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Karma drone disappears

Will GoPro replace my Karma drone and Hero 5 Black?

  • Yes

    Votes: 18 52.9%
  • No

    Votes: 16 47.1%

  • Total voters
    34
Just for clarification for anyone reading this mid-thread:

A) you don't necessarily need GoPro care to get support. (My understanding is that you may be liable for the cost of repair if GoPro sees that the crash is due to the pilot.) Its also my understanding is that the drone has a 1 year warrantee covering product defects (not necessarily crashes). [I don't have GoPro Care, but I'm still filing a claim. I have pretty strong evidence that my drone went 20MPH over GoPro's claimed max speed of 35mph (if in sport mode).]

B) if you upload a flight log, follow it up with a call to GoPro so you can have a ticket opened and your issue can be tracked. (If you just blindly upload a flight log without a ticket, it might not get reviewed, especially since there is currently a huge backlog of issues that support is working on. [My issue, which has been "escalated" still hasn't been reviewed by 2nd-level support])


Yes I did not have GoPro care and it does not cover this anyways. They need to be real with people and put a disclaimer on the box telling buyers to only fly in wide open spaces with no wifi interference around. I received my replacement last week. After 10 days they wrote me saying they would be granting me a one time replacement. I will most likely not fly it again as I don't want to risk losing the camera and stabalizer again. Let alone the karma.
I'm sure most people with our same issue are all getting replacements!
Good luck!
 
UPDATE: To make a long story short... My case with GoPro was closed on May 17th, just seventeen days after it was opened, though it felt much longer... Three days ago I received my replacement Karma drone, battery, propellers, gimble, & Hero 5 Black. I couldn't be happier with the outcome, obviously, as my only out of pocket cost was for a new sd card. There's just one problem now... I'm scared to fly it!

I'm exactly the same. Received all the replacement parts, came in 2 separate shipments and yes had to buy a new SD card.

Totally gun shy. Ran my first test flight after calibrating and pairing and updating and flew fine. But still can't shake the fact that this thing may at any time just take off... not take-off but gonoff on its own.

I bought this to record footage while we are in Iceland and Scotland on a family vaycay. Can't help but think what will happen if it goes "rogue one" again. Oh, by the way that's what I've named my new drone.
 
Yes I did not have GoPro care and it does not cover this anyways. They need to be real with people and put a disclaimer on the box telling buyers to only fly in wide open spaces with no wifi interference around. I received my replacement last week. After 10 days they wrote me saying they would be granting me a one time replacement. I will most likely not fly it again as I don't want to risk losing the camera and stabalizer again. Let alone the karma.
I'm sure most people with our same issue are all getting replacements!
Good luck!
Again, I agree. I would really like to get the camera back for sure from my original drone.
 
@Pyankov FYI: GoPro's business hours are ...
Business Hours:
Sun: 07:00 AM - 04:00 PM
M: 06:00 AM - 06:00 PM
T: 06:00 AM - 06:00 PM
W: 06:00 AM - 06:00 PM
Th: 06:00 AM - 06:00 PM
F: 06:00 AM - 06:00 PM
S: 07:00 AM - 04:00 PM
Pacific Standard Time

Im not sure how reliable the chat is (despite saying "24/7")

On thing you may want to try: Use Skype or GoogleVoice to call support. (I haven't personally used either service for international, so I don't know if it will work on not. But I figure it's worth trying)
 
My Karma ran away yesterday. Launched it and flew up approx 50. The controller said it had lost gps signal. It said it was going to return to land. It starting landing in a tree. It responded to controls and then took off on a wild ride. Eventually sped up and crashed into a tree. I am trying to get in touch with GoPro support and all lines are busy. Chat is also busy. I'm not having much luck so far.

BTW, I was in a very rural area in an agricultural field. No buildings around. Some trees nearby, but not immediately close.

Were you able to recover the drone, and more importantly, get the video? If so, try to get the telemetry data to be shown (see my prior post for the how-to). Im curious to see your telemetry
 
Hello
Yesterday's beautiful day I chose to fly my dairy karma, I pulled out, calibrated, flew. I was flying over the lagoon and fields. After less than 3 minutes of flight, karma lost signal, started landing and crashed . Unfortunately, but in the water in the middle of the flood, he drowned immediately after landing, it is unrecoverable. What should I do, is there a chance of recovering something? Not with my fault lost signal
I buy the karma on 2.06.2017
 
Greetings, I'd like to discuss my new Karma drone and the disappearing act it pulled on me yesterday. My third overall flight, flying in a residential setting, I did my first "high" altitude flight, reaching as high as 300.' I came back down to about 200,' lost GPS, then lost connection between the controller and drone, and that's when Karma instantly took off at a very high rate of speed, not responding to any controller input, never to be seen again. I've filed a claim with GoPro, I've uploaded flight logs, and now I'm just waiting for a response from GoPro. A search for the drone has yielded nothing. I've got ads up on Craigslist and other neighborhood forums. And, no, I don't have a GPS device on the drone, nor my name and phone number. Your thoughts? Anyone experienced the same thing? How will GoPro handle this?




Literally the same thing happened to me. I bought the karma and brought it with me all the way to Portugal. I'm flying it and about 30 seconds in, it loses connection to the controller and then GPS is lost and the karma itself starts flying in one direction above trees and I'm chasing it trying to regain connection to stop it and then all the controller tells me is that the karma is going to land where it is at. Not even return home to land or nothing but land wherever. I've been searching all day yesterday and today and nothing yet. I called GoPro, they are looking at the logs and hopefully they reply to me. I think this is not acceptable and we should be able to get our money back or get a replacement. The karma went crazy and flew over the side in the picture. I had no control over it.
 
Literally the same thing happened to me. I bought the karma and brought it with me all the way to Portugal. I'm flying it and about 30 seconds in, it loses connection to the controller and then GPS is lost and the karma itself starts flying in one direction above trees and I'm chasing it trying to regain connection to stop it and then all the controller tells me is that the karma is going to land where it is at. Not even return home to land or nothing but land wherever. I've been searching all day yesterday and today and nothing yet. I called GoPro, they are looking at the logs and hopefully they reply to me. I think this is not acceptable and we should be able to get our money back or get a replacement. The karma went crazy and flew over the side in the picture. I had no control over it.

We spent around two hours yesterday talking to GoPro. The flight log was useless it doesn't even show where the Karma landed. The pictures we got were from when we were starting to lose the gps signal. They pretty much said it was our fault for flying in the residential area and all the wifi interference but offered to replace it for $400.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
We spent around two hours yesterday talking to GoPro. The flight log was useless it doesn't even show where the Karma landed. The pictures we got were from when we were starting to lose the gps signal. They pretty much said it was our fault for flying in the residential area and all the wifi interference but offered to replace it for $400.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Some bull crap honestly. Like what?? Go pro expects us only to fly in the middle of no where?????? I'm in Portugal and I'm trying to contact them which support sucks. Was on the phone 30 minutes before someone picked up. Go pro is bad for this.
 
Another sad rogue Karma story,

So I've ignored the bad publicity on the Karma from the get go. What can i say i love Go Pro... I don't tend to believe people right when a product is in Beta so to speak... its to early

well i purchased my first Karma from amazon in April and right off the bat was having troubles maintaining a video feed once i switched from video to picture mode. although not a common task i thought it important enough so i exchanged it for drone # 2.

Now drone #2 had seen very little air time besides one/two flights but none the less it was at the same location drone #1 flew just fine countless times, and while using GPS return features extremely well. I was and am super impressed by this drone. Will i buy another ? truly it depends. ive had great success with customer support from Go Pro, but respective to the product it was always with just the cameras. If i find different with the drone.... Lets cross that bridge when it comes.

Today i decided to fly drone # 2 at the same location. I happened to have some AC guys working on my neighbors house that had seen me set it up, and they were stoked as they had not seen one before. they all come over and gather around and im thinking... PREPARE to be amazed ! as i have up until this point every flight !

Like my wife would say... the whole thing lasted about 2 minutes and was never seen again.

everything was green and good to go on take off. 3...2...1... bzzzzzzz up in the air and a quick flick of the left stick i was going up just like my old drone, however... this time the drone would not stay in place, it kept wanting to go backwards. countering this with the stick proved useless !

at first i thought it was wind, but i live in Florida and the weather was Beautiful ! not a cloud in the sky, trees not even moving. I go full stick forward trying to bring it back ! Nothing. like i was fighting a head wind that i could not over take. at this point im wondering if maybe a motor is out...

Upon realizing i have no control over this thing and the lack of error messages on the screen, I decided to hit return to home as it was flying further and further away. It said "landing at location" but its still not descending. in fact still getting further away ! I hit "X" to cancel the operation thinking i was going to need to do what the computer would not.

That momentary second of hitting "X" with neutral sticks was all it took, the drone clearly was not under my control and sped over the empty tree covered land forcing me to rely on the screen for eyes with no line of site, however upon looking at my screen it was black ! Oh hello video problem from drone #1 ! nice of you to show up.

Literally i put my hands in the air in front of 5 people watching me waiting for something to happen. All i could say to them was "its gone guys' not sure if it crashed, not sure if it landed... I just hope it did not hurt anyone. Ill have to call Go Pro to find out more.

I keep playing it over and over in my head wondering what i should have done different. Im so perplexed as to why my first drone worked so well besides for when i force-ably switched it to camera mode.

My return of a unit that had a minuscule problem i thought to be worse than it really was just costed me a grand. and HOURS searching time.

So long story short i've called up Go - Pro twice.

First Karma Tech Agent was great ! seemed apologetic (i was a mess with stress. Did it hit someone ? is it still flying ?)

she promptly sent me some pertinent questions, and I've uploaded flight data, and proof of purchase.

I naively being new to drones called back after learning about flight logs as this is serious to me, i cant stand the idea that this could have hurt someone ! I wanted to know its last known location. come to find out this is not just given away.

Also I did not click the "Karma support" button on the phone and i waited on hold for over an hour before hanging up. I only learned this after calling back and was greeted within seconds after clicking the correct Karma support number. honestly though it was at peak time. and ive never had issues with Go Pro Customer service on any incident ive had with my 6 + go pro units.

I spoke with a gentlemen this time, not as kind as the previous agent. He said that it could take 5 days for them to have the information i requested and they would let me know.

So now i wait... with hopes that some how ill find the answer on some random blog i found when googling "bye bye Karma"

I intend to update this every step of the way as people don't deserve to have such insecurities when there 1000 dollar investments are uncontrollably flying though the air, but i truly do feel that this Karma has massive potential. I loved my hand held gimble, love my hero 5's. Although some DJI fans would disagree i believe Go pro to be a contender to breaking the monopoly on consumer based drone purchases.

expect and update soon, and fingers crossed Go Pro's Customer Support is good as it has been in the past. they have always taken care of me.
 
Last edited:
Some bull crap honestly. Like what?? Go pro expects us only to fly in the middle of no where?????? I'm in Portugal and I'm trying to contact them which support sucks. Was on the phone 30 minutes before someone picked up. Go pro is bad for this.

Yeah, We've been quite upset about this. Wish I didn't buy it in the first place. My boyfriend was so excited for his early birthday gift and he had it for six hours and it flew away.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
@Linda.Ca & @photoguy0126 --

I totally empathize with your feelings -- im there with you.

As tough as it is, continue to search for your lost done. I hope you can find it for many reason, but mostly to recover the telemetry data that the controller won't have. We, as a community, need to collect as much evidence of this errant flight behavior of the drones', so that we bring it to GoPro's attention that something is seriously wrong. And, if needed, we can bring a class action lawsuit. (That's right, i just said the L word.)

The number of stories I've read in this thread of runaway drones is just F'ing ridiculous.
 
It seems to me fro reading this thread and others, that firmware update v1.5 seems to be causing most of the fly-away issues. I'd be real interested in knowing those who've updated firmware to v1.5, have flown a lot and have NOT had any fly-away issues.
 
UPDATE :

So i've been calling daily since my disappearance, customer service has been great but they admittedley tell me that the engineers are the ones with the answers. Fair enough.

I had mentioned in my previous post about wanting to know information on the last known location... this can be found by selecting "maps" WHY DID NO ONE SAY THIS TO ME at customer support !? I have been looking everyday in the wrong locations.

So i followed the little blips to the last known... NOTHING and i was way way off. how it got this far was beyond me, alas this is known for sure. it had throttle, because it went pretty far out. past where i was hitting the return home button.

I knocked on the ladies door and she kindly let me look around. she was 80 so i pretty sure she would not have taken it, however its been 3 days ! anyone could have seen it. I went right up to the point that the controller said 0 ft. nothing. Up or around, she helped me look for almost an hour before i just gave her my information.

A little perturbed as to why i was not given this info when requested the day of the event i contacted customer support for the second time today (they probably hate me now). I spoke with the same lady from this morning Again very nice and they updated my file that i had known the last location from the remote. She also said that is good information as sometimes the engineers send customers to look. I told her that i was a little upset i was not told this feature was here (in a manual or not) i asked to know the day of the mishap and should have been given it. Had this information been given when i called, i could have went to the location while there was battery left and possibly reconnected using the camera. To little to late unfortunately.

If go pro engineers are looking at this they need to know that 1st level agents should advise this because i could have had a carcass to send in. I would much rather spend 200 than 1100 naturally...

The wait continues... and its daunting ! thankfully Go Pro is giving me updates via email checking the status of my case automatically which is very helpful.
 
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@photoguy0126 I feel like a bone head!! I did not think about looking at Last Location. (I only looked at this once before, but it didn't show anything meaningful for prior last flight, so I haven't had much to think about it.)

I just tried looking at it now. I used the GPS coordinates from the controller and plugged it into Google Maps. The coordinates are about 100ft off from where my karma was actually found. (Based upon the direction of travel, I think coordinates are 100ft short because, at 51mph 74 feet/s, the travel speed right before the crash based upon the telemetry in the video) is about 1.25 seconds before the crash. OK. that's interesting. Relatively accurate (versus the last coordinate being 1000 feet off).

More significant is what this implies. In my event, the controller was indeed in communication with drone, getting some telemetry from the drone, yet the drone refused to respond to input controls.
 
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@photoguy0126In my event, the controller was indeed in communication with drone, getting some telemetry from the drone, yet the drone refused to respond to input controls.
Was the drone next to any power lines, cell towers or large buildings? Interference might account for the Karma not responding to controls.
 
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No power lines, cell towers, or large buildings -- i was flying out over water. But the thing is, the comm link should have reestablished itself when it was "returning", but it didn't -- i'm still waiting to hear back from Support about why my drone went double-speed.

By the way, I did get an email from Support earlier today. Basically, it was a reiteration of their last email focusing on WiFi & GPS interference, but still without an explanation of 54mph. Looks like Im going to be calling support back again...
 
Posted this in another thread but it would seem more pertinent here.

'Ok 100% had one of these today. New here do bear with me.

I have an idea as to what's up or going on here. So the drone and controller have GPS right?

Where it happened to me today was an old running haunt of mine. From gps experience on my phone (iPhone 6) and running watches (Garmin forerunner 405) I know the GPS is less than reliable and can give readings that have resulted in me breaking several Olympic records, including a sub 2 minute mile.

So here's my theory. If the controller picks up a bad gps from the controller and then loses connection then fly to me may give the impression of being miles away. And off it goes as fast as it can.

My phone seems to be much better now as I think it averages out these GPS wobbles but if that's what's happening here it could explain why some are seeing it and others not. And if you get a dodgy launch site GPS wise the same could happen there.

Just a theory and I have sent details to the GoPro support guys today. Who knows.'
 
@McToddy

Glad im not the only one who missed this, I was thinking that the Drone had landed similar to yours (100 feet give or take) problem is in Florida (Jurassic Park ) the trees are super tall and there is SO much area that it made it seemingly impossible to search the surrounding area. i was able to get about a 50 foot per-miter . 100 feet in the opposite direction and it would be stolen as it would have been found. I may go poke around there again tomorrow, but im really not feeling like a snake bite over this. Im just upset that they never told me about this function. It should be in there best interest to assist finding it !

As for connection clearly i must have had some type of connection with the remote... But i had a black screen on my video feed very soon after losing control.

Rumor has it they send images, im hoping those could shed light as to what happened / where it is.

@Rambler358

It was admittedly considered residential, However i flew there so many times with my previous Karma with 0 issues that i find it hard to believe it could have been related. I purchased 3 battery's and flew all 3 and was amazed at how well the GPS would return the drone to the exact spot. Not really any power lines to speak of where it lost the ability to be controlled, certainly wifi im sure.
 
Posted this in another thread but it would seem more pertinent here.

'Ok 100% had one of these today. New here do bear with me.

I have an idea as to what's up or going on here. So the drone and controller have GPS right?

Where it happened to me today was an old running haunt of mine. From gps experience on my phone (iPhone 6) and running watches (Garmin forerunner 405) I know the GPS is less than reliable and can give readings that have resulted in me breaking several Olympic records, including a sub 2 minute mile.

So here's my theory. If the controller picks up a bad gps from the controller and then loses connection then fly to me may give the impression of being miles away. And off it goes as fast as it can.

My phone seems to be much better now as I think it averages out these GPS wobbles but if that's what's happening here it could explain why some are seeing it and others not. And if you get a dodgy launch site GPS wise the same could happen there.

Just a theory and I have sent details to the GoPro support guys today. Who knows.'


All i can say that if by any chance this thing gets replaced. if it even so much as shows compass interference its not going up. sad but true, i mat wait for a couple updates in fact. Being a new drone owner this has been a big wake up call whatever caused it.
 

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