Shep and I were out testing the DJI Lightbridge, and noticed the S1000 rapidly blinking purple.

When your $1,300 flight controller is trying to tell you something while attached to your $15,000 drone – you'd like to know that message doesn't mean "Hey, I'm about to crash. "

The first light in the sequence appeared to be related to the flight mode: purple in GPS mode, yellow in attitude mode.

That was followed by five rapid purple flashes. You need to have faster eyes than I have to count them. I used the iPhone's slow motion video to count.

Unfortunately, DJI is very inconsistent with their use of flashes – a Naza controller uses different colors in different patterns from a Wook Kong which is different from A2.

You also have conditions where red is good and green is bad. So when you see a pattern of flashes you don't recognize, you can't just assume things are okay. And when it's not in the documentation – it can give a poor ol' guy palpitations.

However, it turns out that it's just an inconsistency between the programming and the documentation.

The docs lists one mode-flash followed by six purple flashes means you're within a certain radius of the launch point. It is useful to know because features like intelligent orientation control are deactivated in this region.

So when you see five mysterious purple flashes – it just means you're close to home. Nothing to worry about.