Should DJI Spark Pilots and Future Buyers Be Worried?

A few weeks in the past, the DroneLife staff was approached by a DJI Spark pilot who was involved that quite a lot of folks had been watching on as their new Spark fell out of the sky for no cause. At the time, we went via the DJI discussion board posts to see how frequent these points had been. There had been a handful of pilots complaining about random errors and no apparent connection between them. So we let or not it’s.

Now it seems as if that quantity has grown – not less than sufficient for our colleagues at Quartz to think about it newsworthy. It’s too quickly to say whether or not that is the start of a GoPro Karma-like recall state of affairs. One factor we are able to say for positive is that random energy failures and drones don’t combine nicely in any respect.

DJI’s Response to Reports Spark Losing Its… Spark

Speaking to Fortune, a spokesperson for DJI stated:

“DJI is aware of a small number of reports involving Spark drones that have lost power mid-flight. Flight safety and product reliability are top priorities. Our engineers are thoroughly reviewing each customer case and working to address this matter urgently,” the assertion learn.

“We are looking to implement additional safeguards with a firmware update which will be issued soon. When prompted on the DJI GO 4 App, we recommend all customers to connect to the internet and update their aircraft’s firmware to ensure a safe flight when flying their Spark,” the corporate added.

Our Take

We’ve seemed via the DJI boards and tried to ascertain a sample round these mysterious Spark shutdowns. There are all types of various tales and mitigating circumstances that might go some option to explaining particular person instances.

For instance, a number of pilots have been utilizing spare batteries purchased from Amazon; one pilot had simply crashed his drone earlier than it randomly misplaced energy. Another was flying in notably sizzling situations.

The sincere reality is that with any system as advanced as this there are certain to be just a few duds within the manufacturing course of. The difficulty seems to be with a handful fairly than a whole lot, which suggests this it’s one thing that received’t have lasting injury on the Spark’s or DJI’s status.

However, the small minority of pilots being affected by these points ought to obtain full help from DJI, not accusations of pilot error, which have been levelled in loads of the discussion board discussions.

We hope that DJI can work out what’s occurring and make sure that the issues some Spark pilots are having are rectified quick.