DJI Mini 4 Pro CRASH - DON'T Make This MISTAKE! 

I think this is very valuable to DJI, I hope you're submitting this video to them as a kind of bug report. There will be a big bug fix firmware update soon I'm sure. Your testing was extreme but not unreasonable, and on one hand you've shown how capable the drone is in it's ability to recover from a crash, and on the other how it's actions caused the crash in the first place!

If you allow me, I recommend that send you the flight log of this flight to DJI, because this is the only way to DJI can correct this issue.

Great video and test Gavin

Thanks Gavin for always finding these hidden flaws or issues in your testing. I do have an important question which I have not seen discussed as what best setting (Brake or By Pass) to use in Obstacle Avoidance Action when you lose connection & the drone is return home automatically . For example, if my RTH height is set to 200ft, then i lose connection behind a 250ft high building, and my setting is Brake in Obstacle Avoidance Action, my assumption is that my drone will just hover at 200ft behind the bldg and the drone will never return back home. If my setting is set to By Pass in Obstacle Avoidance Action instead, will my drone fly around the bldg at 200ft until it sees or makes connection with my RC? Can you please comment on this so I know what setting to use in Obstacle Avoidance Action when I lose connection. Not sure if someone has already tested this but i appreciate your comment on my question. Thanks so much.

I had the same problem. testing OA, tried to crash the drone I had flown two and a half battery's unable to crash it including things I thought it would hit. Steadily getting braver the more things it avoided. Tried the new tracing, taking the drone from behind me to the front it promptly ran sideways into a bush. The mini 4 pro had successfully avoided this same bush sideways in the previous test. It was almost like OA had turned off when in tracking mode.

I think it seems you can change the height/distance away, but every time you make a change on the double wheel, it will then use the defaults from the menu settings. You can then override them again, which it will try to maintain until you touch the double wheel again.

6:39 lol... I did a similar with my Mini 3 Pro - straight up into a tree branch and it Stopped, Dropped and Rolled itself back upright (in the air) only needing to have its gimbal reset. 😊 great little buggers these are 🎉

When mine was new out the box i tested it extensively and it worked great, avoiding trees by at least 1m at all times and stopping properly when on brake or bypassing effectively.. since the 1st or 2nd firmware update its useless, i recently tested it after the latest up date a few days ago and the drone was going straight down a path, it didn't brake as it was supposed to and then randomly went up and right towards the obstacles despite there being no need to do such a manoeuvre.... Its now totalled and sitting with DJI... They definitely changed something on those updates

If the hardware is detecting the obstacles above but ascending anyhow, that seems like a software issue. Really an easy issue they could fix simply through an update.

Good video. It looks like a bit of software tweaking is needed!

Cool and detailed explanation Gavin and on a side note, your accent rocks !

Your videos have the most usable information of any channel I’ve seen I really enjoy your videos. I own the mini to mini three pro and many for Pro and I have learned a lot of things from watching your videos thanks 1 million.

You might want to test that in an open area and see if you get the same result with the same service request change to the drone, that would eliminate the heavy shade it was under as a cause

Thanks for pushing the envelope so we know what this drone’s limitations are.

It’s amazing to see how it recovers and how it handles such extreme scenarios, I think if DJI see this video they will tweak the active track behaviour but honestly I’m just impressed for how many opportunities it had to crash and didn’t. My old Spark wouldn’t last 5 seconds lol - just got the mini 4 and did my first flight, it will be a while before I risk flying between trees!

I’ve only used active track a couple of times but it does seem to have a a mind of its own when you start using the wheel

I think many RU-vidrs were too excited and didn't make these settings (and attributed the crash to a bug. But the correct setting must be adapted to the location, that's what the menu is there for 👌🏼

Thanks for the video and the test. I got a similar issue i.e. Mini 4 pro crashing while flying backwards in Autotracking mode despite the Obstacles avoidance clearly indicating obstacles (and me being in line of sight) ! Hope DJI will take care of this.

Dead branches are like power lines… they aren’t seen well by the DJI drones. My Air 3 was taken out at 70 feet by dead branches. The warning sounded, but it kept flying into the dead branches and tumbled from there after chewing up a few of the smaller limbs. I was sure it was totaled with three arms broken and the camera detached from the gimbal. I sent it to DJI’s repair facility in Ft. Worth, Texas. Two weeks after sending it in (and only $148 later), the drone was returned good as new. I was impressed with that service.

Yes Gavin that was a very extreme test that no one in their right mind would fly, however it is very strange that the drone decided to fly straight up even though the active track warnings were all in the red. I think Dji need to do a firmware update on this. As usual nice video and explanation

Idiocy like this is always better done in advance by wonderful people like you. Thank you...very useful knowledge prior to purchasing the mini 4. 😊

I’m sticking with the 3 pro, the extra costs for 4 don’t really warrant upgrading…

Amazing it recovered itself 👍🏻

6:58 I have had the same experience with a mini 2 doing this.... If a dji drone can find level it can recover before hitting the ground like a cat

I read some comments that OA seem to take a back stage when mini 4 performs an auto flight. I had it doing Point of Interest flight sideways and it run into tree branches. Sadly it crushed and broke. It was winter, the tree was bare so I assumed it was my responsibility and paid for Care Refresh Express exchange.

I believe Mr Nobby Green had this same thing happen!!!

My drone just did the very same thing in an easier spot. It was a park with some trees above and made it go backwards in active track mode. Suddenly it decided to rise and crashed against a tree and fall to the ground. I picked it up but there was no way to stop it. Eventually rised up again and hit another tree. Then it stoped working. Now I'm about to leave to have it repaired. It was such an unexpected behavior.

im on your side with this one Gav, unpredictability is a dangerous thing, settings are called setting for a reason "to set the position" not set the measurements and then "fingers crossed" to where it goes because of the mini 4 defaulting to dji settings , plus why didn't the sensors stop it while it was on a mission ? .......... definitely NOT user error 😉 "fingers crossed" they fix this little glitch 🧐

Yup. I don't fully trust it anymore. Tried to go up and it ran into a thin branch and broke an arm off. Luckily, I had full warranty on it.

I personally had an issue where I set the drone on cruise control in sport mode, flying at approx 7mph. It was flying towards some power lines when I realized pressing the c2 button wouldn’t cancel CC. I tried tapping the screen to cancel and that didn’t work. The sticks wouldn’t respond at all. By the time I pressed Pause, the drone already flew through the power lines, and thankfully didn’t impact. It was literally inches away from disaster. Main problem, 1. C2 starts CC but doesn’t cancel 2. Tapping “cancel” on screen was unresponsive 3. Adjusting control sticks mid flight and CC did nothing 4. Do not use CC in sport mode especially when flying slower than needed

I would find this behaviour unexpected, too. Even if we accept that the attempt to rise to 5m was as intended, because of the settings, it should still not hit the branches with the obstacle detection. I hope you sent this video to DJI, shouldn't be big of a deal from them to fix it.

dji has rush this next generation of mini 4 drone pro..that it got so many flaws on it..ie active tracking... videos not recording to sd card on drone..probaly a lot more..yet to be discovered

Yesterday I've crashed my Mini 4 Pro based on incorect direction of movement. Active Track decided that I'm ion the move and turn "wrong" way than... crashed. Should be stopped until a few LO/LA changed in system, doeasn't it?.

Exact same happened to me today. Rose up in front of me and clipped a branch. On it's way back to DJI for replacement 😢

😮 That looks like a bug with the priority filtering. DJI will sort it pretty quickly because they won't want claims against them. Send them the log and video. Tomorrow will be a good day.

Interesting video buddy 🤔. Hopefully dji will see this and sort it 👍

I think the manual does said when the lighting condition is not bright enough, the obstacles avoidance will not work same as you set to sport mode?

I feel almost urged to, but anyways Gavin, gotta say it.. Thank you for your awesome yet priceless work!!! Thank you 🙏🏼

Hi Gav. Great video mate. Very strange behaviour from the drone though. Looks like a glitch I don't you was at fault there. Thanks for sharing mate. Hope your ok

I think, maybe DJI hasn’t explained enough. I can see one possibility even tho I don’t have the 4. (I am a QA Engineer). I think possibly: 1) it follows from behind at the height you start because that is the default. You have not interacted with the circle. 2) the height settings for the circles are tied to your Selection…. On the circle. So once you selected front, they apply. You could say it’s a glitch, or you could say it’s a bad documentation. I would suggest setting it up same way, but go ahead and click the behind position even tho it is already there. I bet it might maybe go up to the height setting because you interacted with the circle. Speculation only of course. Since I only have the 3pro.

If I initiate active track, is obstacle avoidance immediately turned on or it only turns on after the present height and distance is reached?

Please make a new Test - 🆘In the Safety menu there are settings for active Track 360 - circle distance and altitude - please make sure to set the correct values ​​before flying - to avoid falls. I did a similar test after watching your video - I set the drone for the forest and narrowly in the Track 360 menu - the mini 4 Pro mastered a similar situation / location without any problems 👌🏼 I ask you to do your test to repeat with settings in the Track 360 menu 👌🏼

How about between 3 pro vs 4 pro cause i see on you tube that some one said its the 3 pro its better when goes into tree. Have you tried compare 3 pro vs 4 pro thanks

I think when enabling ActiveTrack 360 in the settings, it mentions that obstacle avoidance won't work.

How do you like the Mini 4 Pro vs the Air 2s?

None of my sensors are working

I literally had the same problem. Mine almost crashed. Luckily he only trimmed some leaves from a tree.

Yep agree, send the flight log and video to DJI .. they will fix this with a firmware update 👍

Spot on there Gavin, I'm sure it will help many fliers of the Mini 4 Pro. Keep the videos coming :-)

The issue is the new "double circle", that seems to be confusing it. When you click somewhere on it, it now defaults to the height you selected for that circle. There is, of course, a VERY easy fix for this if DJI will do it. If you click on the 'other' circle, then it should go to the height selected. But if you click on the same circle as you're already on, it should only change to that location (not reset the height).

Thanks for this very informative video. I can't say if you are an idiot, I can't judge that, but this incident taught me to avoid a scenario that can potentially damage my Mini 4 Pro. Thanks again. 👍

Where is the allude measured from. Home Point or where you are when you activate the tracking. Also what happens if the object being tracked goes uphill or downhill?

YOU SHOULD BE ON STAFF AT DJI...

Seems like it turned OFF its obsticle sensors when it kept going up at that moment?

Possible it's not exactly the same experience I had with my Mini 4 pro , but it looks like it. I was also testing the active track of my '4' in an open space between trees and shrubbery. I started the drone and it rose to the preset altitude of 2 meters. So far so good, but as I went to pass it to make it follow me, it went aside to give way and crashed in the surrounding bushes. Apparently the obstacle avoidance didn't do exactly what it was supposed to do. Luckily there was no damage whatsoever, except for some green stains of leaves. It can be my lack of experience with the '4', or there could be some flaw in the software.

Looks like a bug to me. To go inside the wheel's parameters seems to be prio 1 for the drone, while ignoring the sensors. I guess they listen to the sensors when you are in the ring, not before. I can hear the drone saying "I must return to the ring... get inside, get inside, get inside, get.... What was that? Oh, nonono." 😊

You might as well just fly it into a bee hive if you want to play with the obstacle avoidance. What is it with these guys flying around between twigs, branches and leaves 🍃😂😂

Because of the fisheye lens the Mini 4 Pro doesn't see detail as good as the Mini 3 Pro - but in 360° ;-)

fair enough probably just a software glitch which will get improved in time. Another reason why not to buy it at the moment .. but thanks for sharing it .. 👍👍

What if you set the height to lower than the drone is? Does it then go down to the 5 m?

I have learn botton sensors has priority over others. Even if you swr avoidance is set to break. Botto sensors perform bypass. Test it yourself. Just get your hand close to bottom sensors. If leaf happen to fly close to bottom sensors your drone will raise without your control. I think ita huge mistake. Botto. Sensors are most useless for avoidance. Good for information but shouldn't have power to override and lift it self

Omgggff! I had that similar instances too! It came back to the same position. And it crash x2 time. Can i claim warranty tho?

Ive crashed my drone is it okay after crashing after changing the axis??

You can tell this was a rushed release simply by the fact that theres still chinese writing in the firmware as shown early on in the video when setting the distance. Im in the market for a new drone after crashing my mini 2 (went to film hull fair and missed a telephone cable in the dark 😔). I think ill be giving this a miss for a bit, hopefully everythings fixed shortly and i can bag myself a deal on black friday or something 👍

I have the Mini 2 and had a crash similar to yours. I clipped a cable and down it went. As it got inches from the pavement - it righted itself and all was well. I counted it as luck but, thankfully it saved itself.

There are too many issues with the tracking and OA in general with this drone. I think a lot of people are forgetting how good the OA was on the mini 3 pro. When tracing, it performed at least as well as this drone, if not better. At the moment unless there is a firmware update that solves the issues, I wouldn't trust the OA on a parallel active track, and therefore I'm going to wait a bit.

A neck strap for your controller solves all problems.

Everyone expects too much from this extraordinary drone. Its special functions have limits, if people want to be followed by the drone in the middle of the woods it is better to use an action camera, or maybe by a friend of yours 😏👍

That's why you just don't fly a drone like this near trees / bushes. If you want to film in this kind of surroundings, use a selfie stick and a go pro or something 😅

Im new to drones and here because I don't want to crash 😂

Absolutely you make the drone crazy.of course drone have 370 bstical evoidence but it not that means you put the drone in middle of lots of bushes and you want to drone avoid.😮😅

The youtuber Dc Rainmaker seems to have experienced the same "bug" on his DJI Mini 4 Pro (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bNvwoPv2jvg.htmlsi=EOF2-1L0Sr7fbqJQ). I do not know if it is a bug or just the detectors not working, but I'm sure it can be resolved in software. It is odd though...

Hello Gavinhr, I want to change the audio language of the DJI Fly 1.12.2 (to Spanish) for my Mini 2 but I can't find the option that was previously found in Profile>Settings>Language. Do you know if there is any alternative in this regard? Thanks greetings.

I don't think that DJI intended for the various off-the-rails scenarios. It is a bit of hardware kit programmed with firmware and it is not possible to program for every unusual scenario an operator may try to create just for the sake of defeating the technology for a high click rate RU-vid video. What the programmers could do I suppose is program a catch-all disclaimer display stating that the activity is potentially beyond the limits of the technology design, proceed at your own risk and abuse is not covered by insurance and put that in the notifications as a logged message. I have a construction project going on, I mapped out a waypoint mission to photograph the progress comprehensively the same way every time I run the mission and then return to home for a hands off a precision landing while I sip on a glass of tea. It takes 34 seconds start to stop. This more about what DJI intended I think.

@GAVINHR could you please help me? I have a Mini 4 Pro but it's behaving very erratically. It keeps flying sideways when I take off. This isn't just a slow drift, it rapidly flies sideways and is very hard to control. This issue just started last night. The IMU and Compass said "Normal", but I tried to calibrate the IMU, anyway. This made things even worse! When the drone does manage to hover in place, it now shakes rather than staying in a nice, still hover. There's a video on RU-vid that shows an Inspire crashing into a garage door after takeoff. That's essentially how my Mini 4 Pro is acting. IMU and Compass still say Normal, but this definitely isn't normal! I've contacted DJI and they're sending me a shipping label so I can send it back to them. They said that, if it's pilot error, then they'll charge me for repairs. Otherwise, they'll repair or replace it for free. I hope they don't charge me. I've been very careful with the drone and haven't crashed it until now. I've had to use the emergency control stick stop command (pressing both control sticks inwards) to prevent more serious crashes. I have the emergency stick command set to Anytime rather than Emergency Only. I don't know what happened. The drone was flying so well for awhile, but now it's extremely unstable. Can you please help? Should I just go ahead and send it back to DJI? Do you think they'll charge me? I can't see any physical damage on the outside of the drone, and the propellers look fine. Thanks. May God bless. Jesus Christ loves you! You are precious and irreplaceable and you matter! Take care.

good catch! It's fun watching you expecting it to act "intuitively" -AKA "with common sense" ....Seeing as the "User" is now a Tester, a bounty would be fair.-wouldn't it be great if DJI sent a cheque for these "deep-bugs" you find! (It's good you still have some common-sense left. I fear we have all been a bit corrupted, trying learning every itertion of a thousand softwares. :)

Glitch not you. You have to be ready to hit pause as soon as it loses you. It goes kinda crazy thinks you're somewhere you aren't. It's like a glitch I'm sure 100%. Perhaps obstacle avoidance might tripping it and drone panics maybe but glitch. I've been lucky enough to catch it ahead of time so far, none the less a glitch that needs fixing in firmware update. Active track 360° needs some bug removal. Until then be extra ready to hit pause and stop it. Thank you for the video now I'm sure it will get fixed because you helped address it. Thank you Gavin and no you're not an idiot it's an issue for sure a glitch.

I can confirm at the moment the priority balance between 'reach requested position' and 'avoid crashing' is reversed. Bad move from DJI... let's wait for the usual post-release fix. The color balance shall be addressed as well due to a strong magenta tint (quite evident filming in manual at 5200k).

Top❤❤❤❤

Mine just shot itself straight up into the ceiling, spent 10 seconds grinding itself against the ceiling and then smashing down. Returning this piece of junk in the morning.

What is it "Crash mini4 Pro Week?" You and "51 Drones" both crashed your drones this week. 😂

Well.... This is why you don't want to buy early release. Period.

Asking ourself, why we pay a trust Omni obstacle avoidance, this story lasted from 10 yrs ago, and always till now

Nichts für ungut, aber könnt ihr schlauen RU-vidr nicht mal eine 3D-Animation basteln, in der die toten Winkel der Anti-Kollisionskameras verdeutlicht werden?

Gavin, you're an absolute idiot lol, only joking. I did watch your active track video, and I was really impressed. I wouldn't dare take mine through the forest like that. I did that with the mavic 3 as soon as I turned around. It just literally shot off into the trees, lol. I was actually impressed with the mini 3 Pro active track, although no obstacle avoidance on the sides it done pretty well. I've not really tried it out on the mini 4 Pro, but I will, but in a more open space 😀 I do like the mini 4 Pro though I do feel it's a better picture when put on the big screen. The only thing I don't like is the propeller guard feels like it's going to crush the drone, and I feel the bag that it comes with is a little small it's very tight with it all packed away. Great video as usual, my friend. I hope dji would respond to this and see what they would have to say. 😁👍👌🇬🇧😀

Wooow, 😎🤝

Very interesting, thx for sharing: Seems it's an AI/Algo/Prioritisation error that DJI will need to iron out. The machine is the idiot here 😉

trusted too much to a toy and think it is pro. People needs to lower their expectations

Pretty unreasonable terrain to fly in.

😂😂😂

such BS you guys are askin too much of this tech ... i mean really/ what do u expect my air 2 never could keep up w my mt bike dirt bike vey good without any obstacle's u want epic follow get a skydio dji is not there yet

Get used to all youtubers droning on and on and on saying the same thing every time a new DJI drone is off the now faster moving conveyer belt to earn ad revenue from likes.. Getting a bit tired of it now... Mini 5..mini 6 mini feckin mouse active tracking goofy.

You should have watched all the other videos of people crashing their Mini 4 Pro telling us not to make the same mistake.