After 2 hours at the flight field on Wednesday night thinking about all I have read on this and other multi rotor forums. I chickened out and decided to Not fly with the recently uploaded 1.9 firmware.
With all the firmware problems being openly discussed with the Inspire 1 Pro and what I feel is a poor response from DJI. I have at the moment lost counsumer confidence. I fly aircraft with DJI WKM and A2 systems and never experienced any problems. But with my Inspire that was originally on 1.7 firmware it has already cost me £1400 for a replacement gimbal that was not due to pilot error. So I down graded to version 1.8 Thurdsay evening and the Inspire pro flew exceptionally well that reached my expectations. Sorry DJI but you need to be mindful of your existing customers as well as your future potential customers and hope your actions are enough to change my feelings. I have spent many thousands of pounds on DJI products but now feel somewhat dissatisfied with the Inspire firmware problems.
Area21,
I have not seen a single accident report that I would contribute to bad 1.9 firmware. The post here appears to be a ESC failure and the only debate was if the pilot should have tried so many restarts without contacting DJI. In the end DJI did agree to take care of the customer, but I do not believe it was due to any acknowledgment of 1.9 firmware issue. They took care of the customer because their instructions were "restart the aircraft and if the problem persisted to contact DJI". I am not sure that they realized that some may do five or six restarts and if they were able to finally get it to not error that they would fly the UA.
I do not understand why you feel that it is a poor response form DJI. They wrote the customer "After having our data analysis team take a look at the flight log from the flight in question,
we were unable to determine the cause of this unfortunate event... we have
decided to cover your unit by warranty, and offer the craft only at no cost to you." (Emphasis added)
Even the customer wrote "First I need to take back what I said about DJI's customer service.
They were very helpful and prompt about my case."
I consider this an excellent response from DJI, YMMV
I have successfully been using 1.9.1.10 and 1.9.1.30 since they have become available with no issues, as have many others.
Keep in mind that if a Inspire firmware was updated within a few weeks of an accident or incident the blame is typically put on the firmware, rather than hardware or pilot error. Both hardware failures and pilot error are a much more likely causes. We have many single point of failures in an Inspire. If any one of the four ESC fails, the UA is coming down. If any of the four motors fails, the UA is coming down. etc, etc, etc.
By going back in firmware version you are going to a firmware version that has known issues. If it was not for these issues they would not have updated the firmware to 1.9. If there was indeed an issue with the firmware DJI would be the first to know about it as their customers would be calling support. I would have to believe that they would also issue a warning and/or a firmware update. DJI has far more to loose than any one single customer. DJI would act in their own best interest to minimize loss.
I would suggest that any firmware update or any unusual error message should result in the pilot applying some risk management and taking extra precautions. A test flight would be in order, where you keep the aircraft at a safe altitude and near the operator so that an immediate landing can be made while you make sure all control inputs are working properly. Use at least one battery to 30% depletion allowing the circuits to get to a normal operating temperatures. Any indication of an adnominally during the test flight should result in an immediate landing, shutdown and reassessment of the condition of the UAS. At the time of the failure ending in the loss reported here, the Inspire was 200' high and 1,000' from the operator during his initial test flight.
Let me make one more thing perfectly clear. I do not intend to judge the actions of the pilot in any way here. Without being there in the exact same situation I can not know what I would have done, perhaps I even would have done the exact same thing. The pilot shared his experience with us with the hopes that we would benefit from it. While I may not share his conclusions about the firmware, I can say I do believe I have have learned from this incident.
In fact I commend him for sharing his experience with us so that we can benefit from any lessons learned. He was under no obligation to do so. If we are so quick to jump to judgement on this or other forums why would anyone else post such an experience here?
