I recently bought my Spark, and remote, and battery, and another battery, and a range extender, but all of that is for not because the Spark is gone. It registered the wrong home point, then went into auto land and landed in front of someone else’s house, or maybe in a tree, i can’t tell. but i went to look for it and couldn’t find it. I’m hoping someone can look at my flight data record and give me an idea of what happened? i tried reading the analysis but it looks like Swahili to me (is that even a real lanuage???)
Thanks so much
Since I’m new, for some reason I can’t upload files. So I created a folder on my google drive with a few different files showing data of the final, fateful flight.
Any feedback would be extremely appreciative!!
Ari
When you took off, the GPS signal was too weak to mark the home point. At 1m 2.8s into your flight, the home point was marked at 37.90287648, -122.2829643(at the yellow pin in the image below). At 12m 8s into your flight, the battery reached the critically low level and the Spark started auto landing (to prevent it from dropping out of the sky). Your flight log shows it landed on top of this roof:
Oh wow, thank you so much for taking the time, I REALLY appreciate it!
So it’s on the roof?? The flight image in the flight record on my phone looks like it’s in a tree, so could that be inaccurate? This is what I’m referring to…
Google Earth does not show the last segment of your flight. You’re right – the last known location is close to that tree. It looks like it might be in the bush next to the tree though.
Plug 37.90317571, -122.2830227 into the map app on your mobile phone and that will take you to the last known location.
Yeah, I had thought it was in the tree but was unable to see it. I guess the crucial question is…how possible is it that the “last known location” isn’t actually the location of where it landed? Could the drone possibly be one or two houses away but the battery was so low that the info (coordinates) didn’t get transmitted? What do you think?
At the end of your flight log, the Spark was nearly stopped (since you let go of the elevator stick) and auto landing at the coordinates above. The flight log shows a negative altitude at that location since the takeoff point was at an elevation of 559 feet and the landing spot was at an elevation of 332 feet. Since your Spark still had about 135 feet to descend before landing, it could have coasted a few more feet as it was coming to a stop. So, I’m thinking it landed somewhere on the front of that property.
Did you talk to the homeowners at that house? Maybe they found it in their front yard and picked it up.
I always sync my DJI data with Airdata.com (aka healthy drones). There is a free version which i’m not sure if this feature is avail on free version but worth checking. This site has a takeoff GPS location and Last known GPS location.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
So I checked the “find my drone” section and it still shows the drone at the same location. Is that a positive? As in it’s probably in the tree??? Or could someone still have stolen it and been using it via whatever means and I wouldn’t be able to tell because it’s not linked to my account anymore?
The find my drone feature just records at what location your drone lost communication with the controller… so unless someone took it, it should still be there… I had to hack through almost 1/2 mile of jungle to recover my obsidian… also be aware that the gps has a margin of error… varies form 6ft to 30 ft - but with our birds locking on to GPS & GLONASS we have a better fix
As @ccpirate noted, that’s not always going to be the actual location. In your case, I think it did land close to that location. Is it still there? Maybe if it landed in that bush and nobody discovered it. If it landed in an open area in that front yard, I’m thinking the homeowners probably found it by now.
