoever go figure.....

I'm still waiting on a call back at this point from someone from customer support with the case number CAS-3557966-T8P9W5 as quite frankly I'm ticked that Dji has acknowledged a hardware based flight system failure and won't do anything about it.

I'm seriously bummed now.... what to do....
2019-9-18
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DJI Diana
Administrator
Flight distance : 2408 ft

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aw.847.aw@gmail Posted at 9-18 15:49
Update-- all spark users beware!!!!! , I've done some digging and it seems that there are multiple cases of faulty GPS modules on certain Spark units, this was confirmed by my flight log by customer support.
Customer support referenced powerlines in the vicinity of my flight?? and said the GPS module went wacko AND HAS REFUSED TO REPLACE THE UNIT. I've flown a phantom 3 and 4 hundreds of times at that exact location and no bug outs whatsoever go figure.....

Thank you for the case number, per the data analysis, there is a high voltage tower nearby, no matter which drone, we never recommend to fly near areas with magnetic interference such as the high voltage lines, the warranty service cannot be provided under your case. Appreciate your understanding.
GTScreenshot_20190919_125156.png
2019-9-18
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aw.847.aw
lvl.1
Flight distance : 17848 ft
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Your quoted reference from your manual is vague and conveniently does not provide specific setback parameters for WIFI, bluetooth, utilities etc which for you as a manufacturer can be used as a blanket reason not to cover warranty claims... My flight was over 100 meters away from any such powerlines/utilities and the RF noise readout on the DJI GO app as well as my third party RF noise scanner picked up little to no interference within the bands that the Spark system uses... furthermore your customer support in the past noted I should have no issues whatsoever if such a distance is maintained and i'm not flying literally beside them...
Seems like a pretty shady situation you guys have going on here... You could easily deny any warranty claims with compass or flight systems errors by simply stating flight conditions were near RF noise creating devices such as cell phones, WIFI routers etc. and we all know too well that there is simply no avoiding these devices unless you're in the middle of no where.

This entire experience with this DJI unit has left an extremely sour taste in my mouth and it seriously makes me question the quality and safety of your products as well as your integrity as a manufacturer. Quite honestly I've received better customer service from support from the likes of Bangood and Hobbyking which is really quite laughable and has left me looking to replace my remaining DJI lineup with an alternative lineup of quality systems to continue my hobby as well as my work with... I don't know who in their right mind would knowingly use products that can potentially fly away by themselves with little to no failsafe redundancy available, potentially causing injury or property damage, just because a cell phone or powerlines are nearby LOL. WHAT A BS EXCUSE sidenote: anyone need a phantom 3 or phantom 4 for cheap? I'm simply not interested in my other DJI products meeting the same fate as my poor Spark  
2019-9-19
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Gimpy
Second Officer
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aw.847.aw@gmail Posted at 9-18 15:49
Update-- all spark users beware!!!!! , I've done some digging and it seems that there are multiple cases of faulty GPS modules on certain Spark units, this was confirmed by my flight log by customer support.
Customer support referenced powerlines in the vicinity of my flight?? and said the GPS module went wacko AND HAS REFUSED TO REPLACE THE UNIT. I've flown a phantom 3 and 4 hundreds of times at that exact location and no bug outs whatsoever go figure.....

What to do? Well, you could still post the flight log as I suggested earlier, but only if you want us to see and judge for ourselves what happened.

As for replacing your supposed fleet of DJI aircraft (though curiously, only a Spark is associated with your account), that's not really a credible threat to anyone, least of all DJI. However, if you really do own a Phantom 3 and 4 and want to sell them "cheap", you'll have no trouble.
2019-9-22
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