Ooops… I Crashed My Drone

It was always bound to happen but after two years of successfully flying my DJI Mini 4 Pro drone around Perth and beyond, I crashed it.

Insert sad face 🙁

Fortunately, I can see the funny side of it and just had to make it a video.

For context, I’m droning a really big aircon installation out in Maddington – it’s a big job and has required multiple site visits to get the key moments.

It started with a big crane lift to lift the A/C units onto the roof, then multiple visits to fly the drone INSIDE the warehouse.

Of course, it was all going so well until it wasn’t. I was getting pretty confident and doing some epic fly throughs. You may be wondering and I’m here to tell you, I did have the collision detection engaged, but sadly it didn’t pick up this thing.

Yep, that measly PVC pipe hanging from the roof got me. Well, got the drone.

The damage was something internal, from what I can tell? The drone still flies okay (I was flying it the next day for a job down in Henderson), but there’s an error coming up called “Internal Camera Error” – which from what I can tell, means that the auto focus is all out of whack when I zoom in.

Which is crucial for this drone job I’m doing inside the warehouse. I need to be able to zoom on the guys installing the A/C without encroaching on them.

Here’s a vid I shot and put together of an epic sunset that yeah, just isn’t as crisp as it should be.

Some research on Google revealed that sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a licensed repairer here in Perth. So I had to send it off to Melbourne, which was a bit weird. And I’m currently awaiting notification on how much it will cost to repair.

The big lesson out of all of this is to not get too carried away with the shot (the lead up shot really was beautifully cinematic) and be aware of your surrounds.

UPDATE: I’ve heard back from DJI in Melbourne… $568 to repair – but that includes a year’s worth of “care cover” – definitely needed 😉