I bought my son (31yo ) the GoPro Karma for his birthday and after downloading the updates and calibrating and he used the flight simulator to practice we all went outside to enjoy his first flight. Everything went well at takeoff. Went up about 50 feet and starting roaming to the right by it's self but got it to come back but just then it took off like a bat out of hell and with no response from the controller just watched $1000 fly out of sight. We spent New Years Eve in the woods trying to locate it's last known location. Happy New Year Karma I just spent $1000 for 5 min of excitement and 4 hrs of searching.
Fly Away
- Thread starter poppopharry6954
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Hahaha this sounds EXACTLY like what happened to me. I went up for my 3rd flight to video some fireworks and it just said "GPS Lost" and took off on a transpacific journey over the ocean. I watched as my Christmas present fly out of sight helplessly. Let's just say it wasn't a fun last 30 minutes of 2017 when I had to explain that to my dad who was asleep at the time. So unfair because it seems this is not my fault as I am not alone in this issue and GoPro Care doesn't do anything. Now my Karma grip is useless as well as all other GoPro gear. Filing a claim but not expecting much with their lackluster customer service. Did manage to get some good footage tho before I lost it...
I nearly lost my Karma on the second flight the other night.. Lost GPS signal .. it was 400 feet up.. then it started drifting.. I used my masterful pilot skills to swing it back around after it flying nearly 2000 feet the other direction completely out of control.. i brought it down to a near crash landing about 200 yards from the house.. running after it in a t-shirt in negative 10 degree weather.. what a night.. sorry to hear all of your stories of disappointment but I am here to share my similar experience. It won't even let me take off 90% of the time now because of "compass interference".. I recalibrate every flight and still doesn't work or loses calibration in 1 minute of flight time. I never had any problems like this with my 3DR Solo.. sadly the Solo doesn't have the beautiful gimbal that Karma has. I did manage to record the video of the out of control flight and will upload it soon.
Skuzzyg
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Sorry to hear about everyones back experiences. I'm curious as to what your location / geographical area consists of?
I am in South/Central Oregon, very small towns and mostly trees and mountains around when I fly. I dont fly near houses or other industrial areas often at all. There was one time I flew over a lake without GPS location... everything was fine, Mid flight it "Found GPS" and the notification freaked me out thinking it was gonna turn in to a submarine, but thankfully no issues.
I most recently took it out and up to the mountains where I was flying just past 1,200 ft distance, weak connection, but no fly-aways. Im curious if it is coming down to interference from other WIFI signals?
I am in South/Central Oregon, very small towns and mostly trees and mountains around when I fly. I dont fly near houses or other industrial areas often at all. There was one time I flew over a lake without GPS location... everything was fine, Mid flight it "Found GPS" and the notification freaked me out thinking it was gonna turn in to a submarine, but thankfully no issues.
I most recently took it out and up to the mountains where I was flying just past 1,200 ft distance, weak connection, but no fly-aways. Im curious if it is coming down to interference from other WIFI signals?
I think some Karmas come with bad karma. Flew mine eight or nine times without a hitch however flight ten was just a little different. The area was familiar and I had already flown there previously with no problems. This day the Karma had compass calibration issues and it took re calibrating two times to finally complete. Next was GPS signal and required moving the Karma about 30' from the location I had flown from before. Finally got the thing in the air with no problems. I let the thing hover about thirty feet up just to make sure it was thinking correctly. After turning it around and testing the responses I began to ascend to around 100'. This is when the alarm bells went off. "Compass error, Karma unable to hold position" came from the controller and just as it did Karma began to move quickly away from my position. I tried to gain control but the Karma was not responding as on all previous flights. I had at least some control and for the next four and a half minutes Karma and I fought each other until I managed to get the thing on the ground about 30' from me. I was shacking from head to toe when it was all done.
Have flown it twice since then and have found it now has no problems when close but as soon as I get some distance in either horizontal or vertical the Karma loses it's mind and becomes virtually uncontrollable.
Have flown it twice since then and have found it now has no problems when close but as soon as I get some distance in either horizontal or vertical the Karma loses it's mind and becomes virtually uncontrollable.
I am in a small city.. lots of wifi and houses here.. but I have not had any problems with my 3DR drone here.. this is a Karma issue.
Thanks; I'm just wondering if the Karma issue occurs outside of an area environment lots of wifi signals.
Okay, a little background. I have flown a lot of drones the last four and most of them with out GPS or FPV. So when my son gave me Karma GoPro Hero5 for Christmas I wanted to know everything about it. After reading all of the instructions and the updateing all of the software I thought I would do some research on what other people had to say about this drone. Unfortunately the first place I went to was the GoPro site. What a mistake that was because al they talked about was great the new and improved Karma was. So next thing I did was type in problems with Karma drone 2017.
After reading from that I decided to take it back to Best Buy only to hear you are 2 days to late for a return. They said you have 14 days to bring it back. I told them it has never been used. Fortunately I read about all of the problems everyone was having and thought I might have solved the loss on GPS and loss of connection problems. So I went to a field where there are no homes within miles and there are no telephone lines and no electrical lines. There are trees in the area but they are at the edge of the field. The field is 600’ by 800’ by 600’ by 600’. There is no so called environmental enterferance so I felt safe flying. I new from reading from everyone to start don’t fly high in case it decides to go off on it’s own. I flew out 500’ at 6 to 8 feet above the ground west then 400’ south, then brought it back to me at an angle and thinking cool no problems so far. So I bring it back and stop it at 25’ in front of me and 6’ above the ground with 6 min. Of battery left and then decided to bring it a little closer and land it when I heard “connection lost” and it took nose dive into the ground. Same thing happened again. When I called GoPro they told me get GoPro care for 230.00 and then it would cost another 250.00 deductible. Sorry this was so long but sometime is wrong here because there was no environmental interference. The problem is in the communication between the controller and the drone. They need to do a total recall on this unsafe drone. And to say all drones are doing the same thing is a bold face lie. I can see some other drones having problems but at the same rate as Karma. If you want to hear more let me know. Lhwjr,1/8/18
After reading from that I decided to take it back to Best Buy only to hear you are 2 days to late for a return. They said you have 14 days to bring it back. I told them it has never been used. Fortunately I read about all of the problems everyone was having and thought I might have solved the loss on GPS and loss of connection problems. So I went to a field where there are no homes within miles and there are no telephone lines and no electrical lines. There are trees in the area but they are at the edge of the field. The field is 600’ by 800’ by 600’ by 600’. There is no so called environmental enterferance so I felt safe flying. I new from reading from everyone to start don’t fly high in case it decides to go off on it’s own. I flew out 500’ at 6 to 8 feet above the ground west then 400’ south, then brought it back to me at an angle and thinking cool no problems so far. So I bring it back and stop it at 25’ in front of me and 6’ above the ground with 6 min. Of battery left and then decided to bring it a little closer and land it when I heard “connection lost” and it took nose dive into the ground. Same thing happened again. When I called GoPro they told me get GoPro care for 230.00 and then it would cost another 250.00 deductible. Sorry this was so long but sometime is wrong here because there was no environmental interference. The problem is in the communication between the controller and the drone. They need to do a total recall on this unsafe drone. And to say all drones are doing the same thing is a bold face lie. I can see some other drones having problems but at the same rate as Karma. If you want to hear more let me know. Lhwjr,1/8/18
Thank you for this background. Yup--nothing by hype on the GoPro site. I have not flown mine yet and it likely will be a couple of weeks before I get to it. I need to fly it in an urban environment and my intention is to try and use it for crane shots--not the distant aerials we typically see with drones. In this use it will never be very far from the controller so I'm hoping it will work ok. But yours crashed 25' in front of you at 6' above the ground so that doesn't sound so good. All I can do at this point is try it out. We shall see. Thank you again for the background and the best of luck to you.
James Hatch
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I wonder if the camera wifi was not shut off. Once you have good solid GPS, take and let it hover for a while at the start altitude for awhile. If the GPS is working well the drone should remain stable without drifting, if it does wander even slightly, bring it back down and re set the the GPS. It is much better to be sure than to be sorry later.
