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Go pro flyaway

Davis

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Hi all,
I am new to the site. Thought I would share my experience with everyone plus I had a question hopeully the experts can answer as none of my friends fly these. My wife bought me the go pro Karma 2 with hero6 for Christmas because we have always wanted a go pro and I wanted a drone seemed like a great buy to bundle it all. Did all the uploads and calibrated it. Being that I have never flown anything like this I practiced with the simulator for a few hours then headed out. It was amazing! All went well. Next day 2nd flight, I hit auto take off it went up and I brought it up to about 30 feet then it took off like a bat out of hell zooming around and off into the horizon. We searched for 3 days now at the last known gps signal and nothing. Go pro was very helpful, I up loaded the flight log to them and within 24 hours they are sending out a new unit minus the sd card. I have purchased trackimo to attach to the new one so that i will be able to find it, if it happens again. What I would like to know is can I access the flight log after it has already been uploaded? I absolutely cannot stand the fact that a 1000.00 unit is sitting somewhere in the woods close to me. It has no name on it or anything so someone will find it eventually. The last known location on the controller has a directional arrow but it changes spuraddically as I am looking for it. If I could figure out the direction and speed I believe I would have an educated guess on the fall or landing. Thanks
 
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Hey @Davis.

Sorry to hear about the flyaway. Hopefully you recover the drone.

What I would like to know is can I access the flight log after it has already been uploaded?

To answer your question: not that I'm aware of. Many people have asked, including on the GoPro Karma community forum, but from what I can gather this information is available only to GoPro. Having said that, generally they'll give you the information about last known location when you open a support case and upload the flight logs via the controller.

Can I ask a few questions about your flight?
  • What was the environment where you were operating? Urban, forest, beach, etc.
  • Did you calibrate the compass before takeoff?
  • Did the controller give you any warnings at any stage, such as "GPS lost"? If so, what were the warnings, and when did they occur (just before loss of control, at the same time, after, etc.)?
 
Hi all,
I am new to the site. Thought I would share my experience with everyone plus I had a question hopeully the experts can answer as none of my friends fly these. My wife bought me the go pro Karma 2 with hero6 for Christmas because we have always wanted a go pro and I wanted a drone seemed like a great buy to bundle it all. Did all the uploads and calibrated it. Being that I have never flown anything like this I practiced with the simulator for a few hours then headed out. It was amazing! All went well. Next day 2nd flight, I hit auto take off it went up and I brought it up to about 30 feet then it took off like a bat out of hell zooming around and off into the horizon. We searched for 3 days now at the last known gps signal and nothing. Go pro was very helpful, I up loaded the flight log to them and within 24 hours they are sending out a new unit minus the sd card. I have purchased trackimo to attach to the new one so that i will be able to find it, if it happens again. What I would like to know is can I access the flight log after it has already been uploaded? I absolutely cannot stand the fact that a 1000.00 unit is sitting somewhere in the woods close to me. It has no name on it or anything so someone will find it eventually. The last known location on the controller has a directional arrow but it changes spuraddically as I am looking for it. If I could figure out the direction and speed I believe I would have an educated guess on the fall or landing. Thanks
 
Unfortunately, I have had the exact same experience with my Karma. It decided to just take off EXACTLY as you described “Like a bat outta hell”!

It did this on two separate occasions. On the first occasion, it landed between two people who were sunbathing on the beach. Luckily, nobody was injured! The drone just took off on a path down the beach and no matter how hard I tried, my inputs were not going to the controller!!!!

I thought that I had possibly done something wrong, so I took it home and reviewed everything to ensure that I had not missed one step of preparing the drone for pre-flight. I am an aviator in the Navy, so pre-flight and utilization of checklists is essential.

I took the drone back out for a “functional check flight”. This time, everything went well. I tested all functions of the drone at about 10ft off the deck. Everything seemed to function properly.

So, I returned home and completely charged the remote and the battery with the intent to return and capture some sunset images.

The drone was at approximately 20 ft altitude and at a distance of 100 ft from the remote when all of a sudden, the drone started to fly extremely eradically at an extremely high rate of speed.

No matter what I tried, there was no control over the drone. The controller started to sound off random notifications.

My wife was standing beside me. She said “WTH is going on?” I looked at her and said “This thing has gone haywire!!!” I even showed her by releasing all controls that it was flying itself.

Eventually, the drone changed course and headed out over the ocean. Trust me- The thought of $1000 flying out into the Pacific Ocean now had me on the controls like never before!!!!

The drone flew itself out over the ocean and we watched helplessly as our $1000 Christmas gift flew itself right into the ocean. I have contacted gopro and they have opened a case on it. I am seeing a lot of folks who are encountering this same issue, so In the best interest of Gopro, it would appear that there will be a recall in the future.

I will repost as a new thread (I encourage others to do the same) to ensure that GoPro sees the trend of mishaps with the Karma. This is unsafe and I hope that they will correct the problem .
 
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Hi guys - I sympathise! I had the exact same issue... never located it - I was in padstow on a weekend away and it disappeared somewhere into the town and was never recovered, GoPro where very supportive and replaced the whole unit (less £100 msd card) but did send a flexi grip to compensate. Now I have this Dilemma - I have no confidence in flying it now... just in case... well it does a midnight flit again !! Is there a tracker I can buy ?
 
Hey @Davis.

Sorry to hear about the flyaway. Hopefully you recover the drone.



To answer your question: not that I'm aware of. Many people have asked, including on the GoPro Karma community forum, but from what I can gather this information is available only to GoPro. Having said that, generally they'll give you the information about last known location when you open a support case and upload the flight logs via the controller.

Can I ask a few questions about your flight?
  • What was the environment where you were operating? Urban, forest, beach, etc.
  • Did you calibrate the compass before takeoff?
  • Did the controller give you any warnings at any stage, such as "GPS lost"? If so, what were the warnings, and when did they occur (just before loss of control, at the same time, after, etc.)?
I was in my back yard in the northern suburbs of chicago with no major obsticles , buildings or tall trees.
It was about 10 degrees outside no wind clear conditions.
I did not calibrate the compass befor the take off, it only asked me to do that before the maiden flight. Gopro did tell me to do that before each flight though for next time.
There were no warnings until it was up in the air started acting erratically then it said compass lost. At this point nothing I did would control it and literally watched 1000.00 fly away. The controller said landing at some point, but no where close to me. The last known location was roughly 2 miles from the take off.
I did get a replacement tracking number this morning so it is on its way!
I do have the last known location, but it is definitely not there.
 
Hi guys - I sympathise! I had the exact same issue... never located it - I was in padstow on a weekend away and it disappeared somewhere into the town and was never recovered, GoPro where very supportive and replaced the whole unit (less £100 msd card) but did send a flexi grip to compensate. Now I have this Dilemma - I have no confidence in flying it now... just in case... well it does a midnight flit again !! Is there a tracker I can buy ?
I bought trackimo because of the great reviews, but I have no personal experience with it as of now. I jumped in to this without any research that was obviously a mistake. Trackimo is $99 on Amazon with the first year included, pretty cheap insurance considering what you could loose.
 
So this is going to sound weird, but it works. I took my sons old Gizmo watch which has built in GPS and attached it to the bottom of my drone. Had a “fly away” and it pinpointed my drone to within 100ft. Ultimately found the drone 3 miles away! Worth the $5/mo charge on my Verizon bill.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Update for anyone interested. Go ro sent new everything it took about 2 weeks. The trackimo I ordered apparently is 2g network and wouldn' even respond, not sure why amazon even has it on there website. Got a refund for that and ordered a Marco polo. I did a few field test and it seems to be a very accurate instrument! I have not flown the new karma yet, but plan to tomorrow. I did however figure out a way to track the fly way karma. Unfortunately my battery is definitely dead so this new information is hopless for me. If you download the Go pro app on your phone and connect the camera befor your flight you can go I to the setting and remote trigger an alert for locating the camera. It is loud enough that if you are 50 yards away you will find it! I wish the gopro would have told me this instead of me finding out for my self after it was to late! HOPE THIS HELPS with the flyaways!
 
Not had a fly away yet, but many other problems! Sorry about guys losing their gear but are we missing the point? FLYAWAYS ARE HORRENDOUSLY DANGEROUS!
 

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