My DJI Spark drone is no more thanks to a recent trip to the beach and some bad software. Here’s what happened.
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The DJI Spark
DJI is one of the most popular drone manufacturers on the market. Over the last decade, they have proven themselves to be the standard for consumers. Throughout that period, the lineup has expanded into more advanced and more affordable options, enter the DJI Spark.
The Spark is a great entry-level drone because of its easy-to-fly modes. It comes with a standard obstacle avoidance feature that will prevent flyers from damaging their drone if it leaves their control. For example, using gesture controls, a flyer can wave their hand to bring the drone close or push it away to snap a hands-free group photo.
Like the DJI Mavic Pro and other models, it features a mechanical gimbal that keeps the camera focused on a target regardless of where it flies and allows movement of the camera for front-facing or top-down imagery. Owners can fly the Spark via a wi fi connection from a smartphone. I’d recommend picking up the Fly More combo pack with an extra battery and charging hub for more productive sessions.
One of the greatest advantages of the type is the DJI Spark’s battery. A power button on the front indicates the remaining battery life by illuminating green lights (1-4.) This intelligent flight battery helps the drone fly longer and communicates with the controller when it’s time to return home.
The DJI spark is still available on the secondary market but has been replaced by the Mavic Mini 2.
This Drone Doesn’t Swim
I don’t take my drone everywhere I go, but I do like to take it to large open areas where I can fly it freely and capture some nice vistas. One of my favorite places to fly my drone is at the beach and I have been testing the boundaries of the drone and pushing its battery supply. I didn’t charge my Spark before heading to the beach on this trip so I have had about 10 minutes of flight time vs 16 minutes per battery if I had full battery life.
https://youtu.be/v5toA0HO2Hg
I had flown it particularly high and then low again at top speed (though safely) operating to the ceiling of about 180′ and just above the sand and sea. On this specific day, I paid attention to something I never have before.
Within the DJI Go 4 App, it established a “Home Base” just feet from where I was seated on the sand, about 30 feet back from the water’s edge. When the DJI Spark has an assigned home base, there’s a one-touch action to return that exact spot hovering until it is safely lowered to the ground. This feature is designed to save the equipment if you get into trouble.
I was flying low across the water’s surface (there were no people, other than my daughter in the ocean for a thousand feet) when a low battery alert came across my phone’s screen which I was using as my remote control. Though it was only down to 20%, I thought it prudent to return the device home. As the drone was flying in front of me and my daughter, I pressed the “return home” button and watched as my drone failed to slow down, change direction, or at a minimum, climb. Instead, it descended into the sea in the course of about three seconds.
https://youtu.be/If08bGpOMng
There was just enough time for me to try to get the return home canceled and hover or at least maintain course, but to no avail. I threw my phone to the sand and ran to the beach where my daughter was able to pull it out from the waves after just a few seconds underwater.
Unfortunately, the saltwater had already done its damage and my mini drone was no more. As I shook the water from the drone trying to salvage it if possible, I looked at my phone and it had a button flashing asking me to confirm I wanted to cancel my return to home.
Will I Replace It?
When I first purchased my drone, I was certain I would take it on every trip and capture stunning pictures and flybys of incredible locations – just as it is marketed. However, when I applied it to my type of travel, I found it less useful than I had hoped. For example, despite the small size of the device I didn’t want to fly it over a busy plaza in Mexico, and I’d certainly be arrested for doing so in Rome over the Spanish Steps. I even applied for a filming permit in Manchester, England but never received a reply.
Yet the quality of the footage was so good, and I enjoyed flying it and teaching my daughter about flight. So I am torn on whether to replace it, even at the low price point of about $300.
https://youtu.be/pdqhbcGkF80
Conclusion
It was disappointing to see my drone drop into the ocean. I take responsibility for not manually flying it back to the shore but I also expected the DJI software to work better than it did especially for what amounts to a safety measure. I’m not sure if I will replace it, upgrade to a different model, or hang up my pilot wings for good.
What do you think? Do you have a drone? Have you lost it or damaged it beyond repair?
Nice videos. I just moved to Sarasota and am looking for places to fly. Am wary of flying over a beach due to sudden winds, What are your favorite places, both non-beach and beach, in southwest Florida?
Golf courses are usually stunning, orchards, and I once took some great shots above a water park at a hotel where we were staying.
I’ve lost 2 DJI Mini 2s, one in Hawaii where I ignorantly flew it out of my room and it slammed into my hotel and dropped into the pool below. Lesson learned and I had no insurance.
The second one once again dropped into a pool after it gave me a warning of the props spinning too fast. I tried to bring it down and I got it to me only to have it slip through my fingers into a pool.
I’m on my 3rd and I keep it away from water.
lol you are def DJI Fans
Definitely… don’t complain about busting your rig when you never learned to actually fly a real.drone.
Like a crux3… 80$ will eat your DJI.
That exact same thing happened to me while filming my daughters taking surf lessons in Maui. Thankfully, I cancelled it just in time…the video footage shows that it was approximately a foot from the water. I’m going to have a hard time trusting RTH again.
Spark has a history of not doing well over water, sometimes getting confused as to where the surface actually is. The various blogs have reported incidents like yours.
Knowing the limitations beforehand can be valuable.
I’ve had a Spark for a couple of years and it’s badly outdated now I in terms of battery life and camera. I wouldn’t purposely crash my Spark, but if it did crash, I wouldn’t mourn it for long either.
I experienced a software failure (or hardware fail) with a new Mini 2. I was flying over land and water, alternatively, when the drone stopped responding to control inputs. It was 1,000 feet away, hovering at about 200 feet. I discovered that I could still command a sideways translation at 2m/sec and still had control of altitude. RTH had no effect. Once it got as close as 300 feet, I realized that it was only moving along an invisible line, left stick moved it in one direction along the line and forward moved the opposite. Unfortunately, that invisible line did not intersect with where the home point was, on dry ground. Eventually the battery expiried as it self landed in the water, still two hundred feet away. I initiated a claim with DJI and their first response was to say it was my fault that the Mini 2 had flown from outside of a authorization zone into a zone (I was, of course, authorized) and therefore could not fly out. When I replied and asked for my case to be elevated and that such behavior was illogical and unexpected, the company replaced the Mini 2 and the battery that was lost.
Thanks for the tip not to use RTH in certain situations, I’m guessing that there was probably weak or no GPS and the drone was using cell towers to figure out it’s location and using those can be off by a mile. My stepdad lost his Iphone when we were on the big island in Hawaii once and using Find my Phone it looked like his phone was out on the beach somewhere, so he had a metal detector guy scan the beach where it looked like it was on Find my Phone, but gave up after not finding it, but then we got back to the motel room and he found his phone under the covers in his bed. So i’m guessing that when there are not a lot of cell towers or GPS for location these devices become much less accurate.
I have been experimenting with flying off vessels for recon and surveillance…first….theres a issue with the controller wanting to switch back n forth in regards to modes….atty…gps atty gps…. Then there is mag interference….once the drone is off its controllable but im real hesitant and of course there is the landing it back onboard. Currently using the mavic enterprise…what a great drone. Have not flown via litchi and dynamic position yet but will tomorrow. Flying at night is a real pleasure with the navigation lights and search light capability. Flying over water is always a challenge suggest simulation and trials before switching to waypoint flights. Sorry about your. Spark…I love that drone….it is Litchi compatible and can fly fast to make up for its short life battery. Its exceptional for drone light painting…
I crashed my spark over water and the obstacle avoidance didn’t work because I turned into the tree rather than hit it head on. Now that i spent more on the Mavic mini i NEVER use return to home nor fly with less than 30% battery.
You violated the first rule of quadcopters. Never take off without a full battery.
@Quint Randle – Fair. Though it’s not my first time and I really didn’t plan on flying it for long.
the drone didnt fail. its your fault tho. it was going to auto return but you choose to do manually. why would you blame the drone even its your fault? that is not a human to think that he is on danger remember that. thats why it has remote control to you control it thats not even a dog. u should think before you make a stupid story
@Marvin – Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful comment. I think you may have misread what occurred. I complied with the directions of the software and requested the drone to return to home base and altitude and after it began to descend without changing direction into the sea, I then tried to take over manual control.
If you accidentally dunk something electronic in the water, remove the battery immediately. Then submerge the whole thing in alcohol. That will displace and absorb water, and is generally not going to harm electronics or motors. After an hour or so remove it and put it someplace warm. It might take a few days for all the alcohol to evaporate, especially in places like the optics. If it went in the sea, I’d probably dunk in fresh water first to dilute the salt, which might be left behind by alcohol alone.
No guarantees, but it does work sometimes, and might be worth the cost of a gallon or two of alcohol.
Great advice Chris. We use alcohol on our RC combat warships electronics (they shoot and sink each other). Probably have a 90% success rate even after the model was underwater 30 minutes.
Never start a flight if the battery isn’t 100% charged.
In the first minutes, there is a high current drain to warm up the battery. With a partially loaded battery, this means a temporale voltage drop enough to activate An alarm mode to set in landing. You only have to pull up left stich to force going upwards. 2minutes later battery had warmer up voltage remains stabile and the error is gone. IT is not only Spark. Even mavics do IT.
I got my DJI Spark in 2017, loved it, a lot! But yes I was too confident to try flying through trees which tunred to be a fail operation. I have a Mavic mini and now DJI Mavic air 2! Never thought that I could still read an article about the Spark in 2021 – 4 years later!!! You know it’s just like I met my first (drone) lover in my life again, lol a lot of memories
Great write up.
I’ve been *very* disappointed with the DJI software for my Mini 2 regarding low-battery and RTH. All aspects of the interaction are poor. The loud beeping distracting me from flying, the auto-commanded descent without warning, the interface prompts that prevent me from flying the aircraft, and generally poor software/hardware design in dealing with the edge cases that can be expected when flying.
I nearly lost my drone when it too behaved unexpectedly. Luckily, I had a backup plan in place and was able to execute even with the drone engaged in an uncommanded descent (unnecessarily).
I really hope competitors step up their game so I can have the wonderful gimbal, camera and initial flight abilities without poorly implemented no=fly zones, substandard RTH and really poor low-battery programming.
I had a similar incident. I live in Miami so everywhere you fly a drone is almost over water. I have the Autel Evo drone. And have had it now a full year with no accidents. I had a recent episode were it took off and was on its own not responding to my controller whatsoever. I finally got control of it again and sent to back to Autel for evaluation. One of the 8 object sensors/scanners went out. They say it was scanning one of the legs and trying to get away from itself basically. They fixed it but every since then I have a new respect for what theses drones are capable of. Someone could have gotten seriously hurt and I had no control over it. I was lucky I was able to get it back because once it’s in the bay. I’m sure it’s gone for good. Since then I have put a retrieval float system on it so “hipefully” if that ever happens again it will float to the top of the water, I can somehow get it and get the black box and sent it In To see what happened.
Sorry that your DJI drone crashed into the ocean. Before I bought my first drone a DJI Phantom 4 Pro I spent a lot of time on the forums. Picking up tips and things to lookout for.
I live across the street from the ocean in South Florida so eventually made my way to the ocean after having flown the drone for several weeks. One of the things I would practice was to fly low just a few feet from the surface and film the buoy going slowing doing a complete 360 recording. Just practicing filming around an object keeping it centered. My distance from the surface of the water was around 2-3 feet.
Several weeks later on on of the forums someone posted that they where flying their DJI (don’t recall the model but it had collision avoidance sensors) in sports modes going rather fast just a few feet from the surface of the water. Suddenly the drone went into the water with no explanation. Someone in the forum asked if he had his sensors on and he did. Turns out the reflection of the water can a will confuse the sensor and the ability to accurately measure the distance from the surface. So as he’s picking up speed the drone leans forward and started to go down. The drone pilot thought he was at a higher distance and when he saw it was angling towards the water it was too late. The drone crashed.
The recommendation (don’t believe this is in the manual) is that if you’re going to fly low over water TURN OFF your sensors so they data provided is not affected by the sensors. I guess I was lucky because although my sensors were on and I was just a few feet off the surface I was moving slowly and in P mode which locks into the satellite’s with less chance of drifting freely.
Return to home only works if drone is over 20 meters away. If not, then pressing RTH is the equivalent of saying land immediately. What was this situation?
I have the Spark, and confess to still flying in beginner mode as my now 8-year old son always wants to fly it. That mode has worked fine around our house but last two days it has done weird things. First day clicked on the land button and it got a foot off the ground and then just hovered. Nothing would let me gain control and had to wait for battery to die. Second day son was flying when it just took off straight up like a rocket. No control but thankfully it ran into tree branches and came crashing down. Now I am figuring my days with it are numbered until it just heads for Jupiter. I think both times the battery was about 20% and was trying to get it to return with manual flying. Not using RTH but that was locked out anyway.
The boy also has a $50 drone that he has a blast with. Camera of course not at all the same, but on plus side I won’t care too much if I have to replace the drone a couple times. We now just take that out and leave Spark in as a paperweight. Honestly, can’t see upgrading as the software could be glitchy on any of their products and I don’t need a professional grade unit.
I have a spark that I have been flying for a couple of years. I worked my way up from basic quad copters and learned to manually fly before I got a drone with gps and hold position capabilities. RTH has always freaked me out as I do not like losing control especially during a critical phase of the flight like landing on a low battery. I would only use RTH as a last resort if God forbid I lost sight of it. Get a new drone, just don’t trust the software exclusively!
You said the software was faulty but I think you just didn’t read the manual. It says “Something worth remembering is that if your drone is less than 20 meters away from you when you press the RTH button then it will land just where it is”. If you were further away, it would have climbed to your preset height. Also your battery was severely depleted so that can also trigger an immediate landing.
Lastly, it warns you that not to rely on obstacle avoidance when over water or translucent surfaces.
It sounded like you got a lot of enjoyment out of your spark. Go get a Mini 2. It’s really incredible…. But read the manual. It’s got some cool automated flying features, but they are risky too.
I’ve been flying my own built fpv drones lately and it’s made me realize that DJI is in a different class than others. It makes things so simple.