My Spark was returned to me safely! A local group was doing a river cleanup and spotted the aircraft about 10’ from the banks safely perched in tall brush just outside of my search radius. I can’t believe how fortunate I am! The aircraft had successfully completed an emergency landing that kicked in when the
battery hit 20%. I’m attaching a photo the guy sent me when he found it. The crazy part is the way he found me was looking on the sd card and referencing the images gps to property tax records. Once he had my name he looked me up on Facebook and saw my public community post about it missing. It’s always pleasant to find good people out there in the world who will not even take a reward offer.
Some final thoughts on this guys. The location where the drone was recovered was about 875’ off from where the logs showed it landed. Am I correct in assuming that this due to the yaw error and abnormal compass error reported in the logs? And last, does anyone know if Spark’s are water proof? During the 3 weeks it sat in the brush in normal landing/take off position it was rained on quite extensively. I’m afraid to try and power it up. I may error on the side of putting it in a bag of rice for a few days 1st unless I can get confirmation that these are sealed devices.
Wow, that's great !
It probably lost connection before landing, and therefore wasn't able to log the complete flight before auto land.
So now you have that back and the M1P, before doing anything, label your drones with your mobile / cell number, and / or put a file on the micro SD card with your contact info.
Next, if not already done, remove the
battery, no trying it in the drone to see if it functions.
It probably auto landed with 5% or less power in the
battery, so you might be ok with any possibility of it shorting if it did get rained on.
The
battery wouldn't have lasted much longer after landing before it shut down totally.
When the
battery is out, I would try a single push and see if any leds came on
Will only be a flashing first led I imagine, indicating very low power (if any leds light up at all).
Either way, put it aside and get the drone checked I think.
I'd start like this . . . take a cover off the Spark and check inside for moisture, search youtube for how to do this, search something like > remove covers from DJI spark drone
Visibly check inside for moisture, hopefully none, but I would give it some drying time anyway, even if it looks dry.
Forget the rice, it's an old wives tale and does very little to help the drying process.
If wanting to help any drying to be perhaps faster (be good if you do see any moisture / condensation inside), get a tupperware type container, buy a lb or half kg of silica gel crystals, wrap the drone in cloth, and place in the container on top of the crystals carefully, don't bother covering, to much risk of dust etc (rice is far the worst for dust though).
Or, if inside looks dry, you can just wrap in a cloth lightly and put it in a warm place, a sunlit window sill, mantle over a fireplace (only if just warm !) a drying cupboard etc.
Leave it a few days, check again, repeat if necessary, but a few days should be ample.
Once the drone is dry.
You have other
batteries ?
If so, charge one and try it in the drone, props off, initialise, check gimbal does its dance, check through menus etc, etc.
If all seems ok, got through a motor start up without props and see if it sounds normal.
Then with props on a simple hover test flight outside.
Get more and more bold with testing gradually, until sure it's behaving normally for flight, then take some photos etc and see if that's all ok.
Check your flight logs each time to see if there are any warnings or anomalies through the flights.
The
battery that was in it and in the weather, you could try this while the drone is getting a dry out.
If not swollen, I'd certainly test it . . . put on charger, see if it takes a charge.
Make sure not getting unusually hot, not swelling, be extra careful to be there with it in sight while charging.
If it seems ok with normal charging process, when finished I'd try it in the drone in a similar fashion you do with the spare
battery above, nice gradual testing before possibly trusting it again.
Good luck with it.