I want to know as many have reported issues about losing connection or losing the Mavic Mini for various reasons caused by technical issues to pilot errors  Let’s find out how many it is, drop your experience below the video (many have done it already)

Im seeing lots of posts where pilots are taking off without enough satellites connected.

The answer is YES and NO.

YES, at around 11 minutes into the flight below the Mini dropped from the sky, full throttle to ascend made no difference.  I was resigned to seeing it disappear into the water.  At -11 ft (don't know why its a minus) the sensor detected the water and it "bounced" away from the water with about 2ft to spare.  I regained some control and managed to get it back and land it so NO, I still have it, but its going back to DJI.  Either the Mini or the battery is faulty.  I got the "Power Overload" warning early in the flight.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/NGMSJ9UDIRFHIYE43O3W/

DAFlys Posted at 1-14 01:16
Im seeing lots of posts where pilots are taking off without enough satellites connected.

That could cause issues that's for sure, especially above 10m.

Did DJI change this with the latest FW? Something about 8 satellites needed

Mavic Dave Posted at 1-14 01:39
The answer is YES and NO.

YES, at around 11 minutes into the flight below the Mini dropped from the sky, full throttle to ascend made no difference.  I was resigned to seeing it disappear into the water.  At -11 ft (don't know why its a minus) the sensor detected the water and it "bounced" away from the water with about 2ft to spare.  I regained some control and managed to get it back and land it so NO, I still have it, but its going back to DJI.  Either the Mini or the battery is faulty.  I got the "Power Overload" warning early in the flight.

Scary stuff :-) good/lucky you regained control

Henrik Olsen Posted at 1-14 01:44
That could cause issues that's for sure, especially above 10m.

Did DJI change this with the latest FW? Something about 8 satellites needed

I saw something on Youtube that most of the safety features added in the new firmware didn't actually work.  Don't know how true that is though.

I do see a lot of them here indeed.
You might want to do a search.
Not sure if they ever come back to the forum

Ive almost lost it due to drop from sky, reported with logs but no answer yet.
I have two more flights with logs where mini drops without stick input, really hoping DJI is listening and doing something about it even if they are not talking about it.

NO (not yet anyway)

I do keep reading about people flying when windy, then initiating RTH, and then having a “flyaway” (which is actually a drift away as RTH can’t overcome the wind.

I’ve only seen one case where there was a crash and dji offered a warranty, rest seem to be Newbies pilot error. Quite a few lost to the wind, it does seem strange that you couldn't add up how many lost their drones from your comments it might help to compare what we read around here.

hallmark007 Posted at 1-14 02:46
I’ve only seen one case where there was a crash and dji offered a warranty, rest seem to be Newbies pilot error. Quite a few lost to the wind, it does seem strange that you couldn't add up how many lost their drones from your comments it might help to compare what we read around here.

Hi Hallmark, it was not a Newbie error in my scenario.  I have been flying for about two years.  If you look at my flight log above you will see some interesting things around 11 minutes into the flight.  Check my inputs.  

The drone dropped from 16ft to -11ft (minus 11ft)  by itself.  Its return to home also changed from 74ft to 91ft although all it did was go down and then up.  I was very lucky to land it.

If I had to guess, the drone had a power issue or location issue, in other words it did not know where it was.  Anyway, its going back to DJI.

I lost my mini 2 weeks ago, I finally found it, my wife put it in the closet.

R&L Aerial photography Posted at 1-14 04:13
I lost my mini 2 weeks ago, I finally found it, my wife put it in the closet.

You are funny, man

DAFlys Posted at 1-14 01:16
Im seeing lots of posts where pilots are taking off without enough satellites connected.

How many is "enough"? I've read somewhere that 11 sats should be good. Is that the magic number indeed? I would expect the manufacturer to not allow the drone to take off without enough sats or at least have an option for this in the app...

Un4Seen Posted at 1-14 04:46
How many is "enough"? I've read somewhere that 11 sats should be good. Is that the magic number indeed? I would expect the manufacturer to not allow the drone to take off without enough sats or at least have an option for this in the app...

When my drone headed for the water it had 17 sats connected, another red herring.

R&L Aerial photography Posted at 1-14 04:13
I lost my mini 2 weeks ago, I finally found it, my wife put it in the closet.

Ha, best one yet  :-)

Un4Seen Posted at 1-14 04:46
How many is "enough"? I've read somewhere that 11 sats should be good. Is that the magic number indeed? I would expect the manufacturer to not allow the drone to take off without enough sats or at least have an option for this in the app...

There are two types of sats that can be received so if you have 11 connected you have at least 6 of any one type which should give you good position accuracy. Unfortunately you can't mix the data between the two types of sat so it will use one or the other.

Mavic Dave Posted at 1-14 04:57
When my drone headed for the water it had 17 sats connected, another red herring.

Depends on the issue,  there are reports the are easily explained by taking off without getting GPS lock, acquiring that and then the drone trying to fly back to where it thought it was.

DAFlys Posted at 1-14 05:25
There are two types of sats that can be received so if you have 11 connected you have at least 6 of any one type which should give you good position accuracy. Unfortunately you can't mix the data between the two types of sat so it will use one or the other.

The fact that that GPS and GLONASS cannot be mixed is a bummer. I wonder if that's just missing from DJI drones or if it is a physical impossibility...

Un4Seen Posted at 1-14 05:44
The fact that that GPS and GLONASS cannot be mixed is a bummer. I wonder if that's just missing from DJI drones or if it is a physical impossibility...

Found a good explanation: Combining data from global positioning systems https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/130254/glonass-and-gps-satellite-usage-simultaneously-by-positioning-modules

According to this even 4 sats (from a single system) or 5 sats (from two different systems) should be enough, although you have no redundancy, so you better hope the sat data is accurate.

my old toy drone took off and flew with zero satellites and it never saw a satellite not even once during flight but it never flew away.  I understand you need good satellites to fly perfectly but the lack of satellites should not cause the drone to fly away.  maybe it needs to go into 2014 drone mode when the satellites fall below 10 and pretend like it's a drone from last decade which is better than just saying "sorry you don't have enough satellites goodbye!  sucks to be you."

The Saint Posted at 1-14 06:46
my old toy drone took off and flew with zero satellites and it never saw a satellite not even once during flight but it never flew away.  I understand you need good satellites to fly perfectly but the lack of satellites should not cause the drone to fly away.  maybe it needs to go into 2014 drone mode when the satellites fall below 10 and pretend like it's a drone from last decade which is better than just saying "sorry you don't have enough satellites goodbye!  sucks to be you."

The lack of satellites won’t cause a drone to fly away, the lack of piloting skills and wind will, while it takes a bit of practice to learn to fly, most adults would have spent a minimum of 16 years around wind .

Un4Seen Posted at 1-14 05:48
Found a good explanation: Combining data from global positioning systems https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/130254/glonass-and-gps-satellite-usage-simultaneously-by-positioning-modules

According to this even 4 sats (from a single system) or 5 sats (from two different systems) should be enough, although you have no redundancy, so you better hope the sat data is accurate.

4 is enough to fly but 6 is safe to fly, your receiver picks up glonass and gps so if you are reading 11 your guaranteed minimum 6 so safe to go.

DAFlys Posted at 1-14 05:26
Depends on the issue,  there are reports the are easily explained by taking off without getting GPS lock, acquiring that and then the drone trying to fly back to where it thought it was.

Sorry DaFlys, have a look at the flight log.  Homepoint is updated, all is well until 11 minutes into flight, when I hit 50% battery the bird went down, all by itself, look at the left stick.  Notice the change in the homepoint distance until the drone recovered.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/NGMSJ9UDIRFHIYE43O3W/

No matter what way you look at it, ITS BAD.  Drone not responding to inputs, 20 yards in front of me, on a clear day with a little breeze........................

I had planned to sell my Mavic Air, but not now.  My Mini is awaiting collection by DJI.

No because I’ve read and understood the manual, I understand the aircraft’s performance, I check the wind profile, I don’t fly super high or out of VLOS.

Just got the shipping label from DJI the Mini is going back with its batteries. (DJI can't explain what happened to my flight either).

Will update everyone when they conclude what is wrong (although they will probably ship replacement and we will never know)

Un4Seen Posted at 1-14 05:48
Found a good explanation: Combining data from global positioning systems https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/130254/glonass-and-gps-satellite-usage-simultaneously-by-positioning-modules

According to this even 4 sats (from a single system) or 5 sats (from two different systems) should be enough, although you have no redundancy, so you better hope the sat data is accurate.

4 sats give you a rough 3d position,  but more the better.  With my proper GPS it can take 12 or more to be within a meter of accuracy.

Mavic Dave Posted at 1-14 07:38
Sorry DaFlys, have a look at the flight log.  Homepoint is updated, all is well until 11 minutes into flight, when I hit 50% battery the bird went down, all by itself, look at the left stick.  Notice the change in the homepoint distance until the drone recovered.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/NGMSJ9UDIRFHIYE43O3W/

I agree this wasn't your issue,  yours looks a bit like you entered a NFZ but I doubt that you did in that location.

DAFlys Posted at 1-14 08:33
I agree this wasn't your issue,  yours looks a bit like you entered a NFZ but I doubt that you did in that location.

Definitely not a NFZ the drone was 20 yards in front of me over a river that I have flown in 100's of times.

Never ever had an issue.  As it slowly descended with me frantically trying to ascend it, I was angry.  Had I not been watching at that particular moment it would have disappeared into a watery grave.

I hope DJI give me an honest answer as to why this happened.

It has brought back the issues with the Boeing Max to me, I was angry that my drone was doing its own thing and dropping from the sky.  I can just about imagine what a Max pilot felt like when his aircraft was not responding  and heading into the ocean.

Frightening.

Mavic Dave Posted at 1-14 09:04
Definitely not a NFZ the drone was 20 yards in front of me over a river that I have flown in 100's of times.

Never ever had an issue.  As it slowly descended with me frantically trying to ascend it, I was angry.  Had I not been watching at that particular moment it would have disappeared into a watery grave.

Please let us know what DJI says was the cause.

Mavic Dave Posted at 1-14 07:38
Sorry DaFlys, have a look at the flight log.  Homepoint is updated, all is well until 11 minutes into flight, when I hit 50% battery the bird went down, all by itself, look at the left stick.  Notice the change in the homepoint distance until the drone recovered.

https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/NGMSJ9UDIRFHIYE43O3W/

I can’t find anything in this log that shows a problem, from 50% battery until 42% landing your homepoint never changed, all lowering of the craft shows in your log that controller was in control likewise all increase movements, can you go through log and show us where you think homepoint changed, see long and lat below from 50/42% battery (landing)

hallmark007 Posted at 1-14 06:56
The lack of satellites won’t cause a drone to fly away, the lack of piloting skills and wind will, while it takes a bit of practice to learn to fly, most adults would have spent a minimum of 16 years around wind .

ok let me see if I can understand this correctly.  the reason why my toy non-gps drones never flew away in high wind conditions was because I'm a skilled pilot who knew how to keep control of his drones?  I started out like everyone else, there was a day when I was new and green.  I own at least a dozen toy drones for several years and not even once did a drone fly away from me and believe me, the wind was blowing hard....really hard.  I find it really really hard to believe "piloting skills" are the root cause of these issues.  I mean to say, if you fly a bunch of toy drones and one day you decide to step up to a Mavic Mini and you go out on day #600 of your drone flying career and on your first day you're Mavic Mini gets lost in a gust of wind, from a customer perspective, regardless of the "facts"...you're not going to be happy and you will surely be disappointed and likely disgusted.  people who drive fords and Chryslers for years don't go out and buy there first bmw or Mercedes and have trouble with it.  that's because bmw and Mercedes made sure of it.  if I buy a Tesla, I don't expect to crash it during the first week because there's "something I don't know or didn't read about."  that's unacceptable....for a customer point of view.  understand trying to figure out the range, etc but the car has to perform like or better than the rest of the cars.  if the tesla takes off from the parking lot while you're inside shopping because you didn't rtfm, that's unacceptable.

do you guys need my generation to get back in the business and sort this out...or what?  look around you....you have what you have because we did it right and if you couldn't do it right, it wasn't done.  we didn't explain away and make excuses for our issues.  and I mean that in a nice way.  maybe I expect too much...but we're behind; way behind.

The Saint Posted at 1-14 09:37
ok let me see if I can understand this correctly.  the reason why my toy non-gps drones never flew away in high wind conditions was because I'm a skilled pilot who knew how to keep control of his drones?  I started out like everyone else, there was a day when I was new and green.  I own at least a dozen toy drones for several years and not even once did a drone fly away from me and believe me, the wind was blowing hard....really hard.  I find it really really hard to believe "piloting skills" are the root cause of these issues.  I mean to say, if you fly a bunch of toy drones and one day you decide to step up to a Mavic Mini and you go out on day #600 of your drone flying career and on your first day you're Mavic Mini gets lost in a gust of wind, from a customer perspective, regardless of the "facts"...you're not going to be happy and you will surely be disappointed and likely disgusted.  people who drive fords and Chryslers for years don't go out and buy there first bmw or Mercedes and have trouble with it.  that's because bmw and Mercedes made sure of it.  if I buy a Tesla, I don't expect to crash it during the first week because there's "something I don't know or didn't read about."  that's unacceptable....for a customer point of view.  understand trying to figure out the range, etc but the car has to perform like or better than the rest of the cars.  if the tesla takes off from the parking lot while you're inside shopping because you didn't rtfm, that's unacceptable.

do you guys need my generation to get back in the business and sort this out...or what?  look around you....you have what you have because we did it right and if you couldn't do it right, it wasn't done.  we didn't explain away and make excuses for our issues.  and I mean that in a nice way.  maybe I expect too much...but we're behind; way behind.

For somebody who owns so many drones you know very little how they work.

If you have no gps and your drone does exactly what your manual tells you it will, then it will drop down to next available flying mode in minis case opti, if drone is out of range of opti mode it will drop to next mode Atti mode, so atti mode you have absolutely no hold in position altitude yes, meaning you need to show some more skill in flying and some savvy as to what to do, your drone will move on the wind and will continue until you take action if you don’t or if can’t then your drone will fly away, and that includes your toy drones.
If you don't check the wind or if you fly beyond VLOS then it's still your responsibility to fly the drone.

If the drone malfunctions that's Djis fault .

If you are telling us that your toy drones without gps or vps will not move in the wind then tell us how this works, I really look forward to hearing this.

It also only takes a very small modicum of common sense to work out that there are many more new flyers loosing their drones than experience users, do you honestly think dji sold dud ones to new users and kept the good ones for experience users.

Some of what your saying is bordering on the ridiculous.
Yes if I buy a Tesla and I can’t drive and I fail to do anything about it it’s likely I’ll crash SOON .

I don’t know what generation your from , you keep mentioning it but for what I have really no idea, are you saying that newer generations are somehow more savvy and intelligent than older generations, if so then you are much more ridiculous than even I thought.

Now instead of blaming everyone else grow up take some responsibility for what you do how you do it and when it goes wrong.

Please explain HOW YOUR DRONES DONT FLY AWAY WHEN THEY NO GPS AND NO VPS AND PILOT DOES NOTHING AND THE WIND IS STRONG ?
I’m looking forward to this answer .

Not me : Enjoy and fly safe

You gave a dangerous and not valid solution with the problem of the mavic pro charging the remote .....  can you solve it in mINI ?

I have ONE question : how much you payed for  35.000 subscribers ?  ;)

I still wonder why big youtubers are not able to return subscriptions to their subscribers

i got it ... Now

The Saint Posted at 1-14 09:37
ok let me see if I can understand this correctly.  the reason why my toy non-gps drones never flew away in high wind conditions was because I'm a skilled pilot who knew how to keep control of his drones?  I started out like everyone else, there was a day when I was new and green.  I own at least a dozen toy drones for several years and not even once did a drone fly away from me and believe me, the wind was blowing hard....really hard.  I find it really really hard to believe "piloting skills" are the root cause of these issues.  I mean to say, if you fly a bunch of toy drones and one day you decide to step up to a Mavic Mini and you go out on day #600 of your drone flying career and on your first day you're Mavic Mini gets lost in a gust of wind, from a customer perspective, regardless of the "facts"...you're not going to be happy and you will surely be disappointed and likely disgusted.  people who drive fords and Chryslers for years don't go out and buy there first bmw or Mercedes and have trouble with it.  that's because bmw and Mercedes made sure of it.  if I buy a Tesla, I don't expect to crash it during the first week because there's "something I don't know or didn't read about."  that's unacceptable....for a customer point of view.  understand trying to figure out the range, etc but the car has to perform like or better than the rest of the cars.  if the tesla takes off from the parking lot while you're inside shopping because you didn't rtfm, that's unacceptable.

do you guys need my generation to get back in the business and sort this out...or what?  look around you....you have what you have because we did it right and if you couldn't do it right, it wasn't done.  we didn't explain away and make excuses for our issues.  and I mean that in a nice way.  maybe I expect too much...but we're behind; way behind.

im from the generation that is going to teach you how to pull your head out and put a good product on the market that "everyone" can safely fly and enjoy and get their money's worth and the company doesn't have to put up with endless complaints and returns and problems from the customers, the retailers, and the governments.  the Mavic Mini isn't quite it.  this is a problem, even a blind man can see it.

The Saint Posted at 1-14 10:27
im from the generation that is going to teach you how to pull your head out and put a good product on the market that "everyone" can safely fly and enjoy and get their money's worth and the company doesn't have to put up with endless complaints and returns and problems from the customers, the retailers, and the governments.  the Mavic Mini isn't quite it.  this is a problem, even a blind man can see it.

And what "generation" is that?  The one that doesn't capitalize sentences but uses punctuation?  The whole generation thing is played out.  Either your knowledgeable about quads or your not.  Do your homework and your drone doesn't fly away.  

And to the OP, this whole video seems like some newbie clickbait.  Shame on you for feeding hysteria.

Oracle Miata Posted at 1-14 10:42
And what "generation" is that?  The one that doesn't capitalize sentences but uses punctuation?  The whole generation thing is played out.  Either your knowledgeable about quads or your not.  Do your homework and your drone doesn't fly away.

one question:  do you feel dji believes the Mavic Mini is a great product and has a successful launch worldwide?  I know they are proud of their product and personally I haven't had issue with my Mavic Mini but do you think they agree with you and should tell their customers to "do their homework?"  is that the answer here?  Either you can deal with the Mavic Mini as it is or you can't, bottom line; right?