Do you know that the captain drone channel has been around since the year 2016.? However, Ive been around in the Drone hobby since the year 2013., I started out with the DJI Phantom 1. Then the Phantom 2, then the Phantom 3, the Phantom 4 and the Phantom 4 Pro, and then everything changed to the mavic world and thats, where we are today. But back then I was into every type of drone from every type of manufacturer and I kept many of them other ones. You know I tossed away because they were crap, but some I kept because I really did like them. So I thought you know why dont I revisit some of these old drones every now and then in a video, and you know theyre Legacy, drones and Ill. Just call it revisiting something. So this one here is the DJI spark. This came out in the year 2017 in the month of May. I do recall very clearly ordering this one and I was very excited about it. This is the Box. My little spark came and Ill hold it up, so my little secondary camera can film it over there yeah it came in this box. I even have the bill. Inside now, the djis spark was launched shortly after the DJI mavic Pro, so the mavic pro took the World by storm and back then it cost 8.99 9.99 eventually, and it was pretty exciting thats when they got into the world of mavics.

Mavics never existed before that. So DJI tried to make a mini mavic and this is it and they called it the spark. So this is my case for the spark that Ive had forever back then. This is what the case looked like. Dji did make it, but manufacturers made a hard case for the spark, and this is one of them, and this is the one I have and still have to this day now, as I open this, I can tell you the following: I have not flown the spark In maybe two years three years I dont even know if it works but were gon na review it today. So let me open this up and show you whats inside, so my secondary camera can get it over there. You can see. I have the spark looks like I have three batteries. I do have the remote, which was an add on feature when it first came out and I do have the battery charger and some filters first up lets. Take a quick look at the remote. So back then, the remote had the little handles that popped out and you would fit your phone own in between these little handles down here. The antennas popped up basic buttons on it. Nothing exciting no display anything like that. Back in 2017, this remote was considered state of the art and it was pretty much a watered down version of the DJI mavic Pro remote, which had a nice display in it.

This one had no display, so it was considered budget low cost. The cool thing about the spark is you didnt need to use a remote, you could just use your phone or you could just use gestures, you could just power it up and it would fly out of your hand and you could just move your hands around and It would take photos and video without this and even without your phone, alright, so lets take out the spark itself. I dont have a battery on it, so it looks kind of funny, but well take a look at it this way. So at that time the spark came in, I think four colors Ive got the metal green one. It had brushless motors its got, quick removable or quick release, props on it, thats high tech. For those days on the very front here we have a gimbal guard Ill, pull that off. We have our little two axis, gimbal, not three back at those days. That would have been quite a lot of technology to put a three axis gimbal on something so small. So it was two axes with electronic image stabilization and it worked very well see this little thing up here. This little reddish colored thing it might look black in the video, but that is actually obstacle avoidance. The spark hat obstacle avoidance. Yes, it could fly, it could track you and if it saw an object, it would stop. It would not go around it.

It didnt have the intelligence for that, but back then in 2017, that was state of the art and looking at the bottom, one thing that they dont put on drones anymore, but they did on. The spark is all these beautiful, bright indicator lights that are around the little Motors at the bottom. Youll see it when I power it on as well. You have some sensors down here. You have Optical flow, the normal Landing stuff. It has to detect its height when its flying, and this big gap back here is where you put the battery, then on the rear. You flip up the little hatch and you can put your micro SD card in there as well. You could plug in a USB cable, so here we go, Ive got the three batteries that I had. I guess I never used it with more than three batteries and I will say it looks like some of them are dead because they havent been charged in so long. These batteries, like all DJI, smart batteries that go into hibernate mode. Sometimes you cant bring them back to life, no matter what you do. I might be stuck with that. Hopefully I get one that works at least so I can fly this, but the batteries were pretty simple, no ports on the batteries whatsoever, but they did have this little gold Square pattern here and that was for charging. You could buy this charging base that you put the Drone in all right, so here Im going to hold it this way and were going to check the batteries together to see what I have for power see if theyre all dead lets see if the top one Well, I got a light so that can be charged second one.

I dont think I have any thats pretty dead. What are the third one? Oh, I got a light, so I might get two batteries out of three Ive got. One thats got just one light of power Ill see if it has enough power to power this on. Just so, you can see what the lights look like, its a normal DJI double press, and there is a fan in this. You can hear it up here. The fan is going thats back in the days when they used to put fans in their drones, which is pretty cool. They only put fans in the bigger drones nowadays, the little drones dont have fans in them because of the weight. Look at that that thing you could spot at night from quite a distance. They dont really put the bright lights on the drones anymore. That was pretty good back then, and you might build the seat in the camera here, but uh the gimbals working its ready to fly right now matter of fact, it was designed that I could just power it on. I could turn this this way you power it on, and then you have it sit in the palm of your hand and face you and then after its powered on, could you see me you would double tap the power button in the back. It would detect your face, emit a beep or something Im trying to do this from memory, and then it would just launch out of your hands, go up in the air and face you and wait for you to give it a command.

Now, if you wanted to change the settings or see the video and control everything as we do today with drones, you would attach your phone to the remote or you could fly without a remote and just have your phone connected to the Drone thats, how cool it Was back then, and you would use the DJI go4 app, which pretty much doesnt exist today, but I still have it on my phone, so I should be able to get it working this connected to this. Now these two connect, even with the remote wherever I put the remote Ive, lost it even with the remote it all connects via Wi Fi, its not ocusync, or anything like that. So the range is not the greatest youll get about a range. If I look at my screen here, max range was two kilometers, which is just over a mile. I can honestly tell you, I never ever achieved a mile of range with this little guy now for all of you who do not remember the spark or never heard of the spark, let me tell you some of the specs and its going to blow you away Because, nowadays, what do we have? We have the mini, the Mini Pro Mini 2, the mini three so uh. This was pretty Advanced for for the Year 2017.. Let me tell you the specs, so when it came to Flying this in the wind, you could fly it in a maximum of 18 miles per hour wind.

I have no idea what wind level that is its probably nothing exciting, but you would have to put it in sport mode speaking of sport mode. You could get this to go 31 miles per hour in sport mode, which back then was pretty fast, which is about 50 kilometers an hour flight time on this with a fully charged battery. If you were lucky was 16 minutes. Most of us only got 14 minutes, but it was rated at 16 minutes back. Then this little camera up front was actually a one over 2.3 CMOS sensor, its almost a 4k camera in this little thing, but it didnt shoot 4K. It only shot at 1080p. The reason it didnt shoot 4K is because it only had a two axis gimbal up front, so they use the rest of the sensor for electronic image stabilization at the time they sold this. The selling feature was the gesture controls, but most people who bought this never really used the gesture controls. They were just gimmicky by DJI but thats what they promoted and thats. Why a lot of people bought the spark really the greatest thing on the spark back then was there was a tap to fly off as well. It had quick shots. We take quick shots for granted today in the DJI world or any other drones, but back then this little baby had quick shots. I think it had like four of them, which was pretty decent back then it also could do Pano shots in uh horizontal shooting.

This way a series of photos, as well as vertical shots up and down pretty decent for its time now I mentioned when you bought this, you didnt get a remote with it, so you had the option to buy the remote later and the remote was not expensive. Back then, but I remember I used to fly mine, see Ive got Velcro on here. I couldnt figure out why I had this Velcro on the little arms at the back here and thats, because I was using this unit back in those days. This is the DJI. If I can open up there, we go DJI Crystal Sky Ill, bring it over here there. It is a self contained display unit that was very popular in 2017.. There you go. You catch that at my camera, so thats how I used to fly this baby using the Crystal Sky unit with the remote, and it was quite good, a really good image that would come on the Crystal Sky. You know bigger display than phones back in those days. In 2017 very bright, you know a thousand nits back in those days which was unheard of so there you go thats how I would fly it now. The experiment lets see if everything charges up so back in the day when you bought the spark, you actually got a charging brick and it was pretty cool because it had two outputs for USB on it and you actually had an output for your charging tray.

This is, if you got the fly more package, so this goes into the side like that Im going to stick this here, so you can watch it and lets. Take our three batteries and put them on should charge up one after another. Lets see if any lights come to life. Okay, one light there, so thats thats thats good any on that one. No Ive lost them. Oh theres, a battery down here now there was one battery that was dead. I think it was this one, because its not lighting up, let me try this one over here lets see, is that going to come to life come on come on, come on anything. So let me pull this one out. Oh, I see it. It came to life, and this one here is doing nothing to plug this in the remote over here. Get that in the right way it should come to life. Do I see that charging? Yes, I do up here all right, so it looks like the batteries will charge at least two of them, hopefully three and then the remote and uh. Then I could take this little baby for a flight. So uh come on back and well fly it later. All right Im back and I was able to get two batteries charged the third battery. Well, it hadnt been charged for so long that its in hibernation mode and it wont, come out of hibernation mode, thats, very common with DJI smart batteries.

But the only way to take such a battery out of hibernation mode is, you have to hook it up to an RC hobby charger. I have a million of those for the RC hobby, so Ill. Do that at some point, so my plan is take this for a flight indoors, just to make sure everything works and also to familiarize myself with the DJI go 4 app. I havent used it in a few years. So if I dont remember what it looks like at all and then well go outside and fly it so the first things first lets power on a remote double tap comes to. Life makes a little sound. Second thing: power on our little drone here, Ill put it over. I have a camera over here, so you can see it double tap on that it should come to life. Im gon na have to take off not from the center of my table here, but over on this side, because right above me is a lamp and if I fly up in the center youre going to see glass falling down as it smashes the lamp to Pieces. So Im going to take my phone and put it inside these little handles at the bottom, and then you just start up the DJI go4 app, alright, so tap on DJI go4. It should start up and uh. What does it say? It says skip all this and Spark. It knows. I want to use the spark because its the last drone I used, and it says disconnected so this app is not connected to this spark.

You know why, because its old school, I have to go connect my phone to the Wi Fi of the spark then start up the app. So lets go to that. Oh look at all these Wi Fi things happening here. One of these has got to be spark there. It is down spark RC. Did I get it all right this time it knows Im in the spark app and yes, it started up everything. So everythings, good, okay, joysticks out whoa thats, bouncing around a lot lets. Go up Music, its quite stable for indoors. I have to talk really loud because its extremely noisy. This is not a quiet. Drone Ive got it on video record uh lets see. If I can change it to uh lets see if I can make it do a function here, so Im going to turn off record Im going to change it to photo mode Music, take a photo heres. What a photo looks like 12 megapixel now in photo mode. You see, I could take a single shot, multiple shot time shot, cello Focus so were gon na do a vertical panel, and that should make the aircraft uh look up and look down to try that one so vertical panel. Here we go Im going to stay very still, then the gimbal goes down goes up and it goes forward and it takes three pitchers to puts them together. Successful come on now, Berlin, real fast there we go holy crap.

Is that a loud drone holy crap? I forgot how loud that is that Ive got a ringing in my ear that is loud. Next up were going to take the spark for a flight indoors. Okay, Im using my crystal Sky display so Im going to put the record on there. We go and powered up here. We are and were gon na, take off Music avoidance on so I have to turn that off. Go up here, Optical avoided and turn it off great. Now we can fly indoors, break it down a bit and fly forward. You can really Boogie with this thing. Pretty fast, come around the corner, its nice, going through the house, the angle around that come around this way, all right sideways there. There we go straight and bring it over on this table and plop it down there. We are Music, and that was our flight around the house, pretty fast, pretty quick, so the Sparks down there lets take it on up lets, go noisy, but not as bad Outdoors. All right, uh lets buzz it around here then come back its pretty darn cold out. Here so I just take it nice and slow low to the ground. The cameras on, hopefully its recording and coming right at me. Its got obstacle avoided. Stop there we go. Thank you for stopping okay. So I go over to the left of my screen. Agree, intelligent flight mode, so my God, I think so, Im a first time user with this thing so here lets try a quick shot to droney go two one.

There we go thats just gon na go back up and that it should come back to me as long as it stays connected there. We are its pretty good. Okay. Well, try tracking quickly, try a box around me go! Hopefully this works. If I walk, is it gon na track me? Oh its ice on the road here, all right, shes up there, so the tracking function works Im just going to bring it down a little bit so its a little lower and then Im gon na turn around and try not to get hit by a car and Come over this way, so I will tell you on my screen: whats happening is uh its having difficulty in tracking me and doing stuff. It says theres interference from Bluetooth devices and stuff like that. So you know: Ive got Bluetooth devices. My watch Ive got other things on me, Bluetooth, so still tracking me, though I dont know if its recording or anything but uh yeah its there so track it works all right. Its getting kind of cold out here lets bring this over to me. So you can see on the screen. If my records working, we have normal mode, quick shots, active track which are in tap to fly, tripod mode, gesture mode, all right, so apparently, Im having difficulties with the spark in the communication with my phone, the remote and the spark I dont know if its from Old age or what it just keeps complaining about, Bluetooth and everything we are in a you know in a neighborhood where theres a lot of Wi Fi interference.

I dont know so Im just going to power it on again and Im not going to use the remote or anything Im just going to try to do gesture modes and fly it without any remote any phone. Anything so lets. Try that all right, so this could be hit or miss so the way it works with gesture mode is, is you just power this on put you on its going to start up, and I take it, I hold it in my Ill. Put, on my left hand, hold it like this lets. Try this were going to double tap the power button. Tap tap everything happen, oh forward lights are going green when they go red. Oh, it started up and Im gon na, let go of it, but it should have me Im over here. Is it got me? It should be looking for me. Okay, it should have found me so now it should be ready for gesture mode. So all I do to make sure its working is hold up by hand Music and now, if I move my hand like to the left, if you go left, if I move my hand down should come down there, we go and if I move my hand over To the right, are you even looking at me drone come to the right, its bouncing around in the wind, but then I can bring it to the right so now its all working. Now, if I wanted to track me and follow me, I should just go wave like this waving.

Its the front. Lights are flashy, but I dont know if its doing anything here come on over in front of the camera. Here I got ta bring it over in front of the camera again all right, coming back. This way come on come over here see. This is why the gesture mode with a gimmicky thing? Oh, this is ridiculous. No wonder you went things so what was supposed to happen? Let me explain it is that if it had me all I had to do is this wave, my arms and it would go away and it would start tracking lets just do one arm. Maybe it doesnt, like my yellow hand, so its another thing you could do where you put both Harps up and then it would do something, but is that gon na do anything I put both arms up? Does that mean like give up? I give up, if anybodys out here, watching this theyre like. Why is that guy waving at a drone, two hands, nothing and then what it would do is it would fly up and it would go with the tracking mode and I could wander around, but right now. I dont even know if its tracking for that kind of tracking just sitting there lets see if the landing Works, The Landing is pretty simple. Landing is just put your hand out to land, so there we go and one of the other great things with the spark is uh.

You can just use the controller and the Drone you dont even need a phone. It works fine. So if I pull the joysticks out so go up, I could fly it here. Just like a toy drone almost bust it around do all the stuff I want to do and I can even start and stop the camera. It works. The same way, all right change of plans uh, my cell phone didnt work. For some reason it was always getting interference, so it kept disconnecting from the spark which is down there someplace. So Ive attached my crystal Sky Im about to power it on uh. This is very bright for outdoors, so this should work because it is sort of designed for everything DJI, so it should have no problem connecting from here to the remote and giving me a video feedback so well use this. Only problem is, I cant record the screen. So Ill only be able to talk about whats going on and not actually show you whats going on and there we go yeah. It doesnt look very bright when I look in this monitor here to see what this looks like, but to my eyes right now, its very bright, so lets go fly Music! Here we go Music Im going to take it away up, so its not so noisy. In my neighborhood, okay, Im about 30 meters high – and I can barely hear it now so were good whoa – is that a bird just flying over theres another bird? I guess the sound of the spark is scaring the heck out of it and bring it back.

Theres birds everywhere, theyre buzzing, this thing Applause I could see the birds theres, two of them and they Zoom around and theyre going to go up to where my drone is up. There, theyre going theyre going up up here, Im gon na bring the camera down. They just keep circling, so there must be a nest or something there. We are yeah. We can look on the top of the roof, try not to crash, because I dont feel like going up there to get it all right, then look down at the roof. Well, the melting snow on the top so Im losing a lot of heat that way. Im gon na have to get that insulation checked. Okay lets bring it back, come on down all right, theres our little Sparky here and uh bring it down for a landing. Put. My hand out come on down there. We go oh, its cold out here, Im going in. So what did you think about the DJI spark from the year 2017? Well, let me tell you, I learned a few things. Well, actually, I remembered a few things about the spark that I had forgotten. First off the fan in this thing is really noisy, so Im going to turn it off right now, no more Blinky lights and no more sounds so. Do I think well, in 2017, I will say this was a drone that was jam packed with features some of the features in this drone.

It took an awful long time before we received the same features in drones of today. So what do I mean by that? I mean look at that drone and remember when this came out the mavic mini, so that was djis first foray into making a spark two. I call this the spark 2 because they wanted to make a spark 2, but they made this due to the regulations coming out in different countries concerning 250 grams and Below, but the mavic mini didnt have half the features this had. It had next to no features, it had quick shots, thats about it, but it didnt have all the other features. We had to wait until the Mini 3 Pro before we got obstacle avoidance and a lot of the features that were in this baby. Certainly it only 1080p camera 2 axis gimbal with electronic image stabilization. It did a 12 megapixel photos, but I will say the 1080p video that you get off. This spark for the different lighting conditions that you fly in. It is much better than many of the budget drones you can buy today that are 4K. This beat them, and I have to mention that back in 2017, DJI was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the Drone world and their app. You know the interface DJI go for that was turning out to be something amazing and they applied it to this drone. You can still buy budget drones today, but even some of the budget drones today, dont even have an app as good as the app that was back in the day of the 2017 spark.

And, of course you could fly this without a phone without a remote or you could fly it with just the phone and the Drone or just the remote and the Drone or you can fly with the remote, the phone and the Drone. So why did it fail? Why did it fail? Well, obviously, its noisy, but I dont think thats really why it failed. The arms are not foldable, so it wasnt super compact, although I do find it to be quite small. I think it was small enough, but a lot of people complained. It was unfoldable because at that time, DJI you know months earlier had come out with a DJI mavic Pro, and that was the first drone with foldable arms from DJI. And then everybody wanted a foldable drone, and this was not. It also had a really wimpy flight time. You know, like 14 minutes, youre supposed to get 16, but everybody pretty much got 14 minutes. It had a pretty crappy range. If you only used your cell phone, you got 100 meters. If you were lucky, if you use the remote, you were supposed to get at least over a kilometer, maybe a mile most people barely got even a mile or even a kilometer. It was not very good because it was Wi Fi and there was so much interference. Just like you saw when I was outside of my house flying with my phone, I was getting interference. I kept complaining about Bluetooth Id, never seen that before I dont know whats up with that, but anyways thats.

What was happening also those gesture controls were gimmicky. Dji took a lot of crap because they made those gesture controls and hardly anybody use them because they never worked correctly. Sometimes youd get it to work, but it took a few times to get it to work. So gesture controls sort of went the way of the dodo bird. They included them with drones afterwards, but after a while there was no more gesture control, so you dont really see them today and of course, the weight was a factor because, as 2017 progressed into 2018, a lot of countries around the world started to get a little Bit tougher on their UAV regulations, rules, in other words, if anythings flying in the air thats unmanned and it weighs 250 grams or higher, then youre gon na have to take a test or it has to be registered or something along those lines. So this was over that and a lot of people thought well. You know I really dont want this. So then DJI made this thing that I just dropped right here: the midi the mavic mini. So with all that said, I had a fun time revisiting it. I totally forgot all about this drone because I hadnt flown it in two years. I forgot about what it could do and the features and everything but uh once again, its six years old and its not bad its comparable to a lot of drones of today. If you take away the range and the flight time, you know, the camera is decent, everything is pretty decent on it and things that work actually work quite well.

So with all that said, I hope you enjoyed this glance back to 2017 at the spark and a DJI drone. And if you like this type of video, then I have other drones that are pretty old, that I can pull out dust them off and do a video on them to look back at them. So for now I say: if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and I will catch you in a future video with many more cool product reviews.

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