DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Why did my Mavic fly itself into the ocean?

Jackslinger

Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2017
Messages
9
Reactions
1
Age
39
Hi all, my first post here I've been reading around the forum and am so impressed with the amount of help people provide on here. So thanks in advance!!

Description of the disaster:
Feb 13

On my third flight of the day I took off from my kayak a little ways off shore. Used auto takeoff and after establishing a steady hover I paused a moment to check to make sure I had a good connection with the Mavic, and and the my settings were correct. All was well.

I began flying towards shore and immediately notice my video feed seemed to be choppy and I was getting artifacts. I checked my remote and display and all signals and bars were full and green. So I continued thinking it might go away. After a few more seconds it got worse so I stopped. Still the remote was telling me everything was perfect but the video feed was horrible. So I decided to bring it back and land to try and diagnose the problem.

I turned around and headed back with the video feed continuing to get worse while the HD status remained green and full bars. I brought it to a hover about 10m off the bow and about 10 meters off the water. Now as I tried to maneuver closer to myself I found it was not responding well to my inputs, and would not maintain a steady hover. It shifted left and right slightly and wasn't maintaining a constant elevation. Now I was worried.

Now as I tried to desend and land the Mavic stopped responding to me completely and started depending on its own. After a few tries pushing up on the sticks and no response I rushed to get under it, but with no luck and I watched the Mavic desend into the water and sink a few feet away from me .

Since Then:
I contacted dji and after waiting a month and spending $80 in long distance charges they've been unable to conclude what the problem was and so won't cover it under warranty.

I recieved that news a couple days ago and am now trying to figure it out on my own.

There are a couple things that are odd after reviewing the flight log.
1. The flight log ended before the Mavic went into the water.

2. Healthy drones reports a very weak signal when my controller never dripped a single bar. Why would I have such a signal problem with the drone only a few feet from me and zero obstructions. I was the only boat in the water. Nothing else in sight that might have interfered

I've attached a screenshot of it below, aswell as a link to my flight record on the dji go app, and the.txt file.

Ideas:

After reading through some other threads it seems the culprit for the erratic flight over the water near the end of my flight might be attributed to the VPS system which was on. If that was the case though why did I never get a warning that it was landing?

Somehow did I coincidentally lose connection and engage auto land at the same time?

Or perhaps I'm missing something far more obvious.

Recap:

Why did my flight log end early?

Why did I have such a poor signal?

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal?

What the heck happened!?!?


Resources:

DJI flight record screen recording

Flight record .TXT file is attached

screen shot of healthy drones
Screenshot_2017-03-13-22-41-00.png
 

Attachments

  • DJIFlightRecord_2017-02-13_[15-18-45].txt
    145.5 KB · Views: 18
Thank you for the thorough report. Il'll have a look at the flight log. Were you able to recover the drone at least?
 
Bit of a mystery, I did notice there was a warning about flying in a restricted area, its possible radar interference from a nearby airport. I'm just guessing but some research along those lines may help solve the mystery, I will do some research to try to help out... Sorry to here you lost the mavic
 
  • Like
Reactions: jloud
Hi all, my first post here I've been reading around the forum and am so impressed with the amount of help people provide on here. So thanks in advance!!
Recap:

Why did my flight log end early?

Why did I have such a poor signal?

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal?

What the heck happened!?!?
Unfortunately, the logs are all normal. The drone was completely responsive to the RC until the signal was lost. I'm guessing the app simply disconnected but the RC remained connected. The app sometimes disconnects from the RC, but the RC still has control over the drone. At the end of the log, the drone was too high for VPS to take effect so I didn't get a chance to observe the sinking effect. The VPS however was active during the flight. When VPS is active over water, it tends to sink into the water. It can't gauge the water very well and consequently messes up.

Why did my flight log end early? I'm guessing the app actually disconnected but the drone was still connected.

Why did I have such a poor signal? I cannot say. There's nothing I see in the logs to answer that question. It would be easier to have access to the flight log of the Mavic itself, but it's friends with crabs now.

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal? It probably wasn't poor. It was probably the app.

What the heck happened!?!? Your drone was left to drown in water. That's all I can say sorry.

Maybe @BudWalker @msinger @Robbyg Can provide further input. They're better analyzers than I am.
 
Unfortunately, the logs are all normal. The drone was completely responsive to the RC until the signal was lost. I'm guessing the app simply disconnected but the RC remained connected. The app sometimes disconnects from the RC, but the RC still has control over the drone. At the end of the log, the drone was too high for VPS to take effect so I didn't get a chance to observe the sinking effect. The VPS however was active during the flight. When VPS is active over water, it tends to sink into the water. It can't gauge the water very well and consequently messes up.

Why did my flight log end early? I'm guessing the app actually disconnected but the drone was still connected.

Why did I have such a poor signal? I cannot say. There's nothing I see in the logs to answer that question. It would be easier to have access to the flight log of the Mavic itself, but it's friends with crabs now.

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal? It probably wasn't poor. It was probably the app.

What the heck happened!?!? Your drone was left to drown in water. That's all I can say sorry.

Maybe @BudWalker @msinger @Robbyg Can provide further input. They're better analyzers than I am.
Hmm, I appreciate you having a look. I have had the phone crash during flight before and was still able to fly LOS with just the remote. So while your guess of the app disconnecting may be true it still does not explain why the drone would stop responding to my inputs.

And of course with the Mavic swimming and the flight log ending early there is no way to confirm anything.

I will note that the app appeared connected until a few seconds after it was in the water. Still with all signals good until it lost connection completely.
 
Bit of a mystery, I did notice there was a warning about flying in a restricted area, its possible radar interference from a nearby airport. I'm just guessing but some research along those lines may help solve the mystery, I will do some research to try to help out... Sorry to here you lost the mavic

Thanks, yes there is a small airport nearby. These screenshots show my approximate location and the airport. I though about that but I fly near there often and never had any issue before. But perhaps theres something to the theory.
Screenshot_2017-03-15-07-27-14.png Screenshot_2017-03-15-07-27-23.png
 
Hi all, my first post here I've been reading around the forum and am so impressed with the amount of help people provide on here. So thanks in advance!!

Description of the disaster:
Feb 13

On my third flight of the day I took off from my kayak a little ways off shore. Used auto takeoff and after establishing a steady hover I paused a moment to check to make sure I had a good connection with the Mavic, and and the my settings were correct. All was well.

I began flying towards shore and immediately notice my video feed seemed to be choppy and I was getting artifacts. I checked my remote and display and all signals and bars were full and green. So I continued thinking it might go away. After a few more seconds it got worse so I stopped. Still the remote was telling me everything was perfect but the video feed was horrible. So I decided to bring it back and land to try and diagnose the problem.

I turned around and headed back with the video feed continuing to get worse while the HD status remained green and full bars. I brought it to a hover about 10m off the bow and about 10 meters off the water. Now as I tried to maneuver closer to myself I found it was not responding well to my inputs, and would not maintain a steady hover. It shifted left and right slightly and wasn't maintaining a constant elevation. Now I was worried.

Now as I tried to desend and land the Mavic stopped responding to me completely and started depending on its own. After a few tries pushing up on the sticks and no response I rushed to get under it, but with no luck and I watched the Mavic desend into the water and sink a few feet away from me .

Since Then:
I contacted dji and after waiting a month and spending $80 in long distance charges they've been unable to conclude what the problem was and so won't cover it under warranty.

I recieved that news a couple days ago and am now trying to figure it out on my own.

There are a couple things that are odd after reviewing the flight log.
1. The flight log ended before the Mavic went into the water.

2. Healthy drones reports a very weak signal when my controller never dripped a single bar. Why would I have such a signal problem with the drone only a few feet from me and zero obstructions. I was the only boat in the water. Nothing else in sight that might have interfered

I've attached a screenshot of it below, aswell as a link to my flight record on the dji go app, and the.txt file.

Ideas:

After reading through some other threads it seems the culprit for the erratic flight over the water near the end of my flight might be attributed to the VPS system which was on. If that was the case though why did I never get a warning that it was landing?

Somehow did I coincidentally lose connection and engage auto land at the same time?

Or perhaps I'm missing something far more obvious.

Recap:

Why did my flight log end early?

Why did I have such a poor signal?

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal?

What the heck happened!?!?


Resources:

DJI flight record screen recording

Flight record .TXT file is attached

screen shot of healthy drones
View attachment 8559
What phone and app were you using? Were you in airplane mode? I'm betting Samsung / android and not in airplane mode.
 
It's possible since there is LOS to the airport, that it was perfect to have the radio systems interfere with the drone.
 
It's possible since there is LOS to the airport, that it was perfect to have the radio systems interfere with the drone.
Personally, if I have video glitching, I don't fly. Haven't had that problem since many Go App updates ago.
 
Unfortunately, the logs are all normal. The drone was completely responsive to the RC until the signal was lost. I'm guessing the app simply disconnected but the RC remained connected. The app sometimes disconnects from the RC, but the RC still has control over the drone. At the end of the log, the drone was too high for VPS to take effect so I didn't get a chance to observe the sinking effect. The VPS however was active during the flight. When VPS is active over water, it tends to sink into the water. It can't gauge the water very well and consequently messes up.

I see this stated quite often, but can someone elaborate on this for me? Why would VPS cause the Mavic to want to land or sink into the water?

If you have strong GPS and you're in control of the Mavic, why would VPS cause so many crashes over water??
 
Unfortunately, the logs are all normal. The drone was completely responsive to the RC until the signal was lost. I'm guessing the app simply disconnected but the RC remained connected. The app sometimes disconnects from the RC, but the RC still has control over the drone. At the end of the log, the drone was too high for VPS to take effect so I didn't get a chance to observe the sinking effect. The VPS however was active during the flight. When VPS is active over water, it tends to sink into the water. It can't gauge the water very well and consequently messes up.

Why did my flight log end early? I'm guessing the app actually disconnected but the drone was still connected.

Why did I have such a poor signal? I cannot say. There's nothing I see in the logs to answer that question. It would be easier to have access to the flight log of the Mavic itself, but it's friends with crabs now.

Why didn't the remote report a poor signal? It probably wasn't poor. It was probably the app.

What the heck happened!?!? Your drone was left to drown in water. That's all I can say sorry.

Maybe @BudWalker @msinger @Robbyg Can provide further input. They're better analyzers than I am.
Actually, the VPS sensor stopped reporting at 48 secs and never came back on. The .txt converters use 0 to indicate that vpsHeight has no data. DatCon uses a blank to represent this. I've been bitten by this several times. Anyway, the incident isn't related to the VPS sensor reporting bad data.
upload_2017-3-15_8-13-15.png

To summarize my contribution we know even less about the cause of this incident:)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Andrew F
I see this stated quite often, but can someone elaborate on this for me? Why would VPS cause the Mavic to want to land or sink into the water?

If you have strong GPS and you're in control of the Mavic, why would VPS cause so many crashes over water??
The argument is that water can confuse the Mavic and send false echos so that the Mavic thinks it is closer to the surface than it really is. If you are pulling down and it thinks it is very close to the surface, it goes into autolanding mode. I have had anomalous readings but never had the autolanding behavior. I leave the sonar on.
 
Actually, the VPS sensor stopped reporting at 48 secs and never came back on. The .txt converters use 0 to indicate that vpsHeight has no data. DatCon uses a blank to represent this. I've been bitten by this several times. Anyway, the incident isn't related to the VPS sensor reporting bad data.
View attachment 8574

To summarize my contribution we know even less about the cause of this incident:)
I should clarify. It was active in the settings, but it wasn't in effect in the end, so I couldn't see the drone sink as a result of the VPS. Undoubtedly, if the log continued, the VPS would have taken effect at some point.
 
The argument is that water can confuse the Mavic and send false echos so that the Mavic thinks it is closer to the surface than it really is. If you are pulling down and it thinks it is very close to the surface, it goes into autolanding mode. I have had anomalous readings but never had the autolanding behavior. I leave the sonar on.
Not quite, the water makes the sensors think the Mavic is rising, so it slowly descends to compensate, but in reality it's just dropping off into the water.
 
Not quite, the water makes the sensors think the Mavic is rising, so it slowly descends to compensate, but in reality it's just dropping off into the water.
That too. We had the case on here where the Mavic went into autolanding. Didn't happen to me. Mine is prone to reporting negative elevation over time. Pretty funny, really.
 
I see this stated quite often, but can someone elaborate on this for me? Why would VPS cause the Mavic to want to land or sink into the water?

If you have strong GPS and you're in control of the Mavic, why would VPS cause so many crashes over water??
It's because in the air it uses the GPS to gauge altitude, but if you're close to the ground, the VPS takes effect to keep the Mavic stable above ground. Since the water is fluid, the sensors can't gauge the ground. In many cases the Mavic thinks it's drifting up from the water, when in reality it isn't, and as a result lowers the thrust a bit to compensate and hold steady, when in reality it sinks into the water.
 
  • Like
Reactions: paulwills
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
131,445
Messages
1,563,199
Members
160,353
Latest member
flymehome