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Almost $1000 Dollars in Repairs, Only 3 Successful Flights (REPOST)

JakeTaz

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Hello MavicPilots Forum,

This is a repost, if anyone needs me to remove this let me know. Thank you for everyone who responded but I was wondering if someone could check out my DAT files. They will be linked at the bottom of the post. Anyways, a few months ago I received my DJI Mavic - first flight, everything went swell. Second however, I didn't turn off auto return to home on low battery and hit a telephone wire, causing the drone to nose dive. Although frustrating, I suppose that one was on me. A week or so later I brought my drone to a local store (Computer Answers, Schenectady, NY) because I had heard about the extremely long, tedious, and somewhat dysfunctional DJI support. The technician there diagnosed it as a gimbal problem, and close to 400 dollars and a week later, I was back up in the air. The following day after receiving it back from repair, I had my second successful flight with little to no problems (just had to sit around for an update). 3 days later I took it up again for what is so far my last successful flight. Few days later I took it up in a large parking lot and shaky footage occurred, making any recorded clips essentially useless and live feed hard to follow. Flying was definitely too dangerous and I noticed as I was landing an overloaded gimbal error. I was hoping it was just strong wind as it was kind of windy that day I put it back in the air a day later... the same problems occurred. At this point I was quite annoyed, and ended up putting it away for a few weeks until my dad decided we had to do something about it. My dad looked around and referred me to a new company by the name of Expert Drones. I emailed them and got a quick response, asking me to send it in. ($150 dollars just for diagnosis, $40 to ship the drone itself) I was told it needed a new camera, which was a disappointing result. We had literally just forked over $400 to the other guy (Computer Answers) which made me wonder if they didn't fully repair the Mavic or didn't go about it in the right way. While getting ready to ship I observed a loud high pitched noise coming from the drone as well as the shakey footage. Either way, the device was still not working and needed to be fixed regardless. The camera cost $350 and we had to spend $40 to ship it back to us. I just received the package today. I was feeling pretty relieved, figuring everything was finally fixed. I charged up the battery and took it out to the front yard to give a whirl. Everything seemed normal at first and I flew a few yards out and hovered, taking a look at the live feed. I noticed it was moving and in alarm realized I myself wasn't moving anything on the controller. It started to go back to a pretty stable hover, and I started to bring it back to see what happened, but as soon as I did I lost control. It started flying to the side and I had zero control. I started screaming for my dad and sheer panic took over as I watched it crash into the ground and now we have yet again another broken camera and/or gimbal. This time I can't possible think of a way this was user error. Could this have been a fly away? At this point I am unbelievably frustrated and am starting to wonder if I have received a faulty model. Time after time, with issues after issues. I can't imagine this is normal, and if it is I am starting to wonder if this is even a product I want to continue to invest in. Please leave your thoughts and advice below, I'd appreciate it.

DAT Files (starting from when Expert Drones received it up until the crash)
Dat Files Mavic - Google Drive

(I have attached a picture of the camera now.)
mavic_camera_destroyed-jpg.18232
 
Just a thought and "rule of thumb", when "repair" is half the cost of new, why repair? (New Mavic only is $750.00)

Sorry, you are having issues. . . .(They are fun once you get them working)
 
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You started a new thread for this because ????
like i mentioned, trying to get someone to take a look at the dat files. :) sorry. like i said if a mod etc needs me to take it down i will but my dad wants me to figure it out and to be honest i dont know what to look for in the dat files.
 
no matter how bad a reputation DJI service might have (sofar I had no need to contact them), I would never give this delicate piece of highly integrated electronics to a repair shop down the street. Not much they can do, Drone experts or not..

With other words, if a repair is required, have DJI take a look at it, nobody else!
 
should have called or emailed @Thunderdrones he is tghe man who would have sorted it first time. look him up but if you gonna be throwing another 400 at it go buy a new one.
 
Hello MavicPilots Forum,

This is a repost, ........
Everything seemed normal at first and I flew a few yards out and hovered, taking a look at the live feed. I noticed it was moving and in alarm realized I myself wasn't moving anything on the controller. It started to go back to a pretty stable hover, and I started to bring it back to see what happened, but as soon as I did I lost control. It started flying to the side and I had zero control. .......
DAT Files (starting from when Expert Drones received it up until the crash)
Dat Files Mavic - Google Drive

......
I have read the rest of the post. First, you have to establish that the incident flight (FLY055) was due to a Mavic failure. The data is somewhat ambiguous and I'll need more input from you to determine the cause of this incident. It appears that the Mavic was launched while sitting on something approximately 2 feet high. And, that something was made of metal or had metal in it. Another possibility is that the launch site was on a metal grate (or something similar) and the ground sloped down from the launch site. Is any of this right?

Immediately after launch when the Mavic started moving away from the launch site The relativeHeight (from the IMU) and vpsHeight separated indicating a small elevated launch site.
upload_2017-8-2_7-25-21.png
For the next 35 secs or so there was no control input and the Mavic was hovering close to the launch site. At about 43 secs control inputs caused the Mavic to both descend and move away. At this point the effects of the geomagnetic distortion were removed which caused the erratic flight.
 
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@JakeTaz I took another look and there's more to consider here. The flight began with numSats = 0 and gpsHealth = 0. Probably unrelated. But, as I mentioned, the data is somewhat ambiguous.
upload_2017-8-2_8-1-10.png
 
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I would have taken your bird back to the company that fixed? your camera/gimbal for what, 400 bucks?
They must guarantee their work for 6 months, at least
 
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@JakeTaz I took another look and there's more to consider here. The flight began with numSats = 0 and gpsHealth = 0. Probably unrelated. But, as I mentioned, the data is somewhat ambiguous.
View attachment 18615
First off, thanks a lot for taking a look. The mavic took off of my stone walkway leading up to my front door, I took off and flew out to the middle of my lawn where I noticed the first erratic movements and didn't move for a few seconds. I then checked to see if it was still happening and was starting to bring it back which is when the erratic movements began again. Eventually crashed on the street next to a sewer grate. Is there any data to solidly support (or disprove I guess) what I am saying? Expert Drones claims it was my fault and I think I am just going to end up selling it for whatever I can get if they won't fix for free, which is too bad because I really wanted to get into my hobby. However, if I can prove it was a flyaway or malfunction I can most likely get a free fix. Thanks again.
 
Lmfao you burned like $1000 of your daddy's money and didn't just buy a new drone?
I paid for half of it to begin with and the rest was a graduation present from him actually. Now I owe him all the repair $, so not exactly my "daddys" because I'm gonna have to pay it all back, lol. He wanted to repair vs. buying new one. Who knows why.
 
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I would have taken your bird back to the company that fixed? your camera/gimbal for what, 400 bucks?
They must guarantee their work for 6 months, at least
That whole deal was shady at best, they said it worked when it left their shop so we would have to pay again. Definitely wasn't going to do that.
 
First off, thanks a lot for taking a look. The mavic took off of my stone walkway leading up to my front door, I took off and flew out to the middle of my lawn where I noticed the first erratic movements and didn't move for a few seconds. I then checked to see if it was still happening and was starting to bring it back which is when the erratic movements began again. Eventually crashed on the street next to a sewer grate. Is there any data to solidly support (or disprove I guess) what I am saying? Expert Drones claims it was my fault and I think I am just going to end up selling it for whatever I can get if they won't fix for free, which is too bad because I really wanted to get into my hobby. However, if I can prove it was a flyaway or malfunction I can most likely get a free fix. Thanks again.
Just to make sure the flight we're talking about occurred 2017-7-27 20:35:56. The crash site is shown here where the yellow A is.
upload_2017-8-3_0-46-54.png

As I mentioned the numSats and gpsHealth were both 0 at motorStart. Consequently GPS coords weren't recorded for the first 19 secs after motorStart. This is why it looks like the flight began under the tree where the yellow H is. After launch numSats and gpsHealth were both 0 the Mavic switched to ATTI mode and drifted to the location under the tree.

It looks like location under the tree is geomagnatically distorted (caused by metal in the ground, manhole cover, etc). This can be seen by the Yaw/magYaw separation that occurs when leaving that location.
upload_2017-8-3_1-8-12.png
But, I don't understand why there was no indication that the Mavic entered that geomagnetic distortion.

At launch was the Mavic pointed towards the house?

It doesn't seem to me that this is a hardware failure. Any Mavic would have behaved this way.
 

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    upload_2017-8-3_0-43-36.png
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Just to make sure the flight we're talking about occurred 2017-7-27 20:35:56. The crash site is shown here where the yellow A is.
View attachment 18711

As I mentioned the numSats and gpsHealth were both 0 at motorStart. Consequently GPS coords weren't recorded for the first 19 secs after motorStart. This is why it looks like the flight began under the tree where the yellow H is. After launch numSats and gpsHealth were both 0 the Mavic switched to ATTI mode and drifted to the location under the tree.

It looks like location under the tree is geomagnatically distorted (caused by metal in the ground, manhole cover, etc). This can be seen by the Yaw/magYaw separation that occurs when leaving that location.
View attachment 18712
But, I don't understand why there was no indication that the Mavic entered that geomagnetic distortion.

At launch was the Mavic pointed towards the house?

It doesn't seem to me that this is a hardware failure. Any Mavic would have behaved this way.
Very weird, at launch it was pointed away from the house. It didn't go over the house either it went up the street.
 
Very weird, at launch it was pointed away from the house. It didn't go over the house either it went up the street.
It only looks like it went over the house. It actually went through the house. After the crash across the street (at the "A" symbol Google Overhead in post #16) the battery wasn't turned off and continued to record. Apparently you picked it up walked back to the house, and walked through the house before turning it off. You were walking along the driveway, then jogged left about 6 feet and then entered the house at 102 secs. At this point the numSats and gpsHealth both dropped.
upload_2017-8-5_8-40-3.png
upload_2017-8-5_8-40-11.png

The business about which way the AC was facing at launch still is an issue. I gotta go, lemme think about this some and post later.
 
@JakeTaz can you perform a test please. Go to a location that is at least a 100 feet from any structures above or below ground. Turn on the Mavic, hold it out in front of you at arms length and then turn 3 rotations to the right (clockwise). I.e., you do the turning, don't turn the Mavic in your hands. Turn at about 10 secs/rotation. Try to hold the Mavic level (no pitch or roll) while you do this. Then do 3 rotations to the left (counter clockwise). Retrieve the .DAT for that "flight" and post a Dropbox link
 
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