Can you trick the Geo Zone restriction to allow flight?

[Scottalmas]

I seem to recall when I first got my Spark, I flew it in Gesture mode in an area that I late learned was within a Geo Zone. Oddly, I had no trouble flying that day in Gesture mode. My guess was that this was because the Spark was not connected to a phone, had no way to transmit my location back to DJI to tell DJI to ground my drone without an unlock code. I came to this guess/opinion because the next time I went to the same place, I couldn't fly there; that time I was using the RC and the phone was not in Airplane mode.

IF, that is a big IF, my guess was correct, is this a way to trick the Mini into allowing flight in a Geo Zone by not allowing your phone to connect to the internet at any time before or during the flight? Just spit balling here.

 

[sar104]

That's not how the geo system works. The aircraft doesn't transmit its location to DJI while in flight. The geo zones are stored in the aircraft firmware and updated periodically, and so the only way to circumvent them if they are not new enough that they haven't been loaded (other than outright hacking) is to prevent the aircraft from knowing where it is. That means disabling the GPS.

 

[DanMan32]

If you NEVER let your phone connect to the internet, then you won't get new zones, but you still have existing ones, including wrong ones in the AC's database and it has GPS.
I suspect Spark got away with geofence in gesture mode because there's just so far and high you can go and still command with gestures.

 

[molowo]

That's not how the geo system works. The aircraft doesn't transmit its location to DJI while in flight. The geo zones are stored in the aircraft firmware and updated periodically, and so the only way to circumvent them if they are not new enough that they haven't been loaded (other than outright hacking) is to prevent the aircraft from knowing where it is. That means disabling the GPS.

How would you disable the gps for Mavic mini ?

 

[sar104]

How would you disable the gps for Mavic mini ?

Since the versions of DJI Assistant 2 that permit firmware parameter modifications don't recognize the Mini, I think that all you are left with is the old aluminum foil trick.