Need help ASAP, drone fell out of the sky!

[Freebirdforreal]

I have a new mavic pro drone and I have had it for about a week. I went out for a flight this evening and used a battery. I put a second battery in and it wouldnt let me take off until I installed the latest update. After the update installed I reset my settings and took off. I flew for about 10 minutes and then the drone started to lose signal so I pressed return home.

It didnt and then the signal went completely and the drone fell out of the sky. The gimbal was ripped off in the process and 3 sets of rotors went with it.

This is an obvious firmware or hardware issue and I am well within the 2 year warranty. What I want to know is what is the best course of action to take to get a replacement?

Should I go back to the retailer or should I go straight to the manufacturer? The problem is I need this issue resolving and a replacement drone for next weekend!

Any help would be greatly appreciated as this is not the situation I wanted to find myself in

 

[Haloweenhamster]

Did you turn off and on before take off after update?

 

[Kilrah]

You will need to supply your flight logs for investigation to confirm (or not) whether it was really a malfunction.

It is very unlikely you'll have a working machine by next week-end unless you source another one.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

Sorry to hear of your crash.
DJI does not force you to update... it is your option. Also, signal loss alone will not cause the quad to fall out of the sky. There is more going on here. Did you calibrate everything and check all the settings after the update? Did you use a fully charged battery on the second flight? What did the go app show for battery power prior to it falling?

 

[Freebirdforreal]

the battery had about 80% charge and it was turned off and on before flight after the update. It would not allow me to take off before I updated it so that looks like I had no choice, although the update has been available for a while and it was just this time that it wouldnt let me fly unless I had it.

how do I view the flight logs?

 

[LuvMyTJ]

There was an option to bypass the update. The only 'forced' update that grounded quads from DJI so far was with the Spark when they corrected a safety issue. Just bypass it next time till you are ready to do it.



Use this link to get your log files which can help point out what happened - DJI Flight Log Viewer

 

[pixl]

Sorry to hear of your crash.
DJI does not force you to update... it is your option. Also, signal loss alone will not cause the quad to fall out of the sky. There is more going on here. Did you calibrate everything and check all the settings after the update? Did you use a fully charged battery on the second flight? What did the go app show for battery power prior to it falling?

I had a situation where I was given no choice but to update, and that was when I was within a mile of the Chinese border. After the update I was asked for a Chinese Mainland phone number in order to apply for permission to fly. Needless to say, I was dead in the water at that point. After getting a little further away from the border I deleted the Go app and re-downloaded it, and after installing everything was fine again.

I know this probably has little to do with the issue, but I'm just adding it to show there are instances when you are forced to update.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

I had a situation where I was given no choice but to update, and that was when I was within a mile of the Chinese border. After the update I was asked for a Chinese Mainland phone number in order to apply for permission to fly. Needless to say, I was dead in the water at that point. After getting a little further away from the border I deleted the Go app and re-downloaded it, and after installing everything was fine again.

I know this probably has little to do with the issue, but I'm just adding it to show there are instances when you are forced to update.

See my post above yours... you can always bypass the update. (China is an entirely different ball game so I won't comment on their rules).

 

[Ping^Spike]

I don't know what country you're in mate, but if you go to the retailer they'll probably say user error. Going to the manufacturer will take longer than five days to resolve.

Either way, you're not getting a replacement before next weekend If you have a credit card, perhaps go buy a new one from a shop that does 30 day no-quible returns (like Argos here in the UK?).

 

[HWCM]

Sounds like you had it set for hover on loss of signal and it auto landed when the battery went to 10%.
Did you reset your settings after the update.
Good luck getting anyone to warranty this. I am almost positive DJI will state user error.
P.S. NO UPDATE IS FORCED OR MANDATORY. You can skip any update.

 

[Freebirdforreal]

I see many of you saying any update is skipable and i saw the picture where you press x to monimise that menu and continue.

That is what i had been doing and what i did today. However like i said i changed battery and switched back on and it said unable to take off until update is installed hence why i did it.

Also the battery was on around 80% so it didnt land due to low battery. If the signal was lost then how can it be operator error as i was not operating the drone at the time?

I appreciate all of the different views and i will check the link to the flight logs, but im posting to find out the best course of action to take from this point.

The gimbal mount tore off and 3 sets of rotors came away when it crashed, so it wasnt a minor incident.

From what i can gather the drone lost signal, attempted to return home and flew in to a tree, i imagine the obstacle sensors were not working for whatever reason which were switched on and the unit was not in sport mode, so if this happened to you guys, what would you do?

 

[pixl]

Did you set the RTH height to be higher than the tallest obstacle ?

 

[HWCM]

I see many of you saying any update is skipable and i saw the picture where you press x to monimise that menu and continue.

That is what i had been doing and what i did today. However like i said i changed battery and switched back on and it said unable to take off until update is installed hence why i did it.

Also the battery was on around 80% so it didnt land due to low battery. If the signal was lost then how can it be operator error as i was not operating the drone at the time?

I appreciate all of the different views and i will check the link to the flight logs, but im posting to find out the best course of action to take from this point.

The gimbal mount tore off and 3 sets of rotors came away when it crashed, so it wasnt a minor incident.

From what i can gather the drone lost signal, attempted to return home and flew in to a tree, i imagine the obstacle sensors were not working for whatever reason which were switched on and the unit was not in sport mode, so if this happened to you guys, what would you do?

Ahhhh. I see. Sorry for that. It looks like you didn't have the RTH height set correctly for the area you were flying. The mavic did exactly as it was supposed to and start the RTH when it lost signal. But apparently your RTH height was set to low or you moved the sticks while it was in RTH (moving the sticks cancels the RTH climb). There was a tree in the way and it flew into it. Obstacle avoidance doesn't work to well on tree branches.
That or it did detect the tree and tried to avoid it but couldn't get over it and hovered there until the battery got low and it auto landed.
I hate it for you. I would hate to loose any of mine. But this looks like it is going to be operator error.

 

[HWCM]

You can send it in to DJI and they will give you a repair estimate. It won't be done in a week though. It usually takes a two or three weeks after you pay for the repairs.
Good luck.

 

[Haloweenhamster]

People saying that update not forced, depends on country, in China whilst traveling my mavic was grounded due to old fw

 

[HWCM]

People saying that update not forced, depends on country, in China whilst traveling my mavic was grounded due to old fw

He isn't in China.

 

[Haloweenhamster]

Sorry he hasn't got location set and i don't recall him stating, also spark has mandatory update so stating dji don't force updates is

FALSE

 

[HWCM]

Sorry he hasn't got location set and i don't recall him stating, also spark has mandatory update so stating dji don't force updates is

FALSE

Sorry he hasn't got location set and i don't recall him stating, also spark has mandatory update so stating dji don't force updates is

FALSE

Spark had one mandatory update for safety reasons. But you could still dismiss it until the deadline which DJI had given a two week notice to give spark owner's time to update when it was convenient for them.

 

[Haloweenhamster]

So was it or was it not mandatory?

 

[Haloweenhamster]

why are people so against updating
Do you not update your phone or computer?
I know I would let Windows do its security updates and update my antivirus and firewall if it needed it

I've worked in computing and electronics and know there's more in an update than what they specify and normally for the better