Drone crashed mid-site survey last Tuesday and I lost 4 hours of progress

I was mapping a 12 acre job site in Austin with my DJI Phantom when the battery went from 30% to zero in under a minute. No warning, no low battery alert, just dead. Had to hike across the whole site to find it tangled in a fence. Turns out the firmware update from the week before messed up the battery management. I lost all the flight data from the survey. Now I'm redoing the whole thing this weekend. Has anyone else had a drone battery fail like this without any heads up?

3 comments

3 Comments

miles_roberts5d agoTop Commenter

Did you check the drone forums? Heard DJI pushed a bad firmware update last month.

stellanelson5d ago

A buddy of mine had his Mavic do the exact same thing two days ago.

bell.felix4d ago

Wait, did your buddy check if the satellite signals were bouncing off anything nearby? I was reading about this thing called "multipath interference" where GPS signals hit buildings or metal roofs and mess up the drone's position data. Happens more than people realize, especially in cities or around parking garages. Could explain why it happened to both of you in similar conditions. Was there any metal or concrete structures around when it went down?