Pro or Pro Platinum?

[sar104]

The point I was trying to make is that technology can compensate for pilot error (and this pilot seems more prone to error than most). GPS navigation, the ability to hover etc. with Spark has prevented it from flying away a lot longer than the $30 drone. From what I understand the Mavic Pro is safer than the Spark in this regard. But does the Mavic 2 have more safeguards than the Mavic Pro?

The M2 has one notable additional feature that mitigates possibly the single biggest cause of uncontrolled flight - namely magnetic interference at the power up/take off location leading to an incorrectly initialized IMU yaw value. As the M2 takes off and ascends out of the magnetically distorted location, the change in compass yaw, with no rotation detected by the z-axis rate gyro, leads to the FC resetting the IMU yaw to the new compass yaw. That makes the M2 very resistant to yaw-error-induced flight problems.

 

[Rojillio Santoro]

Interesting thanks

 

[bliksem]

Less prone to fly away?

Just a better drone all round, the camera is far superior... it has a Hasselblad camera with a 1" sensor compared to the dinky 1/2.3" sensor on the MP/MPP.

 

[DT_Droner_UK]

I have a pro platinum and having tried the "normal" pro,I'd the Platinum better for 2 main reasons:
1) more flight time (3-8 minutes depending on conditions)
2) less noise (just seemed quieter, did not measure the DB)

 

[Rojillio Santoro]

Welcome to the forum.
I too encourage posting logs for analysis. Often much to be learned about a crash, and in general.

Attached are flight records and images from Airdata. I lost my 1st Spark 4/22/18. I included a screen capture from dji Go which apparently uses the limited GPS data which Airdata didn't. The 2nd Spark was lost 10/13/19. I included the flight map of the previous flight, Oct-13th-2018-05-17PM-Flight-Airdata.JPG, flying the same Litchi mission successfully. The 3rd mishap ("There's no such thing as a flyaway was 6/25/19.

 

[Meta4]

Attached are flight records and images from Airdata. I lost my 1st Spark 4/22/18. I included a screen capture from dji Go which apparently uses the limited GPS data which Airdata didn't. The 2nd Spark was lost 10/13/19. I included the flight map of the previous flight, Oct-13th-2018-05-17PM-Flight-Airdata.JPG, flying the same Litchi mission successfully. The 3rd mishap ("There's no such thing as a flyaway was 6/25/19.

I'll have a look at your flight data but those Airdata CSVs aren't easy or good to work with.
I tried to go over the last one and it's telling me that you were flying 260 feet lower than your launch point ... pretty difficult with flat terrain.
One thing I can see there, is that you launched with a partially discharged battery and flew until the battery level was very low.
Cell voltages were down at 3.3V at the end of the data.
That's likely to be a factor.

It will be a lot easier for me if you just post the .txt files you fed into Airdata or post the airdata results so I can access the original .txt files myself.

 

[Dizzy1971]

get a marco pollo locator thats all i got to say about that i,m sick of losing money

I have a Marco and have tested it numerous times just to make my ocd self happier. It always works I never fly without it ! ??

 

[Rojillio Santoro]

I have a Marco and have tested it numerous times just to make my ocd self happier. It always works I never fly without it ! ??

The Marco polo sounds like a good idea if I upgrade to a Mavic. All the other trackers rely on cellular communication which is non existant where I live. Anyone know where I can buy drone insurance that covers drones that dont come back? (I was told there's no such thing as a flyaway on the spark pilot's forum)

 

[Meta4]

Attached are flight records and images from Airdata.
("There's no such thing as a flyaway .

Looks like no better data is coming so I've had a look at your Airdata CSV files.

The first Spark flyaway was a least partially my fault as I was flying from my home where GPS is weak. If I couldn't get a GPS lock on my deck I'd I'd ascend 20 feet or so which was usually adequate. In this instance I flew about a 100 feet into an open area, then the AC stopped responding, though still connected, and flew off into the woods.

Launched with battery at 72%
Flew a waypoint mission which ended at 44.7 seconds with the drone 98 feet up and 47 feet from home.
Drone was left with no joystick input until data ends and signal is lost at 115.6 seconds.
The drone stayed 98 feet up and drifted 855 ft at 7.7 mph from home by the time signal was lost.

With my 2nd Spark I was flying a Litchi way point mission I flown numerous times before in a remote area (no known interference) and strong GPS signal. I momentarily turned my attention then heard a lost connection beep from the controller. The Spark had turned 90 degrees off course and flown into oblivion. After reviewing the flight record people at Litchi said it looked like GPS interference. WTF?. dji wouldn't even look at the issue since I was using other party software.

Drone is hovering at 95 ft
At 55.7 seconds it starts spinning fast anticlockwise, rolling, tumbling and losing height.
This indicates losing a prop or motor.
No GPS data is included in the data so where it landed is unknown.

The 3rd Spark (a refurb) flew away or mistook a location several blocks away as Home

You launched with a partially discharged battery and flew until the battery level was very low.
Cell voltages were down at 3.3V at the end of the data.
The drone would have been unable to fly home with the battery at critically low voltage.

I went for some training at a drone school that used Mavic Pro.
The instructor said the reason for my flyaways was WiFi, though I suspect that's an over simplification

Your instructor had no idea what he was talking about and was just making things up.

 

[Rojillio Santoro]

Looks like no better data is coming so I've had a look at your Airdata CSV files.

Launched with battery at 72%
Flew a waypoint mission which ended at 44.7 seconds with the drone 98 feet up and 47 feet from home.
Drone was left with no joystick input until data ends and signal is lost at 115.6 seconds.
The drone stayed 98 feet up and drifted 855 ft at 7.7 mph from home by the time signal was lost.

Drone is hovering at 95 ft
At 55.7 seconds it starts spinning fast anticlockwise, rolling, tumbling and losing height.
This indicates losing a prop or motor.
No GPS data is included in the data so where it landed is unknown.

You launched with a partially discharged battery and flew until the battery level was very low.
Cell voltages were down at 3.3V at the end of the data.
The drone would have been unable to fly home with the battery at critically low voltage.

Your instructor had no idea what he was talking about and was just making things up.

Wow! Thanks. I'm still curious what caused the Litchi waypoint mission to go awry. The litchi people said it looked like GPS interference. Being in relative wilderness where EMI should be at a minimum, my I imagination went crazy thinking of a neighbor who has threatened me and others in the neighborhood at gunpoint, and incidentally is a pilot and might be capable of creating such malicious interference. Consequently, I haven't flown in that location since, though I really think it was more likely equipment malfunction.

On the Apr-22nd-2018 flight it's not surprising that you find rolling and tumbling (I cried the whole night long). I heard the crunch when the drone hit a tree. I hit record video immediately after it happened and see what looks like the ground under a redwood tree in the cached video. I's been driving me nuts knowing it only went 47' and is still nearby on my land unless some animal carried it off. After hours of searching I gave up. Having the GPS data should lead me right to it, but the area is heavily wooded and GPS single is spotty.

Sorry it took so long but I had trouble find the original txt files (attached). It seems that Litchi only generates a csv file and this forum won't allow uploading of csv files. You're smarter than I am if you can read that machine language gobbledygook. How do you do it? Does the Airdata csv not show everything?

I think that instructor meant that Ocusync provides a stronger communication than Wifi so I probably wouldn't have lost communication as easily if I was flying a Mavic.

 

[Meta4]

Wow! Thanks. I'm still curious what caused the Litchi waypoint mission to go awry. The litchi people said it looked like GPS interference. Being in relative wilderness where EMI should be at a minimum, my I imagination went crazy thinking of a neighbor who has threatened me and others in the neighborhood at gunpoint, and incidentally is a pilot and might be capable of creating such malicious interference. Consequently, I haven't flown in that location since, though I really think it was more likely equipment malfunction.

On the Apr-22nd-2018 flight it's not surprising that you find rolling and tumbling (I cried the whole night long). I heard the crunch when the drone hit a tree. I hit record video immediately after it happened and see what looks like the ground under a redwood tree in the cached video. I's been driving me nuts knowing it only went 47' and is still nearby on my land unless some animal carried it off. After hours of searching I gave up. Having the GPS data should lead me right to it, but the area is heavily wooded and GPS single is spotty.

Sorry it took so long but I had trouble find the original txt files (attached). It seems that Litchi only generates a csv file and this forum won't allow uploading of csv files. You're smarter than I am if you can read that machine language gobbledygook. How do you do it? Does the Airdata csv not show everything?

On the Apr-22nd-2018 flight it's not surprising that you find rolling and tumbling (I cried the whole night long). I heard the crunch when the drone hit a tree. I hit record video immediately after it happened and see what looks like the ground under a redwood tree in the cached video. I's been driving me nuts knowing it only went 47' and is still nearby on my land unless some animal carried it off. After hours of searching I gave up. Having the GPS data should lead me right to it, but the area is heavily wooded and GPS single is spotty.

Did you have a few flights that day?
The flight data seems to be from a flight which landed successfully about 20 feet from the launch point.
It's a different flight as the battery is full to start and there's no tumbling and falling, just a smooth descent to the ground.
This flight was around 2pm that day. Here's what it looks like:

DJI Flight Log Viewer | Phantom Help

Upload and view DJI Phantom, Mavic, and Spark flight logs online

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The flight from June 26 looks like this: DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com
Launch with battery at 40% but it appears that this is immediately following another flight on the same battery.
GPS was good and the home point was recorded properly.
The flight was all good until you went to bring the drone in.
RTH brought the drone back to 50 ft away from home and 111 ft up.
You cancelled RTH and resumed control at 11:10.5
You brought the drone back to 10 ft from home at 11:30.2 and hovered
The trouble began at 11:48.1 when the log shows full right joystick was applied taking the drone further away.
You commenced autolanding at 11:49.9 but the log still shows full right joystick (until 12:53.7)
This took the drone 524 feet south where it appears to have crashed at 12:38.3.
The crash appears to have been a soft one, possibly into tree branches and the drone managed to fly another 140 ft before stopping again around 12:55.