Compass Issues(self induced)

[Imaybail]

Just want to share this with the community. I used a silver paint pen to add my FCC reg. Number to my P3S. Apparently the paint contained some amount of metal and it totally compromised my compass. Took a little scratching my head to figure it out. Removed it and all is well again.

 

[msinger]

If that had caused a problem, calibrating the compass again should have resolved the issue.

 

[Imaybail]

Could not calibrate the compass. Tried multiple times with no success.

 

[msinger]

As a test, it would be interesting to see if you can repeat that by marking a piece of tape with that silver pen and sticking it to your Phantom (so you don't have to clean it off again).

 

[Imaybail]

That’s how I originally marked it, with a piece of tape.

 

[Meta4]

I used a silver paint pen to add my FCC reg. Number to my P3S. Apparently the paint contained some amount of metal and it totally compromised my compass. Took a little scratching my head to figure it out. Removed it and all is +
well again.

That sounds unusual.
It's not metal that causes compass problems.
It's magnetic metals like steel or iron and it's hard to imagine that a silver pen contains iron.
And as msinger says, the addition of a small amount of magnetic material should be able to be compensated for with calibration (that's exactly what compass calibration is for).
I wonder if the cause of the incident was something else and the compass issues were a coincidence.

 

[Imaybail]

Could be, I’m a noob with drones. Still learning how these work. At any rate, it is working properly now.

 

[Reconeyes]

Is it normal to loose signal when grabbing the drone from the top to perform compass calibration? I had to grab it from the landing gear to run the "dance"

 

[DaveD]

Is it normal to loose signal when grabbing the drone from the top to perform compass calibration? I had to grab it from the landing gear to run the "dance"

if you grab it from the top you will lose gps signal usually

 

[Meta4]

Could be, I’m a noob with drones. Still learning how these work. At any rate, it is working properly now.

Simple way to confirm would be to put some silver paint on a bit of papar and see if a magnet is attracted to it.

 

[Imaybail]

Checked this today. Ran a magnet over the tape I had marked with my FCC number and got no reaction. Guess my compass issues were not related to the paint pen.

 

[N017RW]

A good lesson....
‘Correlation is not Causation’.