P3A issues...

[PFCO]

Hi guys,

Had my P3A for a month nearly now and I love it, however I am having a few issues whilst flying.

In mid-air, I am getting the "compass error - exit GPS mode" which sends the drone slowly at an angle whilst I correct it. This often is momentarily and regains GPS. Of note this happened to me today whilst in a big empty field.

I am also getting an automatic right yaw that I have to manually correct whilst flying.

Are these known issues?

 

[alokbhargava]

Off late many have reported compass errors during flights. There is no root cause yet known but proper IMU, compass calibrations have resolved these errors. We don't know if there is any hardware related issue.

Drifting to one side or automatic yaw can be easily corrected by IMU and stick calibrations.


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[PFCO]

Thanks for that. I'm confused because I've calibrated the compass and IMU a number of times with hardly an improvement. Can you advise on what settings to adjust for the yaw?

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[BudWalker]

Thanks for that. I'm confused because I've calibrated the compass and IMU a number of times with hardly an improvement. Can you advise on what settings to adjust for the yaw?

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It does seem that there has been an increase in compass errors lately. The ones that I know about are mid-flight one-time incidents. My theory is that these are false positives made more frequent with recent firmware upgrades. Your description sounds like this may be different. I'd be interested in looking at one of these incidents if you could provide the .DAT file. To see how to retrieve the .DAT file go here. Also, look at the last part of that page which will help you get the right .DAT. The .DAT will be too large to attach here; you can provide a Dropbox link.

Also, it would help if you could provide an additional .DAT file with a specific flight profile. After launch hover at about 30 meters and then rotate through 3 turns (1080 degrees) at 5 to 10 secs per rotation.This will tell us if there is a compass calibration issue.

 

[PFCO]

Hey Bud,

Thanks for the reply. Here are two dropbox links to recent flights where I have had the GPS/Compass/Yaw issues:

Dropbox - FLY057.DAT

Dropbox - FLY059.DAT

I have also downloaded your CSV and DatCon applications Hope you can help.

 

[BudWalker]

Hey Bud,

Thanks for the reply. Here are two dropbox links to recent flights where I have had the GPS/Compass/Yaw issues:

Dropbox - FLY057.DAT

Dropbox - FLY059.DAT

I have also downloaded your CSV and DatCon applications Hope you can help.

I know it's a hassle. But, could you perform that flight I described and provide the .DAT for it? Thanks.

 

[RC Madman]

I had a good long stretch of about 3 weeks since the last compass cali I needed to do. This one took a little bit of effort.

1st attempt failed, 2nd failed, 3rd I restarted the AC and tried again and it failed, 4th I shutdown everything and fired everything up let it sit for a bit maybe 4-5 minutes then tried and it was successful. I believe in part the number of failed attempts were because the craft was not warmed up yet.

 

[PFCO]

I know it's a hassle. But, could you perform that flight I described and provide the .DAT for it? Thanks.

Of course...I will get this done as soon as I can over the next few days.

Thanks again

 

[The Risk]

P3A issues

To date I have had a crack free trouble free experience since i purchased my bird a year ago.. then i touched wood and then disaster. I did an auto takeoff like I always do and the bird lifts off about a foot and flips and smashed in to the dirt road / ground .... now a have a crack on the case diagonal between two of the screws behind one of the motors and a a damaged motor (noisy) grrrrr

 

[NRJ]

Thanks for that. I'm confused because I've calibrated the compass and IMU a number of times with hardly an improvement. Can you advise on what settings to adjust for the yaw?

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I agree, I have done a complete calibration system wide and I still get compass errors, Signal loss and fly atti. It never happened until firmware 3.0.1. DJI may be the issue here. People are just waiting for an update because they can't downgrade now.

 

[PFCO]

Understood NRJ.

Have DJI been made aware of these issues previously and are they planning an update? I certainly hope so!

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[NRJ]

I agree, I have done a complete calibration system wide and I still get compass errors, Signal loss and fly atti. It never happened until firmware 3.0.1. DJI may be the issue here. People are just waiting for an update because they can't downgrade now.

I hope so as well. I don't know how they get notice of these anomaly's, but I gather from things mentioned in this forum, that DJI reads this forum. Probably because we complain so much and often about things that are wrong (rightly so). Lol. Maybe someone in the forum will know if this is how they get notified of unhappy customers. But I also hear that Apple gets their fixes first. Notice they have version 3.0.2 of the app and we are still on 3.0.1. Hopefully that means when they fix the issues for Android, we will get 3.0.2 also. I may be totally off base here too. I'm just tired of there continual upgrades. It's not fun that way unless they are faultless upgrades.

 

[PFCO]

I know it's a hassle. But, could you perform that flight I described and provide the .DAT for it? Thanks.

Here you go Bud: Dropbox - FLY063.DAT

 

[BudWalker]

Here you go Bud: Dropbox - FLY063.DAT

Thanks, but this isn't the right .DAT. There was no motorStart in this one.Take a look at the bottom half of this page for info on getting the right .DAT

 

[PFCO]

Thanks, but this isn't the right .DAT. There was no motorStart in this one.Take a look at the bottom half of this page for info on getting the right .DAT

Sorry about that. I wrongly thought that a new flight was created when I started and stopped the recording. Here is the flight data:

Dropbox - FLY062.DAT

I know it is a big file however I hope you can see where I carried out the manoevers as requested. I am struggling to find that specific set of turns I did...I just hope it becomes obvious to you.

 

[BudWalker]

I took a look at FLY062. and could see some evidence of a compass calibration problem. But, it wasn't as extreme as I have seen in other cases. I noticed that you did a compass calibration in this flight. I suspect you're probably pretty good at calibrations by now and that isn't the problem (except see below). Since you appear to be doing everything right and the problem persists I suggest you send it to DJI for repair. From the flight number I'm guessing your P3 is still under warranty.

What I was looking for is something like this(from another flight)

This graph shows Yaw (red line) which is the actual heading. It also shows magYaw (green line) which is the heading computed from only the magnetometers. Normally, these values should be identical, or very close. In this case these values are different with the differences being both repeatable and dependent on actual heading.Note also that the compass errors are dependent on heading.

In your flight there is some of this but it isn't as extreme.

I gotta ask. Is there something like a gimbal protector that gets removed before flight, but not before the compass calibration?

 

[PFCO]

Thanks very much for your help. I remove the gimbal guard before calibration and before motors armed.

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[PFCO]

Just an update in relation to this...sent my P3A to DJI Netherlands and I'm awaiting an update.

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[PFCO]

 

[BudWalker]

View attachment 69217

Looks like they're saying that the most recent P3s have a known compass hardware problem. Maybe that explains some the recent compass error problems.