GoPro Karma

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End of support and subsequent bricking

The GoPro Karma is a 2.2lb compact quadcopter drone that was released October 23, 2016, alongside the Hero 5 series of cameras. Compatible with version of the Hero4, 5, 6, and 7 cameras.

On November 8, 2016, GoPro announced the recall of the Karma Drone following reports of loss of electrical power on the drone during operation. On February 1, 2017, the company announced that the Karma Drone will return to stores with a redesigned battery latch.

On February 27, 2021, GoPro, Inc. announced its' final automatic firmware update, ultimately bricking around 2,500 drones.

In 2023 the group GoPro Karma Fixes started helping people fix the pairing issue through a difficult process that involved wave soldering a microSD card to the right arm board, probing several points on the main board simultaneously, and using PuTTY to flash the update. In June 2024 Joshua Dixon started developing his Good Karma Kit that made repairing the drone accessible to anyone, no matter their skill level.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoPro_Karma

https://www.facebook.com/groups/609999613656869/ - "GoPro (broken) Karma Pilots" - public group on Facebook - 1.7K members

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1412898679632354 - "GoPro Karma Fixes" - private group on Facebook - 2.8K members

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SizD3OBIy9dCjxXiDEue5CJAeTQEjGdyFFMuF2wzQwQ - "Project Good Karma user guide" - a GoPro Karma repair kit guide