DJI Spark: Seize the Moment

Introduction

It’s no secret that on May 24 in New York, the long-await­ed pre­sen­ta­tion of a new prod­uct from the leader in the field of UAVs, DJI Inno­va­tions, took place. This new prod­uct, as expect­ed, was a self­ie drone — Spark. We offer you to get acquaint­ed in more detail with the capa­bil­i­ties that this com­pact quadro­copter is endowed with.

Peculiarities

• 24 core high per­for­mance proces­sor
• GPS/GLONASS
• Face Aware Face Recog­ni­tion Tech­nol­o­gy
• Frontal 3D Obsta­cle Recog­ni­tion Sys­tem
• VPS Visu­al Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem
• Full drone con­trol with ges­tures
• 12MP FHD cam­era built on 1/2.3 inch CMOS sen­sor
• 2‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal cou­pled with dig­i­tal sta­bi­liza­tion
• 4 autonomous flight modes
• Smart shoot­ing modes
• Max speed 50 km/h
• Max FPV Removal Dis­tance 2km
• Max­i­mum flight time 16 min­utes
• Com­pat­i­ble with DJI Gog­gles
• DJI Care Refresh Extend­ed War­ran­ty
• SDK sup­port
• 5 drone col­ors to choose from

Equipment

At the moment, the man­u­fac­tur­er offers a self­ie drone in two trim lev­els:

1. Spark Con­troller Com­bo
2. Spark Fly More Com­bo

Color

Quad­copter DJI Spark is imple­ment­ed in 5 col­ors:

Alpine white

sky blue

green mead­ow

red lava

yel­low sun­rise

The Spark Con­troller Com­bo will include:

• Drone
• Con­trol equip­ment
• 1 × intel­li­gent bat­tery
• 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCw)
• 2 × spare rotors (1CW/1CCw)
• Micro USB cable
• RC micro USB cable
• RC cable USB‑C
• USB charg­er
• Com­pact trans­port case

Spark Fly More Com­bo:

• Drone
• 2 × intel­li­gent bat­ter­ies
• 4 × main rotors (2CW/2CCW)
• 4 × spare rotors (2CW/2CCW)
• Rotor pro­tec­tion
• Charg­er
• Charg­er for simul­ta­ne­ous charg­ing of three bat­ter­ies
• Remote Con­trol
• Car­ry bag (Spark/Mavic)

Specification

Drone

Brand:

DJI Inno­va­tions

Mod­el:

Spark

Max. take­off speed:

10km/h (Sport mode in calm weath­er)

Max. sink rate:

10km/h (in auto land­ing mode)

Max. speed:

50km/h (Sport mode in calm weath­er)

Max. ceil­ing above sea lev­el:

4000m.

Max. flight time:

16 min­utes (in calm weath­er at a con­stant speed of 20km/h)

Max. hang time:

15 min­utes (in calm weath­er)

Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0° to 40°C

Satel­lite posi­tion­ing sys­tems:

GPS/GLONASS

Trans­mit­ter pow­er:

2.4GHz FCC: 25dBm; CE: 18dBm; SRRC: 18dBm. 5.8GHz FCC: 27dBm; CE: 14dBm; SRRC: 27 dBm

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

2.400 — 2.483GHz; 5.725 — 5.825GHz

Take­off weight:

300gr

Dimen­sions:

143×143×55mm

Frame:

170mm

3D Obstacle Recognition System

Obsta­cle detec­tion range:

0.2 – 5m

Work­ing envi­ron­ment:

The sur­face of the obsta­cle must be at least 20 x 20cm and pro­vide a dif­fuse reflec­tion of more than 20% (for exam­ple: wall, peo­ple, trees)

Camera

Sen­sor:

1/2.3″ CMOS
Effec­tive pix­els: 12MP

Lens:

FOV 81.9° 25mm (equiv­a­lent to 35mm) f/2.6
(Shoot­ing range: 2m to ∞)

ISO range:

Video: 100‑3200; A pho­to: 100‑1600

Elec­tron­ic Shut­ter Speed:

2–1/8000sec

Pic­ture Size:

3968×2976

Pho­to modes:

single/burst: 3 frames/AEB: brack­et­ed frames at 0.7 EV bias/interval: 2/3/5/7/10/15/20/30/60sec

Video res­o­lu­tion:

FHD: 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps

Max. video bitrate:

24Mbps

File sys­tem sup­port:

FAT32 (≤ 32GB)

Pho­to for­mat:

JPEG

Video for­mat:

MP4 (MPEG‑4 AVC/H.264)

Equipment

Work­ing fre­quen­cy:

2.412–2.462GHz; 5.745–5.825GHz

Max trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

2.412 — 2.462 GHz (in an unob­struct­ed and inter­fer­ence-free area) FCC: 2km; CE: 500m; SRRC: 500m. 5.745 — 5.825GHz (in an unob­struct­ed and inter­fer­ence-free area) FCC: 2km; CE: 300m; SRRC: 1.2km

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0° to 40°C

Bat­tery:

2970mAh

Trans­mit­ter pow­er:

2.4GHz FCC: 26dBm; CE: eigh­teendbm; SRRC: 18dBm. 5.8GHz FCC: 28dBm; CE: 14dBm; SRRC: 26dBm

Oper­at­ing cur­rent / volt­age:

950 mAh at 3.7V

Sizes of sup­port­ed mobile devices:

thick­ness: 6.5–8.5mm; max­i­mum length: 160mm

Intelligent battery

Capac­i­ty:

1480mAh

Volt­age:

11.4V

Max. charg­ing volt­age:

13.05V

Bat­tery Type:

LiPo 3S

Pow­er:

16.87Wh

Net weight:

95gr

Charg­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

from 5° to 40°C

suspension

Con­trolled range:

Pitch: ‑85° to 0°

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

2‑axis mechan­i­cal

WiFi

Work­ing fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz / 5.8GHz

Max. trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

100m (dis­tance), 50m (height) (in unob­struct­ed and inter­fer­ence-free area)

Recommended microSD cards

Mod­els:

San­disk 16/32GB UHS‑1 Micro SDHC
Kingston 16/32GB UHS‑1 Micro SDHC
Sam­sung 16/32GB UHS‑I Micro SDHC
San­disk 64GB UHS‑1 Micro SDXC
Kingston 64GB UHS‑1 Micro SDXC
Sam­sung 64GB UHS‑I Micro SDXC

Intelligent Modes

Shooting

DJI Spark received 4 smart shoot­ing modes:

Quick­Shot — make a video clip in one tap. Let Spark take pro­fes­sion­al shots for you (the drone itself shoots for 1 minute), after which a 10-sec­ond video will be cut in auto­mat­ic mode, which you can share as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Quick­Shots helps you cap­ture amaz­ing shots with cin­e­mat­ic com­po­si­tion in one tap.

In turn, this mode sup­ports 4 options for offline shoot­ing:

• Rock­et – the drone flies ver­ti­cal­ly upwards and shoots under itself.

• Dronie — the drone takes off from the bot­tom up, focus­ing only on you.

• Cir­cle – the drone per­forms a cir­cu­lar flight around a giv­en tar­get.

• helix — the drone per­forms a cir­cu­lar flight around a giv­en tar­get, mov­ing away along a spi­ral tra­jec­to­ry.

With the DJIGO4 app, cre­at­ing a video clip using record­ed footage and play­ing your favorite music has nev­er been eas­i­er. Select one or more videos from which you want to cre­ate your clip, select a cap­tion, fil­ter and click “Cre­ate”. The clip will be cre­at­ed auto­mat­i­cal­ly in a few sec­onds.

Flight

tapfly — In this mode, the drone will fly to its des­ti­na­tion with one touch on the screen. Using vision tech­nol­o­gy, he will pro­ceed to the spec­i­fied loca­tion, track­ing obsta­cles in his path.

Includes 2 flight options:

• coor­di­nate — touch the place on the screen where you would like the Spark to go, and it will fly there while main­tain­ing the spec­i­fied height.

• direc­tion – con­tin­ue fly­ing in the direc­tion of the tap on the screen.

active track — Using this mode, Spark auto­mat­i­cal­ly rec­og­nizes objects of var­i­ous shapes and sizes, and then tracks their move­ment.

There are two modes avail­able:

• Trace — allows you to track the tar­get both in front and behind or around it.

• Pro­file – fol­lows the object from the set angle.

Ges­ture — Take full con­trol of the drone with sim­ple hand ges­tures.

Pro­vides two options:

• self­ies — Raise your hands, wave or join your fin­gers in a frame and Spark duti­ful­ly takes a pho­to.

• Palm­Con­trol – allows you to move away, zoom in, as well as move the quad from side to side in accor­dance with the move­ment of the user’s hands. Spark can also take off and land from the palm of your hand.

In addi­tion to the already exist­ing shoot­ing modes, the quad­copter received two more new modes:

• Pano – The drone is capa­ble of cap­tur­ing hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal panora­mas by auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust­ing the 2‑axis gim­bal and cam­era direc­tion.

• Shal­low Focus — Using 3D vision tech­nol­o­gy, it detects the object in the pic­ture, cre­at­ing pho­tos with a shal­low depth of field in order to end up with a beau­ti­ful pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty pic­ture.

Camera

On board the drone, a high-per­for­mance 12MP FHD cam­era built on a 1/2.3‑inch CMOS matrix is ​​installed by means of a 2‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal. The unique tan­dem is com­plet­ed by the “Ultra­Smooth” tech­nol­o­gy, which allows to real­ize high-qual­i­ty and sta­ble shoot­ing at the out­put.

The drone cam­era received a wide-angle f / 2.6 lens with an equiv­a­lent focal length of 25mm. The lens con­sists of five ele­ments in one group. All images cap­tured by Spark are always bright and sharp with min­i­mal col­or aber­ra­tion and dis­tor­tion.

Motors

The DJI Spark is equipped with pow­er­ful brush­less motors that pro­vide wind-resis­tant flight at speeds up to 50km/h (in sport mode).

Sport mode becomes active only when using the remote con­trol.

WiFi HD

Inno­v­a­tive HD Wi-Fi tech­nol­o­gy deliv­ers 720p real-time video stream­ing up to 2km away.

Food

The pow­er­ful 1480mAh (3S) intel­li­gent lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery, with 12 intel­li­gent pro­tec­tion func­tions, ensures the drone can fly sta­bly and safe­ly. The Spark bat­tery auto­mat­i­cal­ly tracks the remain­ing flight time in real time, so the pilot knows when to return.

Despite all the exist­ing intel­li­gent func­tions, the pow­er of the drone pro­vides an indica­tive flight time of up to 16 min­utes. You can charge the bat­tery in 3 ways:

1. Using a USB cable — in this case, the charg­ing time will be 80 min­utes.
2. By means of a charg­er (Charg­ing Hub) that allows you to charge up to three bat­ter­ies at the same time. Time to ful­ly charge one bat­tery — 52 min­utes, two bat­ter­ies — 55 min­utes, three Bat­tery — 85.2 min­utes.
3. Using the dock­ing sta­tion “Charg­ing box”.

*Dock­ing sta­tion for fast charg­ing “Charg­ing box”.

Control

Spark can be man­aged in three ways:

1. Ges­tures (removal dis­tance up to 10 steps)
2. Smart­phone via DJIGO4 app (remote dis­tance up to 100 meters)
3. Con­trol equip­ment paired with a smart­phone via the DJIGO4 app (remote dis­tance up to 2km)

flightautonomy

The Fligh­tAu­ton­o­my sys­tem con­sists of a main cam­era, a VPS posi­tion­ing sys­tem, a 3D sen­sor sys­tem, a GPS/GLONASS satel­lite posi­tion­ing sys­tem, and a 24-core high-per­for­mance proces­sor.

This arse­nal allows Spark to car­ry out high-pre­ci­sion flight both out­doors and indoors. For exam­ple, with the help of the VPS, the drone is able to fly and land safe­ly with­out GPS sup­port (no high­er than 30 meters). And also, thanks to the 3D sen­sor sys­tem, it can detect objects encoun­tered in advance (for 5 meters).

Offline return

Like all DJI drone prod­ucts, the Spark is capa­ble of autonomous­ly return­ing to its take-off point in three sit­u­a­tions:

1. Insuf­fi­cient bat­tery charge
2. Sig­nal Loss
3. When the RTH (Return to home) func­tion is acti­vat­ed.

The drone oper­ates in obsta­cle detec­tion mode through­out the jour­ney. Hav­ing reached the point, using the cam­era fac­ing down, Spark checks the land­ing site with the images record­ed dur­ing take­off, and only then per­forms a pre­cise land­ing.

GEO system

Geospa­tial Eenvi­ron­ment Online — the sys­tem is designed to inform the pilot about how safe it can be to fly at the cur­rent launch site. GEO will tell you about the pres­ence of “No-Fly” zones (air­ports, sta­di­ums, etc.) at the launch site. All for the sake of safe­ty.

Price

To date, DJI Spark is avail­able for sale in the fol­low­ing trim lev­els:

1. Spark Con­troller Com­bo — $399
2. Spark Fly More Com­bo — $549.

Conclusion

DJI Spark from $399

Func­tion­al­i­ty

9/10

Flight time

6/10

flight qual­i­ties

9/10

com­pact­ness

8/10

Equip­ment

9/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Qual­i­ty
• Design
• com­pact­ness
• auton­o­my
• Full ges­ture con­trol
• Cam­era
• 2‑axis mech. sus­pen­sion
• Frontal 3D Obsta­cle Recog­ni­tion Sys­tem
• Col­or spec­trum
• Flight time (for a self­ie drone with this poten­tial)

Minuses

• Beams don’t stack

DJI Inno­va­tions, as always, put every­thing in its place, now in the self­ie niche. An excel­lent prod­uct at a very afford­able price. Con­grat­u­la­tions to all fans of this brand. Self­ie and trav­el enthu­si­asts will appre­ci­ate the drone’s max­i­mum capa­bil­i­ties. Age lim­it 18+.

A photo

Pho­to tak­en with the DJI Spark self­ie drone.

Video

Video with DJI Spark drone.

DJI Spark pre­sen­ta­tion (in Russ­ian).