Dji drones reliability

[jojonono]

DJI would have sent you a refurb (as good as a brand new drone) for half price!
If my business was repairing drones I would highly recommend my service against DJI's as well.

He gave you a used gimbal.

gimbals are very sensative but unless you pinched it and held it tight while it initiated you wont damage it!

Most likely the calibration was done incorrectly. or you got a bad gimbal.

NO you will need to calibrate the gimbal with Python just as your repair person attempted to do.

I have 3 Mavic pros none of them will let me keep the cover on they will usually overload if I forget the cover.

to a point YES that is a fragile piece of equipment- You need to fly the drone with that in mind!

Send it to DJI- PAY the quote- Recieve a NEW Drone! NO it can be software BUT if you crash it yes its a hardware thing!

Sounds like he is using scrap parts. DJI certified repair centers dont do that! He doesnt want to pay the fee it takes to get the used gimbals to work ( you need the RepairTool software emulator). there are services online that charge a per use fee of 100 bucks for this.
If you can afford the purchase the mini 4 would be an excellent addition to any Drone fleet. If he is DJI certified he gets this service from them so thats a red flag. DJI will do this for you it takes around 7 days or so turn around time.

Nothing that wasnt update related and easily fixable.
DJI is not like the local car dealership that charges high prices for service they are actually quite reasonable
Your best bet for gimbal repairs is to send it to DJI this way you are getting a new part with a warranty.
ONE more note: IF you DROP or crash your Drone - IT WILL BREAK.
If this person is an authorized DJI service center they themselfs would not have attempted the fix-They would have sent it for replacement. A DJI authorized Repair center will usually only physically work on Enterprise model Drones
ALL the rest go to the factory.

prevention is better than cure

am trying to figure out to prevent crashes at the first place

sending anything to dji from the UAE >> USA will mean 1 month downtime and i rely on my drones to make a living...

thank you for all your remarks,

 

[jojonono]

If you are relying on obstacle avoidance to prevent damage, you are asking for trouble.
And since your OA can't work in the dark, that crash is down to the way you are flying.

Flying close to obstacles is risky and requires extra care.
Better still keeping away from obstacles is the most effective obstacle avoidance.
When there's nothing to hit, it's very hard to get into trouble.

DJI drones are extremely reliable.
Much more reliable than many drone flyers.

that makes a lot of sense

my first crash was indoors in a huge tent

the second one was at night OUTDOORS, here in the UAE its quite illegal to fly anything, i am just taking the risk and it seems to be fine so far, except for the occasional drone crashes

 

[Starz]

the occasional drone crashes

Simple solution.
Don’t fly lower that 30 feet above anything that wants to eat your flying camera.

 

[Azarov]

There is a DJI office in Australia and DJI assessment is $90. Then you may add the cost of the repair if your drone is not under the warranty.
You can insure the drone and public liability if you're doing commercial.
My DJI M2P crashed once in Nov'23 the first time for the past 4 years. The repair/replacement was covered by the insurance.
Likelihood of the event (based on log analysis) is a battery malfunction.

 

[jojonono]

So something came to my mind I hope u guys can relate or comment on it...

The air 2s additional Landing gear/legs + prop guards, can this guarantee the gimbal wont touch the ground if the drone ever falls from the sky on the ground ? Do u see what am saying ? The extra wide props and high landing legs makes it impossible for the camera to actually touch the ground... so is it the case ??....

 

[jojonono]

Simple solution.
Don’t fly lower that 30 feet above anything that wants to eat your flying camera.

U mean don't fly.lower 30 feet than the highest tree or light pole in the area ??....

I always estimate the maximum altitude before taking off and even lock the maximum height in the drone settings, never thought of minimum height, mmmmm is that a brilliant idea or what !?...

 

[jojonono]

There is a DJI office in Australia and DJI assessment is $90. Then you may add the cost of the repair if your drone is not under the warranty.
You can insure the drone and public liability if you're doing commercial.
My DJI M2P crashed once in Nov'23 the first time for the past 4 years. The repair/replacement was covered by the insurance.
Likelihood of the event (based on log analysis) is a battery malfunction.

Except I don't live in Australia

 

[Starz]

U mean don't fly.lower 30 feet than the highest tree or light pole in the area ??....

I always estimate the maximum altitude before taking off and even lock the maximum height in the drone settings, never thought of minimum height, mmmmm is that a brilliant idea or what !?...

In the United States, we have a maximum height of 400 feet above ground level. Your restrictions may be something other than that. DJI products have a maximum height of 500 meters built into the system that in some cases can be modified to exceed that number. Every DJI product that I have is set to the 500 meter limit. I have enough gray matter between my ears to make the correct decisions on what height I need for where I’m flying my expensive cameras. For the purpose of not allowing some drone eating obstacle to ruin my day, I tend to not fly anywhere near those kinds of circumstances. I do not participate in the highly profitable DJI care refresh program or any other form of insurance simply because I don’t feel the need.

In my opinion, flying anywhere below 30 to 50 above the tallest object will be a risk to some degree. Risk certainly has its rewards, but there can be a cost for that reward that I’m not willing to spend.

 

[Shuttersky597]

A safe way is to set up waypoint mission during the day a run mission at night. Does the Air 2s do waypoints? Good luck my friend.

 

[EssenYVR]

...suddenly the infamous Gimbal motor overloaded appeared out of nowhere..

Is there any chance you've been flying in an environment where dust or sand could have been blown into the gimbal? That kind of foreign object damage could cause the gimbal motors to seize up.

 

[Felix le Chat]

i too reached this conclusion that the camera and gimbal are the weak spot of every drone,

how do i mitigate crashing them for god sakes ?

i will have a second hand help from now on to minotor the drone while flying and warn me if it is about to crash into something

both crashes were in low light situations were the sensors didnt work well

i have a side question though, mmm...

the other day someone had the mavic 2 pro, his obstacle avoidance sensors managed to pick an obstacle 2meters away in extremely dark outdoors shoot, i was really surprised !

so i was wondering are the mavic 2 and mavic 3 pro sensors more reliable at night ??...

its either that or i will have to hook up extremely powerful lights when flying at night on my drones for the sensors to prevent crashes at night !...

thank you,

The only answer I can offer to your side question is based on personal experience. I shoot quite a lot of interiors in very old buildings (which, because of their age, have very small windows and are gloomy), I use prop guards on both my Mavic 2's and my mini 3 pro and fly in tripod/cine mode which means all O/A 'sensors' are engaged and running on rocket fuel (Mavic 2 Pro & Zoom in particular). PGYTECH prop guards have saved my metaphorical bacon on quite a few occasions and are the single best accessory I've purchased.

With hard shell interiors (built structures) you will not get a good GPS fix, which means ATTI flight mode takes over - flying ATTI is a totally different ball game... especially in confined areas. The infra-red sensors (top and bottom) won't work very well in low ambient light so you really need to use the mk.1 eyeball to judge trajectory and proximity.

Fill lights will cause exposure problems if they're fitted to the drone and they only illuminate a very small circular area. You might be better off letting the wide fixed aperture work to your advantage as far as it can and then lift the shadows and local contrast in editing, yes, this creates a lot of digital noise in the shadows, but good noise reduction algorithms can work minor miracles now.

Soft shell interiors (tents, marquees, etc.) have support structures which are normally metal poles and bracings - this opens another potential can of worms with regard to possible compass errors.

A lot of droners sneer at them: but prop guards are an essential part of the work I do. Not only protecting my drones, but doing the same for the clients asset. Another 'essential' is flying slowly and precisely.

As suggested in your other thread and repeated here: WAYPOINTS planned and set during daylight conditions with the launch point precisely marked (chalk mark/water based paint spot) this waypoints flight can then be repeated after the sun sets... but the takeoff point needs to be exactly the same. I would only trust this with exterior shoots.

Best of luck.... and thank you for the courtesy of your 'thank you'.

 

[Hermey]

I have 4 DJI drones, and 1 Autel drone, a Nano Evo+. With the caveat mentioned that I do not fly a lot -- I'm sure I fly much less than a lot of people on this forum --- the only problem I've had with the DJI drones system, is that at times I find I've been logged out of the DJI App on my smart phone, and this can easily result in being completely unable to fly as planned, if I am in an area with no cell signal, and thus unable to log back into the App.


I recently experienced a couple problems with the Autel Nano Evo+, that has never happened to me with any DJI drone...

One was that as was flying the Nano back to launch point, all of a sudden her gimbal went wonky and the horizon line went askew. The image showing up on the App was about 20 or 30 degrees tilted from the correct horizon line.

Then, shortly after that, I got a warning notification that the battery was down to 10% and apparently Return to Home was being initiated. This notification didn't stay on my screen long enough for me to respond to it and cancel RTH and just land the drone immediately, in the vicinity of where she was which was about 100 ft away. I ended up struggling to keep the drone from landing on bushes, and bring it over to a flat area where it was safer to land. She managed to land safely but it was a close call.

 

[mj2019]

well how how valuable are dji drones in what they offered us hobbyist or pros is far far behind imagination, the revolution of capabilities they have introduced into our hands in the price of almost nothing is more than science fiction,,,, u need to remember the days where u at least needed a helicopter of several million dollars of cost with a crew holding life in them needing tens to hunderds of thousands of dollars to train and multi thousand dollars camera to get an airial footage that a phantom2 with a go pro 1 can get today by better quality even.....
dji changed the planet and our life for ever
i hate them( dji) when they restrict us by the limitation they put on the drone and firmware( am not in the US or EU)
but dji drones are more than reliable if u treat them with the required level of knowledge and proper operation they can live forever with proper care
DJI deserves a lot of respect and appreciation from the bottom of my heart

 

[chadCO]

I have a mavic pro that is still flying great after 100's of flights, a mini 4 pro that probably has 500+ flights on it with one mishap into a tree (my fault) had to replace the gimbal shock mounts, first time I did it the gimbal worked.... but would give errors, I had to take it apart again and get both gimbal motors aligned then it worked perfect. Bear in mind it passed the calibration the first time with the motors out of sync, so it might just be a matter of redoing the shock mounts.