Mavic Pro went rogue

msinger · Nov 8, 2017

Your flight log ends when the battery was at 60% and your Mavic was about 10 feet above the ground. The crash is not documented, so it would be impossible to know for sure what happened without seeing the DAT flight log (which is on your Mavic's internal memory card). From your description above, it sounds like your Mavic was attempting to return to the home point.

CJEllijay · Nov 8, 2017

Yeah, I noticed that too and that's why I was worried that it didn't show the crash for when the repair place looks at the log.

I do have a nice 15 sec video of the drone in the tree though

msinger · Nov 8, 2017

The DAT flight log will show the crash. It records data the entire time the Mavic is powered on.

CJEllijay · Nov 8, 2017

msinger said:
The DAT flight log will show the crash. It records data the entire time the Mavic is powered on.

Thank you for all of your help. Sorry to sound like such a rube.

Porto · Nov 8, 2017

msinger said:
From your description above, it sounds like your Mavic was attempting to return to the home point.

But why it would try to return home? If because the signal was disconnected, it would be very strange as the OP was quite near to the Mavic and the flight log also doesn't show RTH.

msinger · Nov 8, 2017

Porto said:
and the flight log also doesn't show RTH

The flight log doesn't show the end of the flight, so there is no way to tell how much of the flight is missing.

Porto · Nov 8, 2017

msinger said:
The flight log doesn't show the end of the flight, so there is no way to tell how much of the flight is missing.

Yes, you're right. But still IF it attempted to RTH, that would be strange as the OP didn't say there was any warning of RC Disconnected (but indeed the RC behaved as if it was disconnected as it did not respond to the Pause button or any stick input).

I hope the OP will update us once he got explanation from DJI.

Edited to make it clearer.

f3honda4me · Nov 8, 2017

Porto said:
But why it would try to return home? If because the signal was disconnected, it would be very strange as the OP was quite near to the Mavic and the flight log also doesn't show RTH.

Plus, if the mavic lost connection to the RC, then the RC flight log wouldn't record the RTH part.

Porto · Nov 8, 2017

f3honda4me said:
Plus, if the mavic lost connection to the RC, then the RC flight log wouldn't record the RTH part.

Yes, correct

CJEllijay · Nov 8, 2017

Tracking shows that the drone should be at the repair facility no later than this Friday.

I'll update as soon as I hear anything.

Another Mavic Pro arrives tomorrow with a iPad Mini (thought maybe it was a Samsung S7 Edge issue)

sar104 · Nov 8, 2017

CJEllijay said:
Tracking shows that the drone should be at the repair facility no later than this Friday.

I'll update as soon as I hear anything.

Another Mavic Pro arrives tomorrow with a iPad Mini (thought maybe it was a Samsung S7 Edge issue)

One question - if you look at the recorded track of the aircraft, does the location of the end of the track correspond to where it suddenly ascended, or does it look like there was further horizontal progress up the driveway after the log track ends?

logge · Nov 8, 2017

Did you see if the controller was still connected to the drone while it was ascending (did you see the video feed?). If not it probably just lost connection and initiated RTH.

I've had a few connection losses happen while literally standing next to the Mavic with at least one resulting in RTH nearly crashing it. In my case, it seems to have been the USB cable which was faulty (the problems stopped happening after I changed it)

If you are ever flying under something, it's safer to change the settings to hover on connection loss instead of RTH.

sar104 · Nov 8, 2017

logge said:
Did you see if the controller was still connected to the drone while it was ascending (did you see the video feed?). If not it probably just lost connection and initiated RTH.

I've had a few connection losses happen while literally standing next to the Mavic with at least one resulting in RTH nearly crashing it. In my case, it seems to have been the USB cable which was faulty (the problems stopped happening after I changed it)

If you are ever flying under something, it's safer to change the settings to hover on connection loss instead of RTH.

Are you saying that your mobile device losing connection with the RC caused the RC to lose connection with the aircraft?

CJEllijay · Nov 8, 2017

sar104 said:
One question - if you look at the recorded track of the aircraft, does the location of the end of the track correspond to where it suddenly ascended, or does it look like there was further horizontal progress up the driveway after the log track ends?

looking at the end of the flight it appears to correspond with where it ascended based on my driveway.

CJEllijay · Nov 8, 2017

logge said:
Did you see if the controller was still connected to the drone while it was ascending

It was still connected, however no matter what input I attempted nothing happened from a controller standpoint.

logge · Nov 8, 2017

sar104 said:
Are you saying that your mobile device losing connection with the RC caused the RC to lose connection with the aircraft?

That's the only explanation that I could think of. I know that you are supposed to be able to use the remote without a mobile device, so in theory there shouldn't be an impact. Most of the times only the video feed would cut out and the app would indicate it lost connection while the RC still said it was connected, but a few times it actually led to a RTH (while I was no more than a few meters away in a big open space outside a city).

Since I changed the cable this summer I've flown it numerous times (using the same mobile) without any such issues.

sar104 · Nov 8, 2017

logge said:
That's the only explanation that I could think of. I know that you are supposed to be able to use the remote without a mobile device, so in theory there shouldn't be an impact. Most of the times only the video feed would cut out and the app would indicate it lost connection while the RC still said it was connected, but a few times it actually led to a RTH (while I was no more than a few meters away in a big open space outside a city).

Since I changed the cable this summer I've flown it numerous times (using the same mobile) without any such issues.

Interesting. Do you by any chance have the DAT file for those disconnect events?

Porto · Nov 8, 2017

CJEllijay said:
Tracking shows that the drone should be at the repair facility no later than this Friday.

I'll update as soon as I hear anything.

Another Mavic Pro arrives tomorrow with a iPad Mini (thought maybe it was a Samsung S7 Edge issue)

Looking forward to your update

Btw, the advice to set it to Hover for disconnection is a good advice should you do something like this again in the future. But make sure you don't forget to set it back to Return to Home for normal flying.

logge · Nov 8, 2017

sar104 said:
Interesting. Do you by any chance have the DAT file for those disconnect events?

I uploaded this when I had the problem, however, it might only be the log from the remote. I guess the DAT on the Mavic is long gone by now?

Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

After reading on this forum, I decided to try the cable that came with the phone and after that I was able to fly at the same location many times without problems.

sar104 · Nov 8, 2017

logge said:
I uploaded this when I had the problem, however, it might only be the log from the remote. I guess the DAT on the Mavic is long gone by now?

Airdata UAV - Flight Data Analysis for Drones

After reading on this forum, I decided to try the cable that came with the phone and after that I was able to fly at the same location many times without problems.

Probably - the DAT files get overwritten by new ones. Anyway - in that flight you were in wifi mode as far as I can see, where the device is controlling the aircraft directly, and you had noticeable signal issues. That is a completely different situation.