Blew a $400 drone on a bridge inspection last month because I skipped the geofence update

Was doing a routine bridge deck survey on I-95 near Richmond and my M300 just dropped out of the sky. Turned out the firmware had a known glitch about a restricted zone that wasn't patched. Anyone else had a stupid expensive crash from ignoring those software prompts?

2 comments

2 Comments

sanchez.blake5d ago

@wesley_fox92 dead on about DJI making it easy to skip. Buddy of mine lost a $6k Matrice doing the same thing, ignored a geofence popup on a cell tower job. Drone just locked up mid-air and fell into a river. He still swears it was a scam by DJI.

wesley_fox925d ago

I hate those geofence updates. I skip them all the time on my Mavic 3 and it's gonna bite me one day. The drone companies bury those mandatory updates in the middle of a menu so you blow past them trying to get flying. $400 is rough but I've heard of guys losing $10k birds because they ignored the prompts and hit a no-fly zone. You'd think DJI would make it harder to skip, but they don't.