Welcome DJI Spark Pilot!
Jump in and join our free Spark community today!
Sign up

New user, my experienceand questions about the spark.

spartavel

Active Member
Join
Jun 20, 2018
Messages
39
Age
45
I used the Spark to make 2 seris of photos. One in France, the other in Spain.
In Spain I was in a forbidden military area (drone photos forbidden) BUT on a private land and taking photos from that land only, not from the huge NATO military installations (that there are no problems to take photos from with a camera). Also I wasn't flying high (around 15m above). The law is not very clear. What is clear is that any photo from public areas in Spain are property of the Spanish administration (copyright).
Everything worked great.
In Spain I used it by 80km/h gusts of wind (in sport mode) and it was okay. So that is really a very big deal.
Some gusts would deport the spark but it came back when it could !!!
However it refused to make Panoramas. Had to make them manually. Not a big deal. It was sunny and and no movement was caught on the pics depite the Spark correcting its stance all the time.
Not sure if the DJI waranty works in Spain for a drone bought in France.

In France I was very close to a railroad (on a privete property). Only read after that that I have to be at 30m distance (I was as close as aroundt 20m taken from Google Maps). However I didn't flew it high (around 10m) and I was sitting close to it. Problem is that in France the law is even more blurry than in Spain. It's about what's professionnal and what's not.

Very difficult to say what pictures are professionnal, and what is recreationnal.
Taking recreationnal prics is very much free depending on the area. Everything not purely recreational is considered pro. Taking professional photos are very much only meant for official photographs with drone qualifications. The drone qualification rule starts around july 2018. Until then you had to have a microlight pilot clearance. Taking what's considered pro photos without clearance can bring you in France to 5 years jail and 500 000 euros fines. So this is crazy. If I take a photo of my private property to show it for sale, it may be considered professional...

Not my will to do anything forbidden by the law though. On the contrary.

Frankly, after reading about it in your forums, I mostly used the Mod version (Red one). However I connected the official DJI App too and did some tests.
I didin't make any update as it was asking me to (because i think I would have lost time and battery life was limited on the spark). Not sure if I have to.
I don't see much difference from the official App. Connection with the USB cable to the RC doesn't make any difference. Deconnecting only seems to stop the battery feature in the App, but if not connected at all it works.
In fact only the manual features really work, but that's okay for me.
The battery is insanely limited on the Spark. That also is why I should have bought the Parrot Anafi (officially 25min instead of 14min that are less than 10 min of flight in real world).

I made panoramas but I put the blade protection sold with the Spark combo and the panorama mode caught them. Clearly those protections must be avoided outdoors. There is 0 risk with the spark blades.
Later, I put 4 feet clipsed to the spark and it was all great (for 5 euros on Amazon, people say they breaksbut I was carefull and they did not). None caught on pictures. Those are incompatible with the 4 blade protections from the Combo (good riddance).

However, here are some observations about the Spark. I tried hard to use the home feature without luck. It always lands without returning back. The anti-gust of wind works great. The Google map cannot be seen whether with the official blue or the red modded App. The compass doesn't work whatever I tried to do to calibrate it with any App. It says not calibrated. The GPS is always seen as too low and it says it doesn't support GPS. However the pics seem to prove the contrary and the Spark seems to move on a Maps (but there is no Map loaded). On the pics the position of the GPS matches the real position but the elevation doesn't match anything I can guess and convert to the French standards. Very strange.
Also, when I'm taking off, at around 5m high it says I have reached the limit of flight but still goes higher.
I also loaded into the cache the Google Maps from the area I flew but I could see no Map details whether on the official or the Modded App. With the modded App I used the Airplane mode on the smartphone. However my smartphone still use the wifi in that mode once it's connected (so OTG mode isn't needed). Maybe I need to not connect to the wifi to fully use OTG only. Is that true ? OTG cable doesn't charge my phone as it seems on some other smartphones.
With the RC it seems with the Modded App .15 version when launched from the very beginning that it is in the US FCC mode. Not that I was willing to be in that mode. However the RC is by default (automatic) in wifi a (as far as I can tell) mode (5Mhz). I could change that but I didn't. Worked great for my use.

I also installed the DJI App for my Macbook, but it seems to do nothing. I tried to connect anything, including the battery charger and it does nothing. Very weird. Other thing weird is I need to turn on the Spark to grap the media from the microSD card. But the microSD card can be read from a PC or a Mac. For a couple of grams I would have prefered a normal SD card and I watched a youtuber saying the same thing.
I have a couple of photos that were badly saved. Looks like the spark stopped in the middle of the save operation. The SD I used is a top performer Sandisk micro SD : not the problem.
 
As far as you saying "I tried hard to use the home feature without luck. It always lands without returning back."

The Return To Home (RTH) feature works differently depending on distance from home point and other settings. If less than 20meters from the home point, it will simply land in place without returning home. Here is a nice flowchart showing the different actions of RTH depending on certain factors.
 

Attachments

  • RTH.jpg
    RTH.jpg
    45.3 KB · Views: 27
I tested several times and was above 20m, like 100m and no result. Still landing. However I could pull him back manually even while "landing". In fact it doesn't land but stays at some 1m high if calling to return home, but just doesn't come back at all.
But not sure I could upgrade anything on the spark (any firmware). I canceled the no fly zones updates each time. Maybe this is why.
 
I tested several times and was above 20m, like 100m and no result. Still landing. However I could pull him back manually even while "landing". In fact it doesn't land but stays at some 1m high if calling to return home, but just doesn't come back at all.
But not sure I could upgrade anything on the spark (any firmware). I canceled the no fly zones updates each time. Maybe this is why.

You are misunderstanding how it works. it's not "above 20m", it's farther than 20m. It's distance away from you, not above you. If it truly doesn't work for you when farther than 20m, and your home point was recorded at takeoff, then I'm not sure what's going on. I've never had it not work. Cancelling the no fly zones updates makes no difference. Good luck!
 
You are misunderstanding how it works. it's not "above 20m", it's farther than 20m. It's distance away from you, not above you. If it truly doesn't work for you when farther than 20m, and your home point was recorded at takeoff, then I'm not sure what's going on. I've never had it not work. Cancelling the no fly zones updates makes no difference. Good luck!
I meant farther than 20m sorry. When I mentioned stopping no fly zone updates that may also mean I didn't update the firmware to a better one. Not sure how to update firmwares and if this is good (may finish with everything I'm interested in, in abusive no fly zone).
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
14,593
Messages
118,799
Members
17,988
Latest member
Detlef