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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
My fears came to reality, my drone flew off (at 96 km/h [emoji15] ) last Wednesday, I’ve already contacted gopro Sent everything they’ve requested and now the wait begins, after reading and flowing this thread with attention I’m ready for a long journey, I did told however to the GoPro support that I’m not going to waste time with back and forward emails, If I get responses that wanna make me feel a retard that spent 1200 £ to nothing I will immediately start all and I mean all legal actions against GoPro and if I do that won’t be just the financial loss but as well as emotional and moral losses.

I’m really not in a mood to play there game


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Hey I’m in the same boat still! I’ve waited over a month for resolutions to be made and the best so far and what they say their only offer is a replacement of the core and landing gear, harness for the camera and propellers.. still requiring that I’m to pay for half a GoPro hero 5, stabilizer and battery.. that’s 685$ worth of equipment so I’ve told them that if this is an operator error then why are you even trying to issue me anything.. from there I’ve had zero honest answers and so the law suit will most likely be in place. I’m wanting to contact you about how your case is going and if you want to join me in getting our cases resolved I’d be glad to help you and vice versa, to this day I’m never purchasing GoPro products again.
 
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Same here with GoPro support. I am getting the run around with their support group daily. I have the Karma care plan for GoPro when purchased the drone. The device is dangerous because it lose GPS communication during flight at a July 4th event when traffic exiting the event. Police wittiness the drone out of control behavior and seen it took off in the evening sky straight to wooded / swampy area of geographic location. If class action law suit being filed, my attorney would be interested in joining in the class action. Good idea to file FAA compliant about the software and hardware problems with GoPro Karma drone.


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Same here with GoPro support. I am getting the run around with their support group daily. I have the Karma care plan for GoPro when purchased the drone. The device is dangerous because it lose GPS communication during flight at a July 4th event when traffic exiting the event. Police wittiness the drone out of control behavior and seen it took off in the evening sky straight to wooded / swampy area of geographic location. If class action law suit being filed, my attorney would be interested in joining in the class action. Good idea to file FAA compliant about the software and hardware problems with GoPro Karma drone.


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Hey I’ve been in the same issue with customer support! They do nothing but lie to every single one of us until we ask for the case to be escalated. The people I’ve spoken with have told me numerous different things to keep them from being responsible however when the karma has auto fail features in case this is to happen and all three don’t work and we watch our drone float off as it’s telling us another command is happening, this is a defect as stated in the GoPro 1 year warranty. I’ve been explaining this to several of the managers and the supervisor Kieth who’s been nothing but an asshole the entire time I’ve been dealing with them. I’m having my father check into lawyers that handle this type of situation and to speak with FAA to see how my case can be re evaluated. This is a nightmare no human being should ever have to deal with. Please feel free to post to my thread and reach out for my contact info! I’ll be on here religiously until something has been done
 
Hello everyone.
I also had problems with the loss of GPS signal, I spoke with GoPro customer support, the answer was:

If the Karma Drone is too far away from you and you’re not able to see the flight behavior, you should be able to see the live screen preview of the camera through the controller. If the Karma Drone loses a GPS signal during this situation, you will have to increase the manual control as the movement of the Drone will be compounded by wind and altitude.

The best way to verify the current position of the Karma Drone when it is up in the air is through the lights on the arms. The Karma Drone is equipped with both green and red LEDs on the arms to indicate its orientation; green on the front, red on the back.

Losing the GPS signal does not mean you do not have control over the Drone already. You will have to manually control the Drone in this case, as mentioned above. This is different with the Karma Drone losing the connection with the controller. If your drone and controller lose connection, immediately after the connection is lost, the drone hovers in place for 10 seconds as it tries to reconnect and the controller displays a countdown on the screen. 

  • If a connection is re-established, the message disappears and you can continue flying as before.
  • If the drone does not reconnect within the allotted 10 seconds, Karma returns to the launch location. However, when you move farther than 82ft (25m) from the launch position, the drone returns to the controller’s last known location.
  • If the GPS connection is also lost and can’t be re-established, Karma lands in place.

It is recommended to fly the Karma Drone in wide, open area, without large obstacles that could interfere with the GPS Signal during the flight. Otherwise, you will have to manually control the Drone.
 
Hello everyone
Now I am researching and looking for a Karma GoPro manual to learn how to fly in manual mode ?, how to configure?
Please a friend can support me with this information.
Regards
 
There is no configuration and Karma is not intended to fly in manual mode, which is why when people have to fly in manual mode they find it so difficult in most cases. Buy a small RTF guad with or without FPV and learn how to fly it! Could save you a Karma plus gives you another toy!


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It's possible to fly in 'no-gps' mode, to do this, before it aquires gps you hit the start button and then confirm by touching the fingerprint icon on the controller touch screen.

As others have suggested, flying without gps is harder than flying with and I'd suggest you have a go on a safe fly day in an open space.
 
Will it not revert to GPS if it gets enough satellites? I know you can over ride but I am not sure it holds. Seems less risk to learn on smaller, even more touchy, but cheap quad.


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Hi guys,

so looks like im not the only one thats had this issue
I got the drone back in april and have had a few issues with it, (hero 6 not responding) etc. I have changed the stabalizer since.

Anyway, last night I took it for a quick test flight to make sure all is well as Im travelling overseas on Tuesday (5 days) and wanted to make sure all was well, this is the only reason I bought the Karma and Go Pro

Took of with GPS On and all was going well until it got about 30 metres up and lost GPS, I ran towards where it regained GPS and then lost it again before flying off very quickly and the controller saying GPS lost with a 3 minute countdown that it was going to land safely, (start button flashing red)

That was the last I saw of my Drone & Go Pro and have been shedding tears since.
I rung go pro this morning and filed a case as im so annoyed/upset that this has happened

My question is... how accurate would the last known location be? as according to it karma has flown around 250 metres away and is on a large roof of a warehouse. I'm just not sure if it may have gone further than that before crashing etc.

Ill be happy with my camera and SD card back for now so ill keep walking around searching :(

any help would really be appreciated! my holiday is really not off to a good start
 
I had a similar experience here. Flew mine out of signal range and lost visual on my controller. For a few minutes it attempted to return to home, but then it decided to land in place. At this point I was 100% certain it had crashed into a tree or house and thought I was SOL. Lucky for me it had landed on a street that wasn't busy and after I located it I pulled the footage and was actually quiet amused. Had it decided to land somewhere else it could have caused an accident.


I'm never gonna trust the auto return function again. From now on as soon as my signal gets jeporidized I'm headed back.
You should removed that video from YouTube before you get fined by the FAA, you broke quite a few laws and displayed an obvious lack of knolage or skill at being a remote pilot, I’m glad that no one was hurt and that you got your drone back in one piece but for real Man, so many rookie mistakes... smh
 
Hi all,

New to this Forum but wanted to share my experience over the last week, i too had a karma disonnect from GPS and Controller - dissapear into the distance never to be found, third flight also.

GoPro where very understandable, after looking at flight logs and a video i took also at the same time that captured the whole thing, they have sent me a replacement within 1 week.

I should take delivery tomorrow or monday - but how are you meant to be confident it wont do it again ??
 
Video still posted. Is why FAA so hard on requirements etc. There are lots of people like him and yet they are minority of flyers.
Loosing GPS does not cause a fly off if you know how to really fly.


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Awesome Christmas. I purchased this for my husband and used our Hero 5 that we had purchased back in May for a trip to Mexico. Overall, I'm into this $1300. On the third flight, the display shows a message that it has lost the GPS connection and the Karma takes off at a rapid speed out of sight never to be seen again. Needless to say, I'm am not happy and feel totally ripped off. Had I known these issues I would have purchased a different device. Does anyone know if there is anything that GoPro will do? It seems to me that this is something that needs to be rectified through a Consumer Protection lawsuit. Why would any retailer sell a device with known issues such as this? Do I need to address this with Best Buy? Thoughts?
 
I also have just had this happen. Seems theres a theme here.

I ran a brief test flight and when the drone was about 30' away and 15' altitude it lost GPS connection...It proceeded to take off on a tangent in the last direction it was on at a quick pace. I ran up the street following, I was able to briefly regain connection to try to bring the drone back to me, managed to change its direction and altitude (as it was climbing rapidly). After a brief connection and change of direction, lost the connection again and it took off again. I received a message on the controller that the drone battery low and attempting to land...it didn't land and kept travelling on a tangent oin the last heading with no ability to change it altitude or heading.

I managed to find a last know location on the maps portion of the controller but there is no drone there. It is currently lost.

I did contact GoPro and have made a claim, did speak to someone and clearly they have a well educated CSR system and while seeming friendly and sympathetic, she was clearly educated on what to say. I have uploaded the flight log to GoPro as part of their requirements.

Waiting for a resolution.... After reading these posts I am not optimistic. If I don't get a desired result, I will start a public relations campaign. I will keep you all posted.
 
Unfortunately, I have had the exact same experience with my Karma.

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 thedeck. 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 offrandom 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 andheaded out over the ocean. Trust me- The thought of $1000 flying out into the Pacific Ocean now had me on the controls like neverbefore!!!!

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 thefuture.

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
 
Happy New year. First off I wanted to first say how extremely happy I am with Gopro. I have been a gopro consumer since December 2014 with the go hero4 silver and just last January 2017 with the Gopro hero5 black. I’ve been so happy with Gopro that just a couple of weeks ago we bought a Gopro karma drone as a Christmas Gift to myself since my wife and I travel a lot and we love breathtaking photos and videos.

It wasn’t until yesterday (New Years Eve) That I tested it for the first time when we decided to celebrate new years eve out of town in the province. I live in the city and roughly 3 miles away from a major airport, so I cant fly it here.

I was able to fly it twice yesterday in an open field in the neighborhood I was staying at and it was very user friendly and fun. I always kept it in a line of sight view, and even when it went to maximum altitude (400 feet) we could still see it from the ground as a small dot. I landed the drone when I received the alert that there was a 4 minutes left on the battery.

This morning (New Years day) I did another drone flight with the Karma before we headed back into the city that afternoon. Since I had flown the day before, I wanted to take better footage. I let it go about as high as 130 feet and it traveled about 250 feet away (still within line of sight) then out of nowhere the controls became unresponsive as I was I trying to control it before it went out of sight and then the screen froze. When the screen was frozen, I got a notification saying that it will autoland and a countdown sequence for 3 minutes started but there was still no signal and could not see any video. The karma drone had started to drift away quickly from the area I was flying. As soon as I saw the screen froze, I started chasing where the drone could land which at that point was out of sight because it was over a brick wall where a pineapple field is at. The last image that was on the controller was over top of a pineapple field by the neighborhood where I was staying at. I hopped over the 8 foot brick barrier where the pineapple fields were and checked for it. I know it could have landed close by where the last image was. I checked neighboring pineapple fields and sought out help from others to help but didn’t have any success. The area that I think it landed must have been probably the size of a football field and we must have swept that area 4-5 times and it was no here to be found. Perhaps it landed further away from the area where we are looking at. I asked a women nearby and she said she heard it when she was on her porch which means it was flying low when she heard it. She also checked her roof didn’t see anything.

To make a long story short, I spend my new year’s late morning and midafternoon looking for the drone before it got dark. I gave the people who live in the neighborhood and the farmers at the pineapple field an incentive if they were to find it. Almost 5 hours later and with a lot of cuts and scrapes on my leg from jumping the brick wall and going through the pinapple fields, we had no luck. Im confident that the drone should be In that vicinity or If it hit a tree I’m sure it would have probably fallen onto the ground. Its not that hard to notice because its white and black. After the tiring day trying to find it I gave my number to the guards of the gated subdivision a bit of money as an incentive to help find it. I held the controller the entire time trying to look for it and I thought I was close when I clicked maps and saw the last known location. When I went to that location, It was the field where I let the drone fly.

My wife and I are just completely upset and have been searching about how I can go bout taking care of this problem. TO be honest, im devastated, but trying to keep my composure. She is asleep right now and I think I’m going to lose sleep trying to find a solution for this. Fortunately I was able to backup some photos, but I was unable to backup new years eves videos and photos I took on my gopro hero5 black.

We arrived home this evening at 830pm after 4 and half hours of travel due to traffic. The whole ride home I was thinking of a solution and when I was at stop lights or stuck in traffic I read that this has been a problem with the gopro firs gen karma drone loses signal, the pilot loses control of the drone and it lands somewhere. Ive read on other forums that im not the only one who has had this problem with their karma drone. Fortunately some people though I read were able to retrieve their drone, some peoples drones were gone and lost like mine. Is there anything tht GoPro can do because of this. My wife and I are so disappointed right now and wouldn’t like to start 2018 off on a negative note because of this error on gropro hat I’ve read has happened to many other pilots.

I have proof of purchase of my gopro karma and gopro hero 5 karma. And they were all purchase in 2017.

Please help. What can I do? Who do I speak with? I have already uploaded my flight log. If you need the email associated with mygopro acount my email address [email protected] my controller SN is :E5131424570915

Thanks!
 
4E1F2068-4946-464E-A969-493E3B8DD8F5.png Good news! I got this email from GoPro and it was only 2 days after I called them. I am very impressed with their customer support so far.

I realize that sometimes, things just happen, but it appears that they are on top of it just as one would expect!
 
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View attachment 113 Good news! I got this email from GoPro and it was only 2 days after I called them. I am very impressed with their customer support so far.

I realize that sometimes, things just happen, but it appears that they are on top of it just as one would expect!
Good for you this happened. look what i got from GoPro. Its total BS because he admitted that the connection between the controller and drone was average in the beginning then got weaker in the middle of the flight. It should be Strong in the beginning not average!

I'm so furious right now. This is a manufacturers error for losing signal when it was only 250 feet away and within line of sight with no buildings around.

Hi Andrew,


Thank you for your reply and feedback about the flight. I do understand you have flown Maverick drones before but Karma behavior is slightly different since Maverick has sensors, so therefore even without GPS it's able to maneuver to avoid obstacles. Concerning the connection between Karma and Controller, we can see that it was average at the beginning but then got weaker at middle of the flight.

Flying without GPS is only recommended to Expert Pilots since it will require higher skills to safely maneuver the Drone, therefore base on the flight logs we will not be able to replace it under warranty since it was your decision to fly without any kind of GPS signal.


Hope this clarifies our position,

Best Regards,
 
G'Day All,
I have been looking at the comments about the Karma loosing connection. In the video of " I almost Lost My Karma" . I noticed that the line of sight to the controller was not possible because of trees and buildings.
I do not know the area but it looked like several hundred meters (300 to 800 Feet) at least.
My speculation is that the signal between the controller and the drone was marginal at best at that distance.
I think the loss of the signal was due to the homeowner activating his remote from his car to control his garage door.
I know here that if our door bell system which is wireless is activating , you can not get either the electric gate of roller door remotes to work. I suspect that the frequency used is about 450 to 550 MHz and this is the same as a heck of a lot of other devices.
I am only a new Karma user. But I have been a communications tech for over 30 years. I would not trust my Karma in a built up area unless I am close and its line of sight.
Outside of a built up area, and away from television and radio transmitters maybe three kilometres is possible. By the way if you use a much higher frequency than other devices, say 3 GHz the range will be rubbish.
In Australia where I live, our electricity meters are connected via wireless to the network, that,s how our meters are read here. here the mobile phone network is being used. the lowest frequency for our network is 850 MHz I know its heaps higher that what I suspect the Karma uses. But even if the signal is not on the correct frequency, it can affect the Signal to Noise ratio and this in turn can decrease the receivers ability to see the signal its looking for.
I am not looking for a technical argument. Nor do i have any connection to Go Pro in anyway. But it gives you something to be aware of with regards to interference in a built up area.
Regards Peter W.
UPDATE: I received a post today that says that the Karma uses the Wi-Fi Network frequencies.
This has me intrigued, as that would be the last part of the band I would be using.
In the next few days I will run some tests. and see if I can sus it out.
Those very high frequency's would be have a range that was rubbish.
I might have to eat humble pie. Maybe ?
 
Last edited:
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G'Day All,
I have been looking at the comments about the Karma loosing connection. In the video of " I almost Lost My Karma" . I noticed that the line of sight to the controller was not possible because of trees and buildings.
I do not know the area but it looked like several hundred meters (300 to 800 Feet) at least.
My speculation is that the signal between the controller and the drone was marginal at best at that distance.
I think the loss of the signal was due to the homeowner activating his remote from his car to control his garage door.
I know here that if our door bell system which is wireless is activating , you can not get either the electric gate of roller door remotes to work. I suspect that the frequency used is about 450 to 550 MHz and this is the same as a heck of a lot of other devices.
I am only a new Karma user. But I have been a communications tech for over 30 years. I would not trust my Karma in a built up area unless I am close and its line of sight.
Outside of a built up area, and away from television and radio transmitters maybe three kilometres is possible. By the way if you use a much higher frequency than other devices, say 3 GHz the range will be rubbish.
In Australia where I live, our electricity meters are connected via wireless to the network, that,s how our meters are read here. here the mobile phone network is being used. the lowest frequency for our network is 850 MHz I know its heaps higher that what I suspect the Karma uses. But even if the signal is not on the correct frequency, it can affect the Signal to Noise ratio and this in turn can decrease the receivers ability to see the signal its looking for.
I am not looking for a technical argument. Nor do i have any connection to Go Pro in anyway. But it gives you something to be aware of with regards to interference in a built up area.
Regards Peter W.

Karma uses wifi frequencies.The drone creates a wifi network, mine uses channel 11 (2462 MHz) but others have documented channel 1, and the controller logs onto it as best I can tell. You can see it if you use a wifi sniffer app on your phone. The 802.11 workgroup has documented use in five distinct frequency ranges: 2.4 GHz, 3.6 GHz, 4.9 GHz, 5 GHz, and 5.9 GHz bands. I think this setup is a major weakness of the Karma system
 

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