My drone Crash while I was conducting a survey of a building site. I have flown at this site before but for some reason something malfunction and my DJI Inspire 1 crashed onto the building. It completed more than 60% of its flight before finding out connection was lost and crash occurred. The firmware was up to date. Last thing I remember seeing on the Drone Deploy app was that the aircraft was losing altitude and at a split second I lost connection, thus crashing.
I contacted DD support center but no answer so far and its been a week or so. That is why I’m posting on here to see what might’ve went wrong.
Has anyone else experienced this? If so what was the resolution?
Since the interruption happened during the flight plan, Im not sure it saved the logs. I wasn’t able to complete my mission and instead I clicked the start over button. However, I do see a log from that date and when I imported it to Airdata, it shows data from another date and unrelating info.
Just to clarify we are talking about the drone’s DJI logs and not the DroneDeploy mission log? The should be a separate DJI log every time it takes off. We don’t have an Inspire so I am not totally familiar with it’s system, but there are usually logs on the drone and logs in the mobile device.
How do you get the DJI log file? During flights we’re running only DD and they have admitted issues with their log file collection. I’d like to have log files available for every flight. AirData doesn’t “see” the DJI logs, at least not for me.
Same here. I think if the mission is not perfectly executed as designed at the end is when I have the most trouble. This is often because I normally take control once the mission itself has completed and never let it land on the ground. The same happens with daisy-chain planning if you forget to “resume” the full mission plan at the very end.
Can you provide a little more information on the location, altitude, map plan? DroneDeploy does not actually take control of the drone at all. In the most simple explanation DD backdoors into DJI Go and all the mission parameters are executed through that. If you ever exit out of DD mid flight and load DJI GO you will see what I am talking about. I highly doubt the crash is related at all to do with DD, but I would still love to see the previous map and know altitude and environmental conditions during the flight.
The DJI Inspire 1 does not seem to have a USB port… Besides the drone is completely toast and not functioning properly. I checked my settings but in my iPhone. I’ve been using my iPhone when taking flight and flown many missions successfully. I still have yet to hear from DJI themselves.
Btw thank you so much for all your input and help! I’m curious to see what went wrong and want to nip this issue in the butt ASAP.
Hi Sam, I can provide you with the specific details to my flight plan but just a heads up, I’ve flown the same flight plan 2 or 3 other times and never had a problem, that’s why I found this to be so peculiar.
I’ve attached a snapshot from the DD app when it froze in frame (within point of collision). It was set at an altitude of 150 ft, so the snap must’ve been caught as the drone descended after contact. At this point the app was completely frozen so I unloaded the app and went back in. When opened, the app couldn’t connect with the drone, which was apparent due to the possibility of a crash. (attached)
Now the DJI Inspire 1 is not as advanced as present day drones but it is still a high quality drone that possesses intelligent tech. I just wish it had obstacle avoidance equipped with it but that’s another discussion.
From those screen grabs, it appears the drone lost GPS (for whatever reason) and dropped into ATTI mode. In that mode, it will not continue it’s autonomous mission which requires a GPS connection. It will also drift with the wind and hit whatever is in the way. The only remedy if/when a drone looses GPS connection and drops into ATTI is to fly the drone manually. Sorry for the loss of your drone.
Pretty much, I was able to some what salvage the camera… I going to see if I can access the gps somehow. I don’t know if DJI would be of any help because the Drone was purchased around 2014 when it first came out and no I didn’t purchase the care in the beginning.
Does the location on the bottom left coincide with the actual location of the crash? I’m going to agree with Dave on this one based off the information we have. I know several people that lost Inspire 1’s due to weird stuff happening.
I had a similar issue. I was flying and photographing a parking deck construction site. I had flown this mission several times previously using DD and a Mavic Pro. However, on the fatal flight, instead of heading towards the construction site, the drone turned and headed into a stand of trees. Fortunately, the drone fell to the ground rather than getting stuck up in a very tall tree. Unfortunately, it was about $800 worth of damage.
