To Recalibrate or not

[Rob1962]

Must i recalibrate every time i fly my drone at different places,So far i have not and no problems and i taking chances.

 

[grin factor]

I thought you had to also, but read somewhere unless you move many miles away its not necessary. When you start the motors it will tell you home point recorded.
Someone a bit brighter than me will confirm this.

 

[Kirby Johnson]

Must i recalibrate every time i fly my drone at different places,So far i have not and no problems and i taking chances.

I can tell you what has worked for me.Your Mileage May Vary. I DO NOT. I have hauled mine around in the car and truck and flown with no problems. I did a compass calib once or twice, but just out of curiosity mostly.

My take is If it aint broke, don't fix it. If you get some warning which is persistant, I assume you must, but that has not been my experience. My resistance to changing technical things is probably colored by: "Oh sheezo, throw that Windoze XP away, Vista is soooo much better.
' Then... "Oh that Vista is garbage, you need Windoze 7. " "Huh, you still have Windoze 7? Noooo Windoze 8 is the hot ticket, fixes allll those Windoze problems."

"Oh crimmidy, you still have Windoze 8? No No No, Windoze 10 is soooo much better."

Enough already.

 

[Kirby Johnson]

I can tell you what has worked for me.Your Mileage May Vary. I DO NOT. I have hauled mine around in the car and truck and flown with no problems. I did a compass calib once or twice, but just out of curiosity mostly.

My take is If it aint broke, don't fix it. If you get some warning which is persistant, I assume you must, but that has not been my experience. My resistance to changing technical things is probably colored by: "Oh sheezo, throw that Windoze XP away, Vista is soooo much better.
' Then... "Oh that Vista is garbage, you need Windoze 7. " "Huh, you still have Windoze 7? Noooo Windoze 8 is the hot ticket, fixes allll those Windoze problems."

"Oh crimmidy, you still have Windoze 8? No No No, Windoze 10 is soooo much better."

Enough already.

To clarify, I have only transported mine in single digit miles, not the next state, so I can not offer any advice there. But locally around where I live I have not had reason to recalibrate anything.

 

[Mark The Droner]

Compass Calibration, A Complete Primer

 

[Erised]

It is recommended if you take off around 150 miles from the last calibration you should recalibrate, Check in GO in your sensors menu and it will indicate the compass good (green), not so good (yellow) and bad readings(red bar). If you travel east to west the calibration may be needed, south to north, you should be able to travel even further as the earths magnetic flux travels this way.

 

[DeweyAXD]

I see so many people saying that they re-calibrate every flight and always wonder why. Not that it is necessarily a problem but everytime you re-calibrate you run the risk of a miscalibration when standing next to (or on) ground that has magntic interferance. I think this is a lot less of a risk on the P4 compared to the older models.
Personally i go to a location in the middle of knowhere within a 20 mile radius of my normal flying sites and calibrate/test fly. After that i will never recalibrate unless i travel 100+ miles away.
That being said i have flewn in Scotland and France on a calibration done in South England with no issues. Both places in similar time zones though.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[Pharm]

Search "compass calibration" on here. There are many, many, many, many threads on this.

 

[alokbhargava]

Must i recalibrate every time i fly my drone at different places,So far i have not and no problems and i taking chances.

Technically you don't need to recalibrate every time you go to the field unless calibration is disturbed. I flew from California to Hawaii and was successful in flying without any recalibration.

Calibration gets definitely disturbed if your drone passes through electromagnetic fields such as heavy welding shops, large D.C. Motors generating sparks, siting in a train that uses D.C. chopper technology etc etc. and I'm sure most of the time we don't go through these disturbances and it will be safe to use previously calibrated drone. But if you are in doubt, calibrate again at site which had no steel around hidden in concrete or open.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[rocketflyer]

you don't need to recalibrate every time you go to the field unless calibration is disturbed. I flew from California to Hawaii and was successful in flying without any recalibration.

Fully agree. Never had an issue despite long distance travel. To be fair I probably would if I were to travel 1000's rather than 100's of km.

 

[Rob1962]

Great guess that sums it up thank you very much everyone.

 

[Multicoptertec]

Technically you don't need to recalibrate every time you go to the field unless calibration is disturbed. I flew from California to Hawaii and was successful in flying without any recalibration.

Calibration gets definitely disturbed if your drone passes through electromagnetic fields such as heavy welding shops, large D.C. Motors generating sparks, siting in a train that uses D.C. chopper technology etc etc. and I'm sure most of the time we don't go through these disturbances and it will be safe to use previously calibrated drone. But if you are in doubt, calibrate again at site which had no steel around hidden in concrete or open.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

Our drones use electronic compasses, which differ from mechanical compasses in that there are no moving parts. To simplify, there are an arrangement of components on the compass board that detect magnetic north, just like a mechanical compass. The chip used in this circuit is self degaussing, so it cannot be permanently affected by magnetic deviations. During calibration, the compass records magnetic north from its current location. If you are in a location where elements adversely affect this calibration, your compass has now recorded a value with deviation, and is in error in relation to magnetic north. So, should we calibrate our compasses, and how often? Depending where you are located on the planet, magnetic north changes by x degrees, and this is a declination value. Basic Boy Scout training with a mechanical compass teaches you to adjust your compass true north bearing by adding or subtracting the declination value based on your location. I can only assume our drones do the same thing, so our navigation is correct. Once you have a "good" compass calibration for your drone, it is not necessary to recalibrate, unless you move to a location where the magnetic declination is significantly different from the original calibration point. As has been said many times, recalibration of your compass may introduce a deviation unknown to the pilot. Certainly when you first take possession of your drone, you should calibrate your compass, as the last compass values may have been from mainland China. Note also that the magnetic North Pole moves over time.



Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[alokbhargava]

True.

These electronic sensors use Hall effect sensing mechanism and compute the North direction. There is no moving parts inside but they contain a low magnetic permeability material internally and might need to be rotated to get the min and max values to determine the true north.



Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots

 

[tberton]

I calibrate mine every time I relocate and the rear lights are blinking blue/green. Which is often. Last night I went around our neighborhoods, which is about 50 acres. From house to house I never had to recalibrate one time. What did happen the first time I calibrated it, it wouldn't calibrate, almost ready to quite. I noticed I had the controller sitting on the hood, running, of course. I removed the controller and it calibrated just fine.

My point is I believe calibrating is very important. P3.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[Trucker Den]

I see it as a good step in preflight. Better safe than sorry. I figure if I do it every time then I won't forget when I move locations.

 

[AWD]

I used to be in the "calibrate every flight" camp but changed my actions after reading many of the informative posts here.

I think the reason I was calibrating every flight was because on start up I kept seeing the "Calibrate" indicator while the P4 was warming up. I would start the calibration right then.

As it turns out, if I waited until the start up phase was completed, the "Calibrate" request went away and I then took off and flew.

I have not done a calibration now for at least 50 flights locally with no apparent problems that I can detect.

My P4 gets carried around, loose, in the back of the Jeep and about half the time in the tour pack of my motorcycle so I'm thinking the calibration is pretty well spot on for now.

AD

 

[go fast]

I've travelled hundreds of miles , at least within the state of Florida without recalibration and no problems checked all the sensors before each flight like I always do and all were perfect...

 

[DeweyAXD]

I see it as a good step in preflight. Better safe than sorry. I figure if I do it every time then I won't forget when I move locations.

My concern here though is you are being less safe and may end sorry...
all it will take is one unlucky random occasion when you recalibrate a perfectly good compass while near something that is causing interference. At best you get a weird scarey flight withdrifty behaviour, at worst it is a crash/loss.

I have had a quad do this. I recalibrated too near a large metal farm building (like across the road from it) and my Dji Naza based quadcopter drifted wildly off on its own into the field with little to no control. Not a bad crash but not a nice feeling.

When i returned to the site with manual magnetic orientation compass i could see the problem. Literally anywhere near the building within maybe 70feet the needle on the compass would be moving. Where i flew it was almost spinning.

P4 i am sure is better at handling interference like this but i still think the recalibration every flight strat is worth changing.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

 

[go fast]

My concern here though is you are being less safe and may end sorry...
all it will take is one unlucky random occasion when you recalibrate a perfectly good compass while near something that is causing interference. At best you get a weird scarey flight withdrifty behaviour, at worst it is a crash/loss.

I have had a quad do this. I recalibrated too near a large metal farm building (like across the road from it) and my Dji Naza based quadcopter drifted wildly off on its own into the field with little to no control. Not a bad crash but not a nice feeling.

When i returned to the site with manual magnetic orientation compass i could see the problem. Literally anywhere near the building within maybe 70feet the needle on the compass would be moving. Where i flew it was almost spinning.

P4 i am sure is better at handling interference like this but i still think the recalibration every flight strat is worth changing.


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

Actually the P4 will prevent a bad calibration I tried to recalibrate the compass once 300 miles from home unfortunately I was surrounded by several cars in a field and it wouldn't calibrate because of all the metal so it kept the original calibration which was fine anyway , these quads have come a long way in technology...

 

[Pharm]

...I flew from California to Hawaii and was successful in flying without any recalibration...

Wow! Did you use Litchi for that?

I traveled recently over 600 miles away and had the same experience. I failed to calibrate at the new location and had no problems at all (I MEANT to calibrate, I just forgot to).