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Controller can't connect or pair with karma after update

boki108

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I am certainly not the only one who's karma stopped flying. One day a few months ago I pulled it out and the controller couldn't connect to the drone. The previous time everything worked, so it's weird how without doing anything from one time to the other it just stops working, it's like there was a kill switch timer inside. So like hundreds of others I did an update on the controller and after that it wouldn't even pair with the drone. Not being able to connect to it, the drone can't be updated of course, so I am stuck. Everything is in mint condition and this is clearly GoPro update messing things up. Everybody else concluded the same, and the only way to get around this problem was to call customer service, do a lot of blah blah, them pretending it's your own unique problem and you have to send them the video so that they can figure out what's going on when they know exactly what's going on and could even be doing this on purpose. So, you have to pay them some money I guess for some kind of support or added warranty, and eventually after blah blah and videos and hours wasted you somehow get a replacement drone. So fine, it's not fair but you either throw away your $1000 investment or pay another $129 or so and get a replacement for your perfectly fine looking drone. Can anybody help navigate through this and share what's the current situation on this problem? Thanks up front! BTW, I bought this in the US, and brought it with me all the way to Thailand, and now it's sitting here dead.
 
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Same here... I've been fighting with the useless GoPro Support call bank for three weeks now, jumping through every hoop they request, refusing to pay their extortion fee to warranty a mint condition Karma. It's clearly a software issue that should be easily patched over the internet for free. I'm so fed up with the support staff and have no way of contacting anyone at headquarters. Is this the support teams way of extorting money from us to justify their job security, is HQ even aware of all the issues we have with their products?
 
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Hate to say it but I think it's time to move on to a better platform! Support will not get any better moving forward.

Pretty sure "support" as it stands now, is only a CYA exercise (on GoPro's part) as there are potential lawsuits if one of these falls out out the air at 250 feet and kills someone!
 
This is quite strange that GoPro is willing to just let go of some hundreds or thousands of potential repeat customers. None of us will ever buy anything GoPro, and I alone own several cameras and one drone. Getting us to pay some BS warranty when they screwed up with the updates also doesn't make much sense. For that size company it's not a money maker. It's pocket money really. I guess I just have to get over the loss and the trouble hauling this heavy drone with two heavy batteries overseas to just throw them to the trash.
 
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I’m in the same boat. Brand new stabilizer, GoPro 7 black, and the latest update grounded the drone. I’ve tried everything I’ve seen on the internet and nothing. So glad I spent thousands on multiple drones and everything else. Ridiculous to say the least.
 
I have approached a number of large law firms in order to see if there is a possibility to start a collective lawsuit.

I am also in touch with Gavin Gene who has collected over 1000 signatures on this matter:


We have just created a new facebook group


to organise this matter.

If you are affected by this issue and would like to join the group effort to get GoPro to rectify this - please join the facebook group above and if you don't use facebook - monitor this forum for the follow-up.

Special thanks to the forum admins for supporting us!

Regards,

Alex
 
Hi and seasons greetings everyone,all familiar chat here with the karma issues and weak support .
Lastime I contacted them I was finally off a new karma body .I didn't go any further as is required a payment before progressing further.
So my issue after updating and hard reset s is the now famous fully extend the landing gear message which by the way has been replaced and plugged in and out numourus times,no effect.
So now what to do I signed up for the lawsuit but no further progress here as yet ?
We all have been let down by unreliable equipment but it seems unlikely we are going to get very far.
I am considering seeing if the motherboard could be replaced with a another pie version or something like that.has anyone managed to get a blueprint for the motherboard??
Surely it should be possible to build from the components.
I have 2 drones as I bought a secondhand one for parts but managed to get it going for a while to before it too decided it has issues.
So lots of bits to play with or scrap

Rory
 
Hey All, there are some of us trying to work through these issues to help people get flying. We don't work for GoPro and are doing it for free.
The Karma controller runs on an Andriod OS and we have found a way to flash it to specific versions. What we are trying to work out with the pairing issue is where the problem lies (controller or drone).

It would interesting to see if after flashing your controller back to a previous version if it would start working again (able to pair).

I was grounded back on Jan 1st 2020 and spent two years trying to get GoPro to help me out but I basically got the run around until they were able to say the Karma is no longer supported. I was stuck on version 1.40.x and nothing I did would allow me to download the new version of the firmware)

Anyway, if you watch this video it will show you how to flash your controller as well as back it up so you can roll back to where you were if you want too.

And if you go here you can get previous versions of the firmware (and the latest).

Biggest issue at the moment is that all of our drones are fully operational so we cant reproduce the pairing issue and there for cant work through fixing it.

Hope this helps.
 
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I tried using your image files but I keep getting an error. Do you have any other image files?
 
Hey All, there are some of us trying to work through these issues to help people get flying. We don't work for GoPro and are doing it for free.
The Karma controller runs on an Andriod OS and we have found a way to flash it to specific versions. What we are trying to work out with the pairing issue is where the problem lies (controller or drone).

It would interesting to see if after flashing your controller back to a previous version if it would start working again (able to pair).

I was grounded back on Jan 1st 2020 and spent two years trying to get GoPro to help me out but I basically got the run around until they were able to say the Karma is no longer supported. I was stuck on version 1.40.x and nothing I did would allow me to download the new version of the firmware)

Anyway, if you watch this video it will show you how to flash your controller as well as back it up so you can roll back to where you were if you want too.

And if you go here you can get previous versions of the firmware (and the latest).

Biggest issue at the moment is that all of our drones are fully operational so we cant reproduce the pairing issue and there for cant work through fixing it.

Hope this helps.
Hi, same here, and i try your tutorial but nothing, i try alot pairing reseting and nothing hellps :(
 
If your not a member of this facebook page them you should join it


There is a lot of work being done on the pairing issue in this group. There is no solution yet but there is a company in France that is able to correct the issue through reprogramming.

Extract from the page

Pairing Issue Update - Good for some

A big shout out to Jérémie Bouvier for putting me onto this lead.
There is a drone repair company in France that has employed a former engineer from the GoPro drone team.
They have the ability to reflash or replace the flash chip on the Karma drone. The estimate for either of these processes is about 60 € . The other obvious cost would be for freight and as many of you would be overseas this could well push the total cost outside of what you are willing to pay. It is also worth noting that there is no guarantee that either of these two process will fix your Karma. It is possible that you have faulty components on your boards which would incur other costs.
If anyone wants to look into this as an option you can contact them via the following email address [email protected] (let me know if you have issues with this email address).
As I dont speak let alone have the ability to write in French so I have been using one of the online translators to convert sent and received emails.
If anyone does use this service please drop a comment on this page as to how it went (was it successful, what was the cost, how long did it take).
From the conversation that I has with Luis they have some complex equipment to assist with diagnose, testing and repair. The real bonus though is having one of the GoPro engineers who has the knowledge of the processes and equipment to carry out this work.
If this works well some of you might want to consider sending bulk lots of equipment (several units in one package) to share the cost of freight where you are in the same location.
Additionally if anyone comes across another company that can offer this service add a comment in this group including there location.
I am still looking into being able to carry out this process at home but at this point it looks like some of the setup costs might out weigh what is practical for the average person. The clip on adapter for the NAND is about $50 and the rest of the burning unit is another $50. These both have freight costs and I would also need a standard NAND flash adapter for unmounted chips. When I include freight this is starting to get to about $150 - $170 US dollars. I would be happy to outlay this money as Im a techo and I would be able to reuse it for other things like flashing the NAND in Samsung TV's or memory sticks. I could do the odd repair if I was sent a unit but the average person is not going to outlay this sort of money with no guarantee. There are other issues that I wont go into now.
Anyhow , I am going to keep looking into a flashing process, I got another lead today in relation to the logs being written to the flash basically filling it up and we all know what happens when a computer runs out of disk space right ? This could explain some of the random events where a drone has just stopped working for no reason.
Hi, I had a few days discussing about karma issuses with Luis and he asked several s.n. and I sent it to France, I hope he will fix it out as promised.
I will describe my experience
Thanks.
 
Hi, I had a few days discussing about karma issuses with Luis and he asked several s.n. and I sent it to France, I hope he will fix it out as promised.
I will describe my experience
Thanks.
Thanks , there are a few others trying this as well. keep us posted on your experiance.
 
We have recently started a GoFundMe page to look at how we can replace the property electronics with something more industry standard. If you would like to contribute here is the link.
 
Não há adaptador para o NAND cerca de US $ 50 e o restante da unidade de clipe para gravar outros U

Recentemente, iniciamos uma página no GoFundMe para ver como podemos substituir os eletrônicos de propriedade por algo mais padrão do setor. Se você quiser contribuir aqui está o link.
Sua campanha está indo bem?
 
Hey All, there are some of us trying to work through these issues to help people get flying. We don't work for GoPro and are doing it for free.
The Karma controller runs on an Andriod OS and we have found a way to flash it to specific versions. What we are trying to work out with the pairing issue is where the problem lies (controller or drone).

It would interesting to see if after flashing your controller back to a previous version if it would start working again (able to pair).

I was grounded back on Jan 1st 2020 and spent two years trying to get GoPro to help me out but I basically got the run around until they were able to say the Karma is no longer supported. I was stuck on version 1.40.x and nothing I did would allow me to download the new version of the firmware)

Anyway, if you watch this video it will show you how to flash your controller as well as back it up so you can roll back to where you were if you want too.

And if you go here you can get previous versions of the firmware (and the latest).

Biggest issue at the moment is that all of our drones are fully operational so we cant reproduce the pairing issue and there for cant work through fixing it.

Hope this helps.
I doubt doing anything to the controller will help.
As I see it the problem now lies in the drone itself.
The update failed to start or complete ( I’m not sure which) on the drone itself.
It may be due to improper procedure by user or the update doesn’t have the proper safe checks to verify the drones state and guide the user.
again I’m not sure which is the case.
The drone updates using wifi through the controller and the drone.
I’m going to guess that your drone doesn’t show up in the available wifi list on the controller.
This is because whatever happened during the update the drone no longer powers up properly, thus having no wifi, limp gimble and camera off.
Until we find a way to wake-up the drone I’m afraid they are useless other than parts.
 
I doubt doing anything to the controller will help.
As I see it the problem now lies in the drone itself.
The update failed to start or complete ( I’m not sure which) on the drone itself.
It may be due to improper procedure by user or the update doesn’t have the proper safe checks to verify the drones state and guide the user.
again I’m not sure which is the case.
The drone updates using wifi through the controller and the drone.
I’m going to guess that your drone doesn’t show up in the available wifi list on the controller.
This is because whatever happened during the update the drone no longer powers up properly, thus having no wifi, limp gimble and camera off.
Until we find a way to wake-up the drone I’m afraid they are useless other than parts.
Hey Liquorbox, someone said to me that it could be related to the logs filling up storage/memory which then doesnt allow the OS to load correctly. If its anything like the controller it might be a version of linux, I'm trying to get more information on the issue as well as if there is a way to reflash the drone. There is a micro SD card slot on the main board of some versions of the drone but apparently it is used for logging. It would be interesting to see if added a card to it extends the space available which then allows the OS to load correctly. All theory at this point, I really need to get in touch with someone from the original project to get some solid information.
 
Hey All, there are some of us trying to work through these issues to help people get flying. We don't work for GoPro and are doing it for free.
The Karma controller runs on an Andriod OS and we have found a way to flash it to specific versions. What we are trying to work out with the pairing issue is where the problem lies (controller or drone).

It would interesting to see if after flashing your controller back to a previous version if it would start working again (able to pair).

I was grounded back on Jan 1st 2020 and spent two years trying to get GoPro to help me out but I basically got the run around until they were able to say the Karma is no longer supported. I was stuck on version 1.40.x and nothing I did would allow me to download the new version of the firmware)

Anyway, if you watch this video it will show you how to flash your controller as well as back it up so you can roll back to where you were if you want too.

And if you go here you can get previous versions of the firmware (and the latest).

Biggest issue at the moment is that all of our drones are fully operational so we cant reproduce the pairing issue and there for cant work through fixing it.

Hope this helps.
Could you please share the final88.img file with me? [email protected]
 
Hey Liquorbox, someone said to me that it could be related to the logs filling up storage/memory which then doesnt allow the OS to load correctly. If its anything like the controller it might be a version of linux, I'm trying to get more information on the issue as well as if there is a way to reflash the drone. There is a micro SD card slot on the main board of some versions of the drone but apparently it is used for logging. It would be interesting to see if added a card to it extends the space available which then allows the OS to load correctly. All theory at this point, I really need to get in touch with someone from the original project to get some solid information.
were you able to access the drone or add memory via the micro SD?
 

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