Cannot Get Quad To Finish Calibration Or Start Motors...

[Utopia Texas]

I am a newbie....take that into consideration please.
Last week when I received my Phantom 2 Vision + I had it connected to my Ipad and had it up and flying within 2 hours. Finished initial 20 minute flight and have waited many days for weather to clear up so I decided to fly again this morning.
Outside my DJI Vision App said I needed to recalibrate. No matter how many times I tried I could not get the quad to accept the second half of the procedure. Horizontal rotation produced the solid green lights but vertical rotation always ends up in flashing yellow lights. Also due to cloudy weather never connected to any satellites.
So I came inside and removed the props.......
All batteries are charged to the top.
Everything seems to connect fine. I can see through the camera on my Ipad and the gimble moves properly when I pick the quad up and tilt.
I have pushed on all three wire connections from the camera to make sure they are snug.
Since I am inside no satellite connections but I do get flashing yellow lights which I think mean ready to fly without GPS.

Still cannot get second part of calibration to work.
Still cannot get motors to turn on.

Is no calibration a deal breaker getting the motors on?
Why cannot I finish calibration?
Is there a local repair shop in the Houston, Katy, Sugarland, Texas area?

 

[crash1sttime]

Hi

when you do the calibration are you flicking the S1 switch 6-10 times before doing the compass dance. ? ive never used the app to calibrate the compass.

Also have you tried a full IMU calibration and a transmitter calibration as well.

Take a look at my guide here viewtopic.php?f=38&t=32984

 

[Utopia Texas]

Yes, I am familiar with flipping the S1 switch to initialize calibration and to get the initial solid yellow lights.
Yes, I have done both calibrations in the two DJI apps.

 

[pb7424]

Your flight location may have required you to perform a compass calibration (near metal structures, rebar in concrete, etc). Sounds like your compass calibration worked fine but you were not getting enough satellites which is why you only got the flashing yellow lights. You should try using the app to start the compass calibration. It works great and saves wear and tear on your S1 switch.

 

[Utopia Texas]

The weather here is extremely cloudy and overcast today.
What is the maximum amount of time does it take to acquire some satellites?
Can the weather be poor enough that NO satellites will connect?
What acquires the satellite beam, the quad or the RC?

 

[pb7424]

The GPS receiver is at the top of the quad. Do you have the latest Version 3 of the P2V+? If not, there is a foil mod you can do that will help get more satellites. Details are in this forum.
This web site will give you an idea of how many satellites are in your area http://satpredictor.navcomtech.com/

 

[RobertMfromLI]

The weather here is extremely cloudy and overcast today.
What is the maximum amount of time does it take to acquire some satellites?
Can the weather be poor enough that NO satellites will connect?
What acquires the satellite beam, the quad or the RC?

I've had upwards of 30-40 seconds on occasion - once it took a little over a minute (surroundings blocking some GPS signals, took a while to get a good enough lock). It seems like forever when you're staring at the yellow lights.

 

[Larry L]

Utopia, it is taking about 45 seconds or so for mine to get both quick green flashes & flash only green foe sufficient satellites. I live in central Texas. Yes the weather has been crap but I normally start with about 8 satellites. Yesterday In between the rain, I was getting 10-12.
When you calibrate, not saying you are not doing it properly but after you spin it in a horizontal circle, are you pointing the nose to the ground & spinning it around in a horizontal axis for the second half? What part of Texas are you in?

 

[Utopia Texas]

Yes, I am rotating the second time with the nose pointing to the ground. Did it last week just fine.
I am located just West of Houston in Brookshire, Texas.
Also have some property in Utopia, Texas but obviously have not flown there yet.

For some unknown reason I can now turn the motors on and off inside with the propellers off the quad.
I wonder if this had to do with battery temperature?
I had initially just taken the batteries out of our refrigerator which is kept at 37F.
Will a charged battery lose voltage at lower temperatures?

Later this week the weather should clear up and I can try again outside, just do not trust my flying without GPS.
Does the quad try to acquire satellites right after firing up the battery?

 

[Nathan Carter]

I believe you are actually succesfully calibrating the compass, just thinking that you didn't.

After a successful calibration you will not get some special LED signaling that you did it. Instead, if you succeeded the lights will return to standard signaling based on ocassion. So if you are in "Phantom" mode(the default out of the box) and not "naza" mode, and if you still don't have enough satellites you will have yellow flashing LED.
If however you failed to succesfully calibrate, you will get yellow, red, yellow, red, yellow, red.... Warning you that you should retry the calibration.
So only failed calibration is signaled, succesfull one is not. It just goes back to normal operation.

Regarding your problem with starting the motors. That could be more serious. You should be able to start them anytime regardless of anything. You could try calibrating your sticks on the remote control by using the PC software. Maybe your stick movement to maximum corner positions is not registered properly...

 

[motobob]

I had a yellow light instead of a green light on my RC yesterday for the first time. I was not able to start the motors. I had had many successful flights with zero issues. I thought I had lost the "bind" from the RC to the drone so I re binded it. I then found some evidence the yellow light was tied to the calibration of the joy sticks. I recalibrated, the light turned to green and I was able to start the motors. Perhaps since you are getting hung up in calibration, you delete all of the software, reload it all, and update everything on your drone and see if you can get a fresh calibration to "take"... Bob

 

[happydays]

Just a quick thought - if you're on the latest version with the shoulder wheel on the corner of the transmitter to control the gimbal - the left stick has a lock position on it. When you're initiating CSC you have to be at the very bottom corner which means that the left stick has to be in the locked section.

Mine wouldn't work when I got it first but that was because I wasn't pressing the left stick hard enough to get it right down into the lower corner.

Does that make sense?

 

[Utopia Texas]

Yes, I will keep the stick position in mind. While waiting to fly all these consecutive days with crummy weather outside I have recalibrated the controls again and I can start and stop the motors just fine inside with the propellers off.

 

[LostAngel]

El Campo, TX here. Man I can feel you on the craptastic flying weather lol. Hope you find time to fly and get everything sorted out.

 

[Utopia Texas]

Yes, Since January started the wind, cold and drizzle have put a huge damper on doing anything outside in this part of Texas. I know folks further North would laugh at us but I am miserable. I'll take 100F Summer weather over this any time! After many, many years saving up I was also able to buy a nice small fishing boat this Fall but you won't see me out on Galveston Bay with 30 mph winds and 30F weather!

 

[Larry L]

Yes, Since January started the wind, cold and drizzle have put a huge damper on doing anything outside in this part of Texas. I know folks further North would laugh at us but I am miserable. I'll take 100F Summer weather over this any time! After many, many years saving up I was also able to buy a nice small fishing boat this Fall but you won't see me out on Galveston Bay with 30 mph winds and 30F weather!

Same here in Central TX. The forecast changes for the worst every hour. Monday was supposed to be sunny & still Wednesday it is drizzling. I too like the heat. I have always said, the only time I like it cold, is when I am standing on a mountain with skis strapped to my feet!
With recalibrating, are you able to get motors started out side?

 

[Utopia Texas]

I am going back outside this afternoon and will report what happens. Is your part of central Texas hilly like the Edwards Plateau? I can't wait to get out to the Utopia, Texas area or further West to Big Bend National Park in the future to film some really dramatic scenes with actual hills, crystal clear streams and even mountains. Here near the Gulf Coast the landscape is relatively flat and pretty dull. I do have property in the East Texas Piney Woods where some aerials above the forest would be cool but don't know if I have the guts to fly over such dense wooded area without some sort of additional locator on the quad. Capturing deer in clearings might be interesting also.

 

[Utopia Texas]

UPDATE.... I decided to try the quad out even though it is a bit windy and cold outside and almost everything worked just fine. Acquired 8 satellites and went for a flight up to 200 feet which is above my tallest trees for about 15 minutes and captured it all on movie. Since I am new at this I had a devil of a time turning the quad when it was facing me as some of the controls are backwards and I know this will be easier as time goes on. I am using a very old Ipad as a screen and it works quite well. My only problem in all of this now is that I could not get the camera to pan up and down. The gimbal was working fine and keeping the camera horizontal on all turns but moving the gimbal wheel did not move the camera vertical at all. I am inside now with everything turned on and it still does not work.....it did on my first flight last week. Any ideas???????

 

[rwskinner]

When you went into RC Assistant and calibrated your remote's joysticks, did you also slowly take the tilt wheel to each of it's limits?
Then do the same thing once again in the Phantom Assistant? Heck, I even do the S1 and S2 switches. They actually had odd values in there before I did them and now I think they are -1000, 0, 1000 after the calibration phase.

Richard

UPDATE.... I decided to try the quad out even though it is a bit windy and cold outside and almost everything worked just fine. Acquired 8 satellites and went for a flight up to 200 feet which is above my tallest trees for about 15 minutes and captured it all on movie. Since I am new at this I had a devil of a time turning the quad when it was facing me as some of the controls are backwards and I know this will be easier as time goes on. I am using a very old Ipad as a screen and it works quite well. My only problem in all of this now is that I could not get the camera to pan up and down. The gimbal was working fine and keeping the camera horizontal on all turns but moving the gimbal wheel did not move the camera vertical at all. I am inside now with everything turned on and it still does not work.....it did on my first flight last week. Any ideas???????

 

[Utopia Texas]

Wow, I must have missed reading something on the page in RC Assistant and Phantom Assistant! There was a mini screen to the right side of the "joy stick" calibrate page that I did not understand. Maybe that was it. Thanks......

UPDATE....Yes, That was the problem with the camera not moving vertical when I rotated the gimbal wheel. I had not correctly calibrated the wheel. Thanks for the information, this website and members are the greatest!