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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
By the way (before anyone cast doubts):

A) My FAA ID is on the bottom of my Karma

B) I had two other uneventful flights 15 minutes before the runaway. (That is, the Karma was running fine before hand.)

C) Max flight speed is 20MPH (non-sport mode), 35MPH in sport mode), per https://gopro.com/help/articles/Question_Answer/What-is-Sport-Mode-on-Karma

D) I want to very the accuracy of the telemetry data by comparing the time & position of the flight path with a map. I just havent had the chance to do that yet. (if GPS is lost, then how accurate is the speed, right? Im not sure if the flight controller/Hero5 has an accelerameter or is the G load inferred by the shift in GPS position)

E) Does anyone know if the "GPS Lost" message that shows up on the controller refers to the GPS in the Karma or the Controller? (I've assumed it is in regards to the Karma and not the controller.)
 
@McToddy

Hey, another day another flyaway...
The good thing for you is you managed to recover your items, even if they were damaged.

I called customer support to start the initial claim (no extra care purchased) I had no items to send back as they were lost at a speed of 49MPH heading north lol.

Customer support were really helpful and my flight logs were analysed by a manager/engineer. It took 1 week in total and it was deemed 'I did everything correctly to attempt to control Karma'

A replacement has been dispatched and will be with me soon. No NDA signed and I was on the same software versions as yourself.

Let me know how you get on.

Im curious about your first screen shot showing the speed and the orange horizontal line. Im never seen this before with the karma controller. Keep in mind I had only managed to fly it twice before it flew away. Where can I get these screen shots for future ref?

Thanks
 
Very similar situation here. After having had the thing less than a week, I was flying at about 150ft about 300ft away when the controller said it lost signal and the karma took a nose dive into a knee high grass field. I managed to find the drone(smashed up), and eventually the battery, but the gimble broke off and was lost along with the camera. I've submitted an initial report with GoPro, it was transferred to a "karma expert" and was told it'd be 24 to 48 hours until I got a reply.
 
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 os 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 stat a public relations campaign. I will keep you all posted.


UPDATE...

After 2 weeks and the end result being that due to me flying in a "populated area" there is a potential for loss of GPS signal GoPro decided that this was not a defect. They offered a one time 40% on a GoPro 5 BLACK or session camera. UNACCEPTABLE.

We contacted there support number and got through to a supervisor and from there to a "manager". They reviewed the file and started that there was some discrepancies in the files and email and as a result would replace the drone.

Happy Endings and a lesson learned.
 
@robertmcginily and @seadonky -- can you provide more insight about your experience with customer support?

My Karma did a runaway this past Sunday.

I was flying out over water (0.3 miles according the recovered telemetry) when the Karma lost GPS. I started arcing it back to shore when the Karma started going nuts -- it dropped in elevation (from about 50 feet to "7 feet") and almost hit the water. The Karma was then able to climb but started to accelerate crazy fast -- hitting 54mph at 1.2G's. (In the past month and a half of flying the Karma, I've only been able to get it to about 20mph. I haven't flown in Sport Mode, and I don't think I will).
View attachment 25
As a point of reference, that orange horizontal line on speed chart (lower right) was 17-20 mph before runway started.

As the Karma approached the shoreline, the controller started to loose signal as I could not control the direction or speed -- I could control the yaw as I was able to rotate the Karma to point at my general area as it flew by.

The screen at some point went black and then said something like "Karma will autoland in 3:00" (and did a 3 minute count down). That's when started my hunt for the lost Karma. (I had a general idea of what direction to head on foot.) After the 3 minute countdown completed, the last image from the camera showed up, which helped me to narrow down the final position ...
View attachment 26

This was exactly the issue my "rogue one" drone had. I was able to spin the drone and that was the only control I had. It also then went into a Auto Land due to low battery but was still heading in a single tangent from its last "controlled" location and heading, and began accelerating.

It took me about 10-15m to locate the end-point based upon the last image my controller displayed. Apparently, it clipped a tree before it came down onto a building. Some kids saw the Karma hit the tree and the subsequent fall -- they were in the act of retrieving the Karma when I got on site (about 1500 feet from launch).

Everything was damaged, but the SD card survived.
View attachment 27
In any case, this runaway was not my fault -- especially the 54MPH part!!! I want to make a claim with GoPro for a replacement, despite not having the GoPro Care.

Any insight about how to deal with customer care is greatly appreciated. (Did you have to send in any damaged parts? Did you have to sign an NDA? Did you have GoPro Care or not).

I know I'll have to upload a flight log (I have no problem with that), but I want to setup Wireshark first so I can capture IP packets from the controller to GoPro. I'd like to see what gets transferred, and thus far, I haven't heard of anyone being able to capture flight logs or decipher the .SES files on the SD card.

By the way, here's the firmware levels of my gear (applied on 4/23 -- i took pics during the update process. Sounds a little OCD, but at least I have a record of the updates and the change log that was displayed on the controller before the apply)
-- Hero5 : v2.00
-- Karma Stabilizer: v1.50
-- Karma Drone: v1.50
-- Karma Controller: v1.50

I don't know if the runaway was due to v1.50 updates per se, or something more intrenched from v1.00 that still needs to be resolved.

I had also just uploaded the new updates and was performing a very simple test flight when things went wrong. This is my first drone and I am a new "pilot" but I had taken of from the exact location about 4 times before with no issues prior to update.

Thx in advanced.
 
UPDATE: I uploaded my flight logs on Saturday, opened support ticket on Sunday, filled out and returned the issue questionnaire late Sunday. (Keeping fingers crossed)
 
I bought my Karma on April 1 2017. I have had 6 successful flights until the last one. I was in the same place I had been 2 other times. This time the Karna went straight up about 50 feet, went to turn it in a direction I wanted it to go and it lost gps signal and took off. The screen froze. A few times it said it was trying to land. Not to be seen anywhere. The screen froze on a large area of what it was filming and we spent 3 hours running around to the different areas we had flown and landed before after realizing it was not coming back to where we were. I have filed a case with GoPro on May 28th and call everyday to check. First I was told 3-5 days and now I am being told 10 business days. So I will know something by Friday June 9th. I was told that they review flight logs in house at the San Mateo headquarters. I plan on going there if I need to. It is so stressful to lose so much for something that was out of my control. Had I known there was a potential that it would fly off on its own and never come back I would have never bought it or risked losing the GoPro Hero 5 in the first place.
I have been told every time they will escalate it however, this seems not to be the case.
Would like advise if I should ask for someone else or a manager as one person talked about here to get this taken care of.
My daughter is going on a trip and bought the camera specifically for this and is leaving on the 20th of this month.
Any advise would be appreciated!
I am also just wanting to log along with others who had the same problem to bring more attention to this issue.
Thank you!
 
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As a future reference for anyone that has a runaway drone, try and take pictures of your controller screen with your cell phone. My pic (posted earlier in this thread) shows the general area of the last image (which I used to help locate my crashed karma), but more importantly, it shows the "no GPS" status, and speed (50+ mph in my case) -- I submitted this pic to GoPro as part of my claim.

Also, you may want to put your phone # on the drone in addition to your FAA Reg#, as it will make it easier for a finder to contact you.

By the way, I think the No GPS runaways is relating to something with the updated v1.5 FW -- I got a "no GPS" alert once when I had v1.0 FW, but I still had control of the drone.

Lastly, I think this may be a wide spread issue (considering the inputs posted here) and GoPro may be a bit overwhelmed on the support backlog.
 
UPDATE:
Just received an email today that after reviewing everything, they have decided to give me a one time replacement of Karma, GoPro Hero 5 Black, batteries and stabalizer! They are just checking if they are still under warrant which they are as both were bought a few months ago.

Initial call May 28th. Email saying will replace received June 7.

Will update again when actually shipped.
 
Cool! Some positive news. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for my drone)
 
Speaking on that, my drone decided to break a propeller mid air and fly into a lake. It was not registered to FAA but I do have the broke piece of the wing. Anyone help me with this problem?
 
Kinda funny at the end -- the old guy didn't even notice the Karma out in the street. If it had landed a minute later, he may have seen it coming down. But then, he could have ended up being an a-hole and took possession of the drone with the attitude "you shouldn't be flying those crazy things around here"

That's funny, when ours ran off we started searching a large area that the screen was showing across the river and there was an ambulance on the other side when we got there which completely freaked us out. So happy to find out about 5 min later it was not caused by our runaway drone!
 
Speaking on that, my drone decided to break a propeller mid air and fly into a lake. It was not registered to FAA but I do have the broke piece of the wing. Anyone help me with this problem?

If you upload your flight logs and contact GoPro they may be able to help you. I did not have the GoPro care so it doesn't matter about that. If they determine it was not a fault of yours they may send you new parts or offer a discount
 
If you upload your flight logs and contact GoPro they may be able to help you. I did not have the GoPro care so it doesn't matter about that. If they determine it was not a fault of yours they may send you new parts or offer a discount

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])
 
UPDATE:
Just received an email today that after reviewing everything, they have decided to give me a one time replacement of Karma, GoPro Hero 5 Black, batteries and stabalizer! They are just checking if they are still under warrant which they are as both were bought a few months ago.

Initial call May 28th. Email saying will replace received June 7.

Will update again when actually shipped.

I'm just curious if you had the GoPro Care? We just lost our Karma on June 10th and waiting on GoPro to do their review on our flight logs.
 
UPDATE: My claim got declined. I started a new thread Runaway GoPro Karma drones goes 54MPH (I don't want to hijack this one).

Separately but related: I did do a packet capture of the TCP/IP session when I uploaded my flight logs. The upload was encrypted in TLS session. Good news: when ever you upload Flight Logs, they're not publicly exposed when transiting the interwebz. Bad news: I could not intercept my flight log data. Interesting news: The Controller is using Android 4.4 KitKat (I saw the web query header's agent info). The Controller attempts to contact 2 Google-hosted web-services sites: one is certainly for GPS/Geolocation, and I think the other one is too. The flight logs are uploaded to GoPros backend servers hosted by Amazon's AWS.

I've also been doing some other digging into the files that get saved to the SD card: The .THM files are thumbnails -- if you rename them to .JPG you can view them. The .LRV files are Low Res Video -- if you rename them to .MP4 you watch them. The .MP4 video files have 5 datastreams embedded into the .MP4 container. Stream 0/0 has the video, stream 0/1 as the audio. Streams 0/3 and 0/4 have GPS data. I think 0/4 has the GPS track data (i.e. the snail trail in the upper left corner of my video). I'm still working on trying to figure out 0/2. If you want to view the telemetry gauges in your video, use GoPro's Quik app on your desktop PC. Select View Media. When viewing the media, click on the gears icon near the bottom of the screen. Select the gauges you want (compass, speed, track, etc.). The gauges are only persistent while "viewing" -- to get them to stick, you need to export your viewing by selecting a start point and end point on the timeline bar (as if you going to make a 29 second clip of a 30 second video), then press save. The telemetry data, in it's raw form, is only available in the original .MP4 file -- when the clip is extracted (with the visible gauges), the new .MP4 derivative drops the GPS data in streams 0/2, 0/3, 0/4 mentioned above.

When I am not so pissed, I'll repost this info with links to reference sites/materials.

If I can calm down in the next day or so, I may call GoPro support to speak with a manager. If I don't get any progress, im going to crack open my controller and going to hack the Fxxx out of it!!! (The FCC filings for the controller are an interesting read!!)
 
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.
 
Hello. My name is Dmitry. I was a happy owner of GoPro Karma, but two days ago the drone lost contact with the control panel and crashed into the river with a great current to a depth of 6 meters at very high speed. Karma completely lost control, did not react to any commands and did not display the picture on the display. The next day I invited divers to look for a drone, but they found nothing. Just now, I downloaded the logs from the control panel.
I spent two hours to find at least some contacts with support for gopro and all to no avail. On phone numbers do not connect from Russia, chat support just does not work - closed. On the GoPro Support Hub page in the Karma topic, the "New message" button does not work, and also in the jefft profile
GoPro Community Manager.
I do not understand how to apply to GoPro when I know for sure that there is no fault in the loss. Karma just wanted to commit suicide. Rise of the Machines. Judgment Day. I'm in sorrow, please help.
 
I'm just curious if you had the GoPro Care? We just lost our Karma on June 10th and waiting on GoPro to do their review on our flight logs.
No I did not have GoPro care and it does not cover drones that fly off and can't be found anyways. I did get everything replaced by them last week! :)
 
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