How many of you lost your mavic mini and you think it was not your fault?

Many people have always wanted a drone for the summer, for vacation and experience, but hesitated to buy it, either because it was expensive or because they did not want to mess with registrations and a bunch of settings (as if you were a pilot in the Air Force)
And voila appears the Dji mavic mini, an entry level drone for first timers, from a company with a big name in the field,
Happy people with a gorgeous gadget,
You take it high and take beautiful photos,
You boast and admire, you increase the altitude and you can no longer hear it or see it, and suddenly where it went a little further the screen of the mobile freezes, it becomes grayscale, no gps error, or please return to home manually, the drone does not respond to return it, you panic and suddenly the Joy becomes sorrow, you do not know if it is your fault and the Mavic Mini lost, never return to home and buy buy…
Others regret the money they lost
Others for wonderful holiday records they lost  in micro sd card
and o others because the battery will pollutes the environment
some people write their complaint in forums
some people do not write at all
and some people buy another

I do not want to know if it was our fault or these things happens to those who fly drone for the first time
I want to know how many of you missed you mavic mini and you think you should not have missed it, because you did not do something that not allowed.
Thank you.

First let me tell you. You bought him and he didn't buy you. Whenever you take off, do everything you can not to lose him. Don't fly with the fear that you will lose him, but fly safely and enjoy every moment. Good luck and big greetings to Greece.

Flying is optional, landing is not.

Dirty Bird Posted at 8-27 10:32
Many of us have made hundreds, even thousands, of successful flights with DJI quads.  The problem for the Mini is it is a small, lightweight, drone that can fly far & high.  It is not as powerful as larger models & it is more easily overwhelmed by wind.  You have lots of first-time users who don't bother to read the manual to familiarize themselves with the aircraft, who often make extremely poor decisions on where & when to fly.  

My first quad was a Phantom 2 Vision+.  It cost $1259.  Ironically, the $399 Mavic Mini outperforms it in nearly every category.  You can bet your ass, before flying a $1259 quad, I read the manual multiple times & watched every YouTube video on the Vision+ I could find!  People come here & ask how to turn the Mini on!  Obviously they haven't even read the Quick Start Guide.  Is it any wonder that their Mini winds up crashed or lost?

The Mini was my first drone and was a Christmas present from Wife. I had hinted for something like it. Naturally I was cautious to not take chances with it, not so much for the expense, but for the possibility of  losing Wife's gift. I even fashioned a primitive flotation device and still use it at times. I secretly bought a second Mini off eBay to serve as a spare...in case I had to hide the loss of the first one ;-) I still have both. There have been several glitches in operation that threatened to cause the loss of the drones. All were my fault due to inexperience. I probably will not lose either Mini because I really like my new powerhouse MA2. So I take more flights and chances with it instead of the Mini. My Minis will probably be given to my step sons who will probably lose them...or maybe not. Either way, they will enjoy the journey.

Hello there agparask. Thank you for reaching out and for creating this thread. I hope that our fellow DJI co pilots can give out there valued insights with regards to this matter. Kindly please follow the rules and regulation where you operate na fly your DJI Mavic Mini.  Just a reminder to please prepare a pre-flight checklist before each flight for safer and great flight experience. I will be posting a list from the DJI Mavic Mini Safety Guidelines ( https://dl.djicdn.com/downloads/ ... y_Guidelines_EK.pdf ) for reference. Have a safe and a happy flying always. Thank you.

I confess that I never read the manual, but, I watched almost all the videos of the Mavic Mini.
Also, I not go far and not too high.

Dirty Bird Posted at 8-27 10:32
Many of us have made hundreds, even thousands, of successful flights with DJI quads.  The problem for the Mini is it is a small, lightweight, drone that can fly far & high.  It is not as powerful as larger models & it is more easily overwhelmed by wind.  You have lots of first-time users who don't bother to read the manual to familiarize themselves with the aircraft, who often make extremely poor decisions on where & when to fly.  

My first quad was a Phantom 2 Vision+.  It cost $1259.  Ironically, the $399 Mavic Mini outperforms it in nearly every category.  You can bet your ass, before flying a $1259 quad, I read the manual multiple times & watched every YouTube video on the Vision+ I could find!  People come here & ask how to turn the Mini on!  Obviously they haven't even read the Quick Start Guide.  Is it any wonder that their Mini winds up crashed or lost?

Spot On !!

I did not crash mine yet, it is due to 3 years with other Dji drones, THE MINI is a great powerful machine, but in expert hands, I do not consider it to be a starter drone since it is extremely fragile ..

This was my First flighy with mini .....  As a precaution, use the slowest mode and I realized that it is a very versatile dRone to take very slow shots ... I loved the result

second video with Mini

I refuse to acknowledge the fact that I've lost my 1st Mini (never to be found again in my a small town).

To my excuse I've tons of videos, pictures and logs showing the problem that I'm incurred into which continued with my second Mini.

I paid almost full price (with a low discount from DJI) and I am still utterly annoyed by the fact that DJI sometimes intervened in clear fly-aways where the user didn't know any better.

Anyway... my problem (presumably) was: a faulty USB OTG cable. Had it happened a couple of times not in flight even with a newer cable but nothing compared to the sheer number of occurrences I had before. The Fly app WRONGLY announced (as it always does in those cases) AC not connected to RC, when in reality I was still full in control, auto RTH in 11 seconds. Since the situation wasn't clear to me and I wasn't regaining signal (I was operating vLOS albeit not physically able to spot the drone in the sky) I depressed the RTH button. Only at that point all the RC's LEDs started to blink (I realized this later on) and the drone surely would have commenced coming back. The trouble was the pigeons by the flocks (and sparrows for that matter) surrounding the drone and in situ. It surely went down hitting one of those. I learned and arrived at this conclusion several flights of experience later when I deemed super risky flying anywhere near birds, especially when not giving them enough time to relocate as it happens when the drone starts coming back at RTH speed of 8 m/s.

That said, despite the accident, knowing myself, my practices and safety measures I reckon it is very unlikely that a new accident like that happens again, especially something occurring without any hardware fault. I am still to this point quite irritated by the number of fly-aways or user errors when it wasn't clearly the product's fault and the fact the sometimes even DJI kicked in, probably in the hope of gaining user consensus and paid them for a new unit. I still can't get over the fact that I've spent almost 800 EUR for my Mavic Mini experience with nobody really helping, providing months of logs to DJI (even RC ones... who knew they even existed) only to be greeted much later with a free USB OTG cable spare (as they weren't even able to provide me any result to the inquiry that required me to send DJI GigaBytes of logged data for almost a month).

hi I almost I lost yesterday height 50 meter and distance 200 meters (well cleared area no buildings or power line, no wind and big sun) loss of gray screen connection of a big stress blow but luckily the RTH worked for me

GaryDoug Posted at 8-27 20:02
The Mini was my first drone and was a Christmas present from Wife. I had hinted for something like it. Naturally I was cautious to not take chances with it, not so much for the expense, but for the possibility of  losing Wife's gift. I even fashioned a primitive flotation device and still use it at times. I secretly bought a second Mini off eBay to serve as a spare...in case I had to hide the loss of the first one ;-) I still have both. There have been several glitches in operation that threatened to cause the loss of the drones. All were my fault due to inexperience. I probably will not lose either Mini because I really like my new powerhouse MA2. So I take more flights and chances with it instead of the Mini. My Minis will probably be given to my step sons who will probably lose them...or maybe not. Either way, they will enjoy the journey.

I love this story GaryDoug - especially the secret spare Mini.

I lost my first Mini at the top of the Treaty Oak in Austin (my wife was there - so no tricks) - I was leaving the next day and didn't have time for recovery.  A local business found it's corpse in the parking lot a few days later and sent me the memory card.  And that's why I have two remote control radios.

Dirty Bird Posted at 8-27 10:32
Many of us have made hundreds, even thousands, of successful flights with DJI quads.  The problem for the Mini is it is a small, lightweight, drone that can fly far & high.  It is not as powerful as larger models & it is more easily overwhelmed by wind.  You have lots of first-time users who don't bother to read the manual to familiarize themselves with the aircraft, who often make extremely poor decisions on where & when to fly.  

My first quad was a Phantom 2 Vision+.  It cost $1259.  Ironically, the $399 Mavic Mini outperforms it in nearly every category.  You can bet your ass, before flying a $1259 quad, I read the manual multiple times & watched every YouTube video on the Vision+ I could find!  People come here & ask how to turn the Mini on!  Obviously they haven't even read the Quick Start Guide.  Is it any wonder that their Mini winds up crashed or lost?

Woe Posted at 8-27 10:41
Flying is optional, landing is not.

Like the airline industry, drone pilots have a perfect record. Every drone we've sent up has come back down.

Prairie Chicken Posted at 8-28 07:46
Like the airline industry, drone pilots have a perfect record. Every drone we've sent up has come back down.

That says a lot

I've got the mini and I religiously check my UAV Forecast app an hour either side of flight before taking off for windspeeds at all the heights i aim to be flying - ground all the way up to 120m (as is our legal ceiling here in Australia). If i'm up that high i'm 100% in sport mode, giving those little motors as much power as they need to stabilise Chuk (my wife named the DJIMM), and if I see that video feed show any signs of being unable to cope with the wind, I bring him STRAIGHT back down and check the weather again - maybe try a bit later, or try at a lower altitude.

So far I've had no issues - but I'm relatively new to the game.
Luckily, I've not had to rely on RTH - I've used it out of laziness a couple of times, though.

Lost my Mini about 20 feet away from me, when it suddenly descended 80 feet into the lake at an unusually fast speed.   I have never felts to helpless

djiuser_tKwOmrDEUPk7 Posted at 8-28 16:34
Lost my Mini about 20 feet away from me, when it suddenly descended 80 feet into the lake at an unusually fast speed.   I have never felts to helpless

you said the right word. helpless

Unfortunately we lost our mini just yesterday afternoon... Flying from our terrace to a terrace of a friend, 100m away, it suddenly lost gps signal and at the same time lost connectivity to the controller. We had visual sight and lost it from our vision in a glimpse. Flight data (I managed to open the file today) show 74% battery and more than 100 times pressing the RTH but it never returned. We have gone by car around the neighbourhood but couln't get connectivity again. We have put "wanted dead or alive" posters all around now, but with no results yet. Tomorrow I will open a case with DJI.

IoannisGR Posted at 9-5 09:53
Unfortunately we lost our mini just yesterday afternoon... Flying from our terrace to a terrace of a friend, 100m away, it suddenly lost gps signal and at the same time lost connectivity to the controller. We had visual sight and lost it from our vision in a glimpse. Flight data (I managed to open the file today) show 74% battery and more than 100 times pressing the RTH but it never returned. We have gone by car around the neighbourhood but couln't get connectivity again. We have put "wanted dead or alive" posters all around now, but with no results yet. Tomorrow I will open a case with DJI.

Hi,

If you like post your flightlog on here, using > https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/Upload/

Mayby flightlog explains what happend.

cheers
JJB

IoannisGR Posted at 9-5 09:53
Unfortunately we lost our mini just yesterday afternoon... Flying from our terrace to a terrace of a friend, 100m away, it suddenly lost gps signal and at the same time lost connectivity to the controller. We had visual sight and lost it from our vision in a glimpse. Flight data (I managed to open the file today) show 74% battery and more than 100 times pressing the RTH but it never returned. We have gone by car around the neighbourhood but couln't get connectivity again. We have put "wanted dead or alive" posters all around now, but with no results yet. Tomorrow I will open a case with DJI.

exactly the same thing happened to me. I think there is a problem. The flightLog says there are satellites, but the remote controller geting black and says no gps and no signal and rth not working

Hi, does it work this way? https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/KKP9GDXVFVIZF3HM0S6D/

As you can see, we have pressed RTH more than 100 times but the mini refused to come home, although it was getting gps from 19 satellites. We were getting the message that no gps was found. At the same time we lost connectivity to the drone through the remote controller so we could not take it home manually. At some point it just disappeared from our sight.

It looks to me like a hardware failure, two systems failed at the same time (gps & remote).

IoannisGR Posted at 9-5 14:28
As you can see, we have pressed RTH more than 100 times but the mini refused to come home, although it was getting gps from 19 satellites. We were getting the message that no gps was found. At the same time we lost connectivity to the drone through the remote controller so we could not take it home manually. At some point it just disappeared from our sight.

It looks to me like a hardware failure, two systems failed at the same time (gps & remote).

Hi,

Sorry for your loss, reason for loosing is too much wind for this flight.
See all the warnings.

At 1m1s you initiated a RTH, at 1m16 no connnection, after 78 seconds again connected.
Your MM has climbed to your RTH height setting of 81 meters! Why so high?Almost always at higher altitudes more wind, so your MM drifted away further.
The last records (15 seconds period) in RTH at 81 meters you had contact with your MM, so mayby cancel RTH plus lowering height (less wind) and in fully forward in Sport mode could have saves your MM.
In the log only 1 button press RTH recorded, so where did you see your 100 times?

Hope you put your tel number on the MM or at the SD card, hard to tell where it has landed.
With 74% battery power left, it will drift away long time, my calculated landing spot is the orange marker.

cheers
JJB

Hi JJB,

Thank you very much for your time!

I do know what app you are using to analyze the flight data, the one I found provides these results: https://prnt.sc/ucf68a  https://www.phantomhelp.com/LogViewer/KKP9GDXVFVIZF3HM0S6D/  
As you can see, from 1:27' and beyond we have pressed RTH a whole lot of times but did not get a response of the drone, not even that it cannot return home. It is the first time that I saw this message. (My teenage son was flying the drone with me next to him, so I have witnessed all his efforts to bring it back).

When we realized that drone is not coming back, we ran to the car and drove around the area we had its last position, waiting to get connection again. This is why I am talking about a hardware failure, we never gor connection again, although even your calculated potential landing places do not exceed the expected velocity of the remote controller. At the height of 80 m there are not mobile telephony antennas and even passing over them would not cause any interference, since they do not broadcast upwards. The tree area you see on the map is a university campus, so no interference is expected also, as this area has sparse buildings and can be covered with low signall power. We didn't hit any aircraft of bird or high building, so I cannot explain the connectivity loss. We have flown the drone over that area again a couple of times, the first days we bought it, in middle of June, with no problems (on less windy days to be honest).

On the other hand, it seems that all these messages about the wind have been supressed by the software, since we have seen a warning only once (and then pressed the RTH for the first time). At that point we saw the message that connectivity has been lost and that was all. The first message of flying in a potential high interference environment has never been displayed, if it had we wouldn't fly the drone. I am quite sure that losing the drone it is not 100% our fault, a malfunction or bug has played a significant part in the unfortunate result.

IoannisGR Posted at 9-6 02:53
Hi JJB,

Thank you very much for your time!

Hiya,

What you see is the flightlog shows every 1/10 seconds  a record with the actual data.
So after initiate a RTH, in Phantomhelp you see the flight mode status GoHome.
Connection loss can happen sometimes, hard to explain why it happend in your flight area.Lots of buildings etc, so mayby many wifi signals in that area.

I always fly with a screen recording active, good the watch the recordings and see what messages i have missed (watching the sky/drone and not at my device)

MM is not powerfull drone, so if flying with too much wind and loosing connection, the RTH cannot reach home.

About the reconnecting ; guess you did not notice that, but as data is written in the log, that means that there was a reconnecting.But only for 15 seconds, so understandable that you have missed that.

My landing point calculations uses drift data from the last records, so speed, direction of moving, current batt level, batt level to start autolanding, etc ect are into a  'black-box' , resulting in a estimate landing point.

Main killer is the RTH height setting of 81 meters, flying at 30 meters MM was holding position. (see the chart)
cheers
JJB

Hi again,

We have noticed the last reconnection but we only had the chance to press again RTH. After we lost connection again, we left via car and in a couple of minutes we were at a friend's balkony on the 8th (last) floor at the yellow x on the map, so past any potential interferences (the flat is next to the uni campus seen on the map) anf much higher than any other building. We should have straight connection with the drone, searched the sky towards all directions but could never reconnect (and the drone should have at least 50% battery left). That is why I am suspecting a malfunctioning, I believe that, even if it was blown away by a strong wind burst, even if we had signal interferences from our starting point, from that second point it should connect again to the remote. Am I wrong?  


https://prnt.sc/uciv5w
(I have tried all options but could not embbed the picture in the post, sorry)

IoannisGR Posted at 9-6 07:51
Hi again,

We have noticed the last reconnection but we only had the chance to press again RTH. After we lost connection again, we left via car and in a couple of minutes we were at a friend's balkony on the 8th (last) floor at the yellow x on the map, so past any potential interferences (the flat is next to the uni campus seen on the map) anf much higher than any other building. We should have straight connection with the drone, searched the sky towards all directions but could never reconnect (and the drone should have at least 50% battery left). That is why I am suspecting a malfunctioning, I believe that, even if it was blown away by a strong wind burst, even if we had signal interferences from our starting point, from that second point it should connect again to the remote. Am I wrong?  

I think, in that few minutes to reach that balkony, your MM had drifted away out of reach of your RC.
Drifting speed almost 5 m/s, so in 3 minutes it travelled already 180 * 5 meter.

So IMO no failure ect, just a 'pilot error'.

cheers
JJB

In the flight recording (the .txt file opened via phantomhelp.com) there is a gap from 1:32.4 to 2:50.7, when connection was lost. During that time the drone was at RTH, so at the height of 81M.  After the reconnection, the new position is about 150m away, so it was travelling with less than 100m/min. 3-4 (even 5) minutes of delay until the friend's balkony would take it to 3-500m away, no more than that. Again, I am not questioning the pilot error but I still cannot understand why connection has been lost. We never had the chance to correct the error.

IoannisGR Posted at 9-6 08:13
In the flight recording (the .txt file opened via phantomhelp.com) there is a gap from 1:32.4 to 2:50.7, when connection was lost. During that time the drone was at RTH, so at the height of 81M.  After the reconnection, the new position is about 150m away, so it was travelling with less than 100m/min. 3-4 (even 5) minutes of delay until the friend's balkony would take it to 3-500m away, no more than that. Again, I am not questioning the pilot error but I still cannot understand why connection has been lost. We never had the chance to correct the error.

During the disconnect your MM turned towards home and climbed from 38 meters to 81.
At 81 meters it started to drift away with 4.9 m/s.

a wifi RC<>Drone signal needs LineOfSight, if a building is blocking this than a disconnect will happen.
Distance out of 355 meters at a height of 38 is relative low in angle from your RC position, any building or trees in the way mayby ?

See little chart of distances out to HP, 331 and after 79 seconds 356 meter.

At the balcony the distance out was more than 355, probably 450 or so.  If the reason of a disconnect was not blocking the signal than mayby other wifi signals disturbing the connection.



Guess we will never know this.

cheers
JJB

Dirty Bird Posted at 9-6 10:31
Sorry to be blunt, but why ask for assistance & then argue with those analyzing the log data & trying to help?  You lost contact, drove somewhere else, went to an 8th floor balcony, & were unable to achieve a connection.  That doesnt mean the drone was defective.  Who knows where the drone was by that point?  Maybe it was behind another building, on the opposite side of the building you were in, out of range, or on the ground?  If you knew what you were doing you wouldn't have lost the drone!  Hopefully you had your contact information on it, someone finds it, & returns it to you.  Otherwise just admit mistakes were made & strive to be more careful next time.

Hi,

I am just trying to understand what has really happened. I am electrical engineer myself and I understand some stuff about signalling. The area I live is not flat, it has small ups & downs and I happen to live on the higher part of it and the top floor, I have clear view of the whole city, especially from the roof. The same applies to the friend's appartment, it is at the opposite site of an old stream (a street nowadays). No buildings, trees or any other obstacles have been between the remote and the drone at any given time. Even if it happened from our first position,  it would be out of the way from the second position. Also, there shouldn't be any significant interferences, especially at that height. The drone had been tested during holidays to a range of almost 2.5 km and 500 m height (in the country). So, it is still not explainable (to me at least) why connection to the remote was interrupted and never restored.

I am attaching here an older pic from the roof where I have marked with x our starting point (5 meters inside that) and with an arrow the friend's balcony, where we initially send the drone (and went afterwards to try to regain connectivity).

In any case, I actually need to understand if it has solely been our mistake, so I can buy another drone, or there are issues and limitations that will cause similar problems in the future and I should postpone the purchase until we can go for a more advanced model.

Please do not misunderstand me, I am gratefull for your contribution!

https://flic.kr/p/2jE2L75

We are new to the drone world and got a mini before we had the Mavic air 2 donated.   

The very first flight with the Mini I was trying to film someone jumping off a bluff.  It was full of every emotion you can imagine because I was so excited.  I then took off and was trying to get to the spot I wanted to film the jump from which was across the river but had some overgrown brush/trees.  Right as I was almost there I hit some brush.  Then the panic set in because I lost full control of the drone.  It literally went crazy, did a few flips and started falling towards the water, so I knew right then I lost it.  However, it then was like a cat landing on all fours for it balanced out and then hovered right above the water.  I still couldn’t control it though and it shot up about 100’.   After about two minutes I could control it so I was very happy and I landed it.  When I inspected it the only thing I saw were green marks on the props and the housing above the gimble had unsnapped.  I snapped it back together, wiped off the props and haven’t had an issue since but I also haven’t tried to fly it that close to anything since.

IoannisGR Posted at 9-5 09:53
Unfortunately we lost our mini just yesterday afternoon... Flying from our terrace to a terrace of a friend, 100m away, it suddenly lost gps signal and at the same time lost connectivity to the controller. We had visual sight and lost it from our vision in a glimpse. Flight data (I managed to open the file today) show 74% battery and more than 100 times pressing the RTH but it never returned. We have gone by car around the neighbourhood but couln't get connectivity again. We have put "wanted dead or alive" posters all around now, but with no results yet. Tomorrow I will open a case with DJI.

If I recall if you push the RTH button once quickly after it was activated it is canceled.
A long push activates it.
But with no gps it’s all hand control.
Experts here can verify that.