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Mavic 2 Pro lost, DJI denied responsibility claims user error

evilknievel

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Hello Everyone, first time poster here,

i have an interesting story that combines many of the issues other people on this forum posted before.

a little history;
i bought my first DJI drone in early 2017, a mavic (1) pro.

I had landed it once in a tree, involuntarily but that was the only user mistake I made with it, after this incident the camera image was quite soft on the sides. And it was fixed by DJI, covered by DJI care after paying another small fee (why do you have to pay a repair fee if you have an insurance?)

So when the rumors came about of a new Mavic with a 1” sensors, I got, like many, quite excited.

After the announcement I made my order 2 hours later. As I was about to go on vacation a week later to Taiwan, traveling out of Beijing(expat in beijing), I wanted to get the drone as fast as possible, as the delivery of the first mavic took nearly a week, as it seemed that DJI shipped via train and not air ways.

To my surprise the new drone arrived only a few days later, so my Taiwan vacation was rescued.

So I was off to Taiwan, and off to my first mavic 2 pro flight, as Beijing is a freaking huge no fly zone, everything within the 6th ring road is blocked.

I took my first fight in taidong, not too long, just captured the nice surroundings.
After the first flights, I realized how hot the motors became, after landing they felt as hot, nearly painful to touch.
I contacted the DJI support and they assured me everything is normal they can get hot up to 60degrees Celsius.
Another thing that made me curious is that I had to calibrate the drone before nearly every flight. I had to do this with the original mavic hardly every 10th flight.
Also the drone moved a bit when I had it hovering above my head after take-off and also when I did time lapses later on, in the resulted videos you could make out some spin/movement.

After a few days I arrived in Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan, here is the beautiful taroko gorge and I was planning to take videos of it.
I went into the shakadang trail and at some point I planned to take off, calibrating again….
Then the drone’s sensors complained after take-off about obstacles and I decided to fly somewhere else.

The next spot was more clear but the drone decided to complain again, but I felt this was safe enough, so I deactivated the obstacle avoidance(my bad not to have it reactivates but i think was followed, maybe couldnt have been avoided after all), so I flew higher and the drone was in free air, some 50 meters above me and I took my videos, the drone was some 200-300 meters away and lots of vegetation and rocks should be blocking the signal, but occu sync 2.0 held what it promised, good reception of the video.

Then I was on the way back still video recording, this time a little lower for more detail.

The drone was very close to the starting point and I took my thumb of the stick to make the drone stop.
But the drone kept flying straight, so I counter measured and pulled the stick back to make it stop.
DJI later told me this is normal behavior since the drone lost the GPS signal and went into ATTI mode, why would the drone continue to fly straight in ATTI mode once I put the direction lever in idle position?
I wasn’t in air plane mode!

In the next few moments, the video signal got weak and broke off and my whole Iphone screen went black! BLACK! Not even menus were visible, i panicked and I told the drone to fly up, to get to safety and free space, and then I recognized that the display of the controller showed a “sd card full” message.
I then exited the DJI GO 4 app and terminated it fully on the iphone and restarted it. Once I was reconnected to the drone and got a video feedback again, the drone was already on the ground, I could watch some beautiful rocks and plants.

Imagine my feelings at this moment. After a while the battery died and I couldn’t find the drone in time, even though I was looking for 3 days for it.
i walked through a river and river bed to find it, but i think the drone must have crashed on a higher level.

I contacted DJI and told them what happened, of course I got the typical “we are sorry bla bla” etc.
They asked me to send them the flight recordings and I synced them to their server.

After a few days they came back to me and told me they couldn’t find any strange behavior of the drone, It was functioning as it should have.

We wrote each other at least 10 times the same things over and over again; my statement about what happened on the app was completely ignored.

They made me a generous offer, I could pay 85% and get a new mavic 2 pro with battery, without controller and charger.

I continued my claims but they were ignored over and over again.

After a while I swallowed that pill and took their generous offer.

On my next business trip to Shenzhen(home to DJI) I was able to try the new drone, I was at the large square of the town hall building and wanted to fly down the long street that passes in the center of Shenzhen, passing many high rise buildings like the Shenzhen stock exchange.

I took off and flew down the street, after a few hundred meters I flew backwards to get the right spot to start the recording. When the drone was already on its way back down the street and towards me, the video feed froze! That time the menus where still active and changing but I didn’t get any update on what the drone’s camera sees. I continued to fly straight, as I knew there were no obstacles in the way, after a few hundred meters, I restarted the app, and I could see the live feed again and landed.

I then replaced the battery and took off one more time. This time I flew into the other direction when the same thing happened again, but this time the feed came back by itself after a few seconds.

While landing, the first or the second time(not sure) that day, the drone reported again a loss of gps signal, I would like to state that the drone was in complete free space, no buildings several hundred meters next to it, the gps signal loss was only a few seconds but still.

Also interesting to mention, the engines of my second Mavic 2 pro were not near as hot as they were on the first Mavic 2 pro.

I am posting this to see how many other people have experiences like mine.
I think its outrages how DJI behaves, knowing they are the market leader without any meaningful competition.
There is clearly still a lot of bugs in the systems and the customers are being used as beta testers.

Please let me know what similar experiences were made by you or other users.

best regards
 
You have a lot to teach yourself about how a drone works and how to fly it safely.
Nothing seems unusual in your record.

(why do you have to pay a repair fee if you have an insurance?)
Insurances often have deductibles, it's the case of this one. In the terms you signed.

why would the drone continue to fly straight in ATTI mode once I put the direction lever in idle position?
Becasue that's what ATTI is, without GPS there is no way it can hold a position, letting the stick go just puts the drone flat but it will continue on its path then go wherever the wind pushes it...
 
In ATTI mode, it cannot hold position. If it was already moving, it'll stay moving.
How old is your iPhone? Sound like it couldn't handle the load.
 
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hi ray, the phone didnt die(shut down), it was just the DJI app, which went black, i hit the home button and it went to the home screen, i killed the app and restarted it, that was fine.

my phone battery was also way above 50% (iphone6s), i always kill all other apps while flying too.

in my opinion, the drone acted up once the sd card went 100%, the connection broke off, even though there must have been less than 50m air distance in between, the greatest distance in that flight was several hundred meters.

ok i get it with ATTI mode now, but all the rest was definitely not normal
 
If the app went black then the app just crashed, not "connection broke off". Happens and it's your responsibility to expect it.
 
the drone was very close to me, then i saw how the video feed deteriorated and then app went black, i meant the live feed connection broke off
 
I am posting this to see how many other people have experiences like mine.
I think its outrages how DJI behaves, knowing they are the market leader without any meaningful competition.
There is clearly still a lot of bugs in the systems and the customers are being used as beta testers.

Please let me know what similar experiences were made by you or other users.
What's outrageous is that you expect anyone to read the amount you've written to find what's important in your story.
How about you start again and just write in 10 lines or less what happened.
And also supply your flight data so we can see what really happened rather than what you think might have happened.

To do that, go to DJI Flight Log Viewer - Phantom Help
Follow the instructions there to upload your flight record from your phone or tablet.
Come back and post a link to the report it provides.

If you do that, I'll look at your incident.
 
hi ray, the phone didnt die(shut down), it was just the DJI app, which went black, i hit the home button and it went to the home screen, i killed the app and restarted it, that was fine.

my phone battery was also way above 50% (iphone6s), i always kill all other apps while flying too.

in my opinion, the drone acted up once the sd card went 100%, the connection broke off, even though there must have been less than 50m air distance in between, the greatest distance in that flight was several hundred meters.

ok i get it with ATTI mode now, but all the rest was definitely not normal
The screen went black and you had to kill the app made me think your iPhone couldn't handle it. Not sure how a full SD card affects the app on the phone. Also, check you have the latest iOS on your phone. There was an issue about a year ago that the DJI Go 4 app wasn't working well with the iOS.
 
ive had my mav "freeze" if u will for a breif time while in panorama mode, it got stuck on a image and screen went black and she wouldnt respond at all, cycled sport mode which has halped in the past but it didnt this time, i coud still see the bird and after restarting the phone and cycling sport mode she finally came down but still no picture feed, she didnt come back to life untill i restarted the bird
 
Sounds like phone or just s bad cable connection to the RC. Try a new cable.
 
Also, before launch it's always a good idea to check the overall health of the phone, stuff like free memory and how many apps are running in background chewing up resources. DJI 4 Go is an extremely intensive application which touches a lot of stuff such as Video, Processor, RAM, Network, GPS and USB connection and it's doing all of this concurrently.

Given the potential consequences of application failure, it's important to maximise performance by shutting done all background apps and ideally also enabling aircraft mode, especially if your mobile device is a few years old.
 
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Sorry trying to follow your story, its quite long...

DJI later told me this is normal behavior since the drone lost the GPS signal and went into ATTI mode, why would the drone continue to fly straight in ATTI mode once I put the direction lever in idle position?

Once its in ATTI it will drift with the wind. You need to make constant corrections with the sticks to keep it steady.

In the next few moments, the video signal got weak and broke off and my whole Iphone screen went black! BLACK! Not even menus were visible, i panicked and I told the drone to fly up, to get to safety and free space, and then I recognized that the display of the controller showed a “sd card full” message.
I then exited the DJI GO 4 app and terminated it fully on the iphone and restarted it. Once I was reconnected to the drone and got a video feedback again, the drone was already on the ground, I could watch some beautiful rocks and plants.

So you lost video feed because your iphone app crashed and you lost the drone after that? Did you have a visual on the drone or were you beyond visual line of sight?

Imagine my feelings at this moment. After a while the battery died and I couldn’t find the drone in time, even though I was looking for 3 days for it.
i walked through a river and river bed to find it, but i think the drone must have crashed on a higher level.

Based on what you're saying here, if you could see the ground from the camera feed, the last known position should have been recorded on the app. So if you went there and checked that spot, that means it either grew legs and walked or perhaps someone took it? Taken by a high tide perhaps?

Either way post your logs and reach out to @sar104 for analysis if you want it from a non-DJI employee perspective.

You could also try do what AJ Alvarez did and make countless videos of how crap the Mavic 2 is and hope DJI cave in and give you a new one for free.

 
The biggest problem is that people have no idea how to actually fly an R/C anything, including a drone. When GPS is working, you are not flying the drone, you are basically steering it. Once the GPS stops working, for whatever reason, and you have to actually fly the drone, people freak out and have no idea how to control it. I always tell people who want to fly a drone with no R/C experience, to get a $30 quadcopter on Amazon and learn how to fly that first. That will teach you how to actually fly something so when the GPS stops working, you will know how to respond.
 
Once the GPS stops working, for whatever reason, and you have to actually fly the drone, people freak out and have no idea how to control it

Which is quite strange because in ATTI its still using the barometer for altitude hold. You only have to guide it with the sticks manually which isnt that big a deal. A real toy drone would require you to control power for altitude in addition to steering it where you want it to go.

For me at least ATTI isnt very difficult to fly at all and I often use it in a downwind to pickup speed and watch it zip along at 100km/h if the wind is strong enough :D
 
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Which is quite strange because in ATTI its still using the barometer for altitude hold. You only have to guide it with the sticks manually which isnt that big a deal. A real toy drone would require you to control power for altitude in addition to steering it where you want it to go.

For me at least ATTI isnt very difficult to fly at all and I often use it in a downwind to pickup speed and watch it zip along at 100km/h if the wind is strong enough :D
That's true but it also doesn't stop automatically, which is what messes up most people. People who only fly in GPS mode get too used to taking your hands off the sticks and the drone automatically stopping and remaining in one place.

I partially blame DJI for removing ATT mode, so people can't practice.
 
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Op i think ray meant maybe its your iphone that is culprit....is it an older model? If it is an older model sure itworked with mp1 but mp2 is a whole other animal and the app is more cpu intensive these days
 
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I partially blame DJI for removing ATT mode, so people can't practice.
I usually ensure Im nice and high (near 400ft/120m) when I'm in ATTI. Not as much to hit up there. That being said I usually am in motion when the drone enters ATTI for its own reasons so It may enter/exit without affecting flight and the only giveaway being Go4 shows it on screen.
 
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