DJI Neo Trouble in Low Light… Big Mistakes Made

Tried to capture the hall of fame before it got too dark, but ran into serious issues when the light dropped. My Neo drifted right over the highway!

I felt totally helpless watching it float over the fence towards traffic. Video still turned out clear, but wow, what a scare.

Check out the full video:

Why did it drift towards the highway? Couldn’t you control it manually?

Raven said:
Why did it drift towards the highway? Couldn’t you control it manually?

I think it lost manual control when the sensors couldn’t read the ground anymore. It went into auto-land and just started drifting.

Using my phone for control probably didn’t help—connection is pretty weak. I might’ve been able to hold it with a better controller, but it was close to nighttime so that made things tricky.

@Emil
If you were using a controller, wouldn’t it use GPS?

mikey.47 said:
@Emil
If you were using a controller, wouldn’t it use GPS?

It does have GPS for flying without a controller, but different controllers have different options. Still not sure why it stopped responding to my phone. I thought it would at least land straight down, but maybe this is just how it behaves in low light or maybe it malfunctioned.

@Emil
Doesn’t the Neo have a sports mode or something?

Raven said:
@Emil
Doesn’t the Neo have a sports mode or something?

It has ‘frogger mode’ apparently, lol. More options with other controllers, but phone connection is super limited. Neo’s design lets it fly without a controller, so I think it just acts up in weird situations.

@Emil
I think it’s actually meant to do some things without GPS using optical navigation. From what I know, it only uses GPS when a controller is connected.

Dude… seriously?

Briar said:
Dude… seriously?

Yeah, I thought it was done for, like it was going to get run over or someone would grab it.

When I got there, I was like, ‘Oh, it’s just sitting right there,’ but man, the anxiety was real. Impressed with the video quality, though the low-light performance was disappointing.