UPDATE "GPS Unconnected" P3S

Spiff · Apr 19, 2016

Well, I had my first crash after 10 hours of flying, 100% caused by my own stupidity (many lessons learned). Anyway the drone ended up in water for about 1 minute, maybe less. I let it dry out for 2 days outside in the sun and then fired it back up. It asked me to re-update the firmware which I ran successfully, then I calibrated the compass without issue. The ONLY issue I can see is it will not get ANY satellites. As a test I went to an open field and tried it in atti but instead of taking off it says "gps unconnected". I've done some google searches and nothing comes up. Literally when you "google phantom 3 standard "gps unconnected"" there are zero results. I will probably end up taking it apart tonight or tomorrow to verify the connections.

A couple of questions -

Is there a way to take off without gps? (not just atti, thats not working)

Can I buy a replacement GPS unit if it did get damaged by the water?

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks in advance!

mnewxcv · Apr 19, 2016

you will have to open it and see whats going on. Could be a loose connection, otherwise you will have to buy a new gps and hope its not a mainboard issue. GPS modules are available on ebay:

NEW DJI Phantom 3 Standard GPS MODULE Drone Quadcopter Advanced Position

mdowney58 · Apr 20, 2016

You haven't said when this happened, and I'm not sure it matters, but it may still have moisture inside of it.
Most of the threads I've read, where there was a successful resurrection of a drowned drone, the users placed the drone in rice, and one other user did the rice and then followed it up by concocting a dehumidifier somehow connected to a large bin that contained the drone.
Another user put his in his motor home with the A/C on (which acts like a dehumidifier) and aimed a fan on the drone.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Spiff · May 10, 2016

*UPDATE*
Took me a while but I got a new GPS unit, installed it, and BOOM, works with zero problems. Pretty amazing considering it crashed, rolled down a hill ~30 feet and then fell into a river. Lots of lessons learned for a $20 GPS unit. On a side note the casing is a gigantic pain in the *** to take apart.