DJI Phantom 4 Pro Drifting, Occasionally Losing Signal

Joined
Mar 30, 2020
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
Hello there!
I am new to the forums and wondered if anyone could help troubleshoot some of the issues that I have been having with my Phantom 4 Pro drone. Recently, our family went up north to our cabin, which is on a lake. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to fly around a bit since I hadn't used the drone much during the winter. I took the drone out for a flight, taking it off from the deck on the cabin, and flew it over the lake. I didn't think much of this at the time, but the drone did move quite a lot while it was in the hover position. I kept flying until the drone went into attitude mode and started drifting away. I had never flown in this mode before, so I was slightly nervous and decided to bring the drone back to land it. The battery was getting low anyways. While I was bringing it back, the controller suddenly lost connection with the drone and I no longer had control. At this point, I panicked and started frantically pressing the RTH button, which I thought would solve the problem. It didn't. But, after a few seconds, the drone was connected again and I flew it home. After this I was afraid to fly the drone again there, so when we got home, I recalibrated the IMU and the compass on a flat, level field, and when I flew it, I still noticed the drifting issue (I had been noticing this issue since I got the drone), and after about 5 minuted of flying, the drone briefly went into attitude mode again, so I landed it.

To sum it up, my drone has a few issues that I can't figure out how to solve.

1. The drone has a pretty significant amount of yaw drift and also drifts while it is hovering.

2. The drone sometimes loses its GPS signal and once lost its signal altogether.

If anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, or why they happen, that would be great!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jim Canada
Hello there!
I am new to the forums and wondered if anyone could help troubleshoot some of the issues that I have been having with my Phantom 4 Pro drone. Recently, our family went up north to our cabin, which is on a lake. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to fly around a bit since I hadn't used the drone much during the winter. I took the drone out for a flight, taking it off from the deck on the cabin, and flew it over the lake. I didn't think much of this at the time, but the drone did move quite a lot while it was in the hover position. I kept flying until the drone went into attitude mode and started drifting away. I had never flown in this mode before, so I was slightly nervous and decided to bring the drone back to land it. The battery was getting low anyways. While I was bringing it back, the controller suddenly lost connection with the drone and I no longer had control. At this point, I panicked and started frantically pressing the RTH button, which I thought would solve the problem. It didn't. But, after a few seconds, the drone was connected again and I flew it home. After this I was afraid to fly the drone again there, so when we got home, I recalibrated the IMU and the compass on a flat, level field, and when I flew it, I still noticed the drifting issue (I had been noticing this issue since I got the drone), and after about 5 minuted of flying, the drone briefly went into attitude mode again, so I landed it.

To sum it up, my drone has a few issues that I can't figure out how to solve.

1. The drone has a pretty significant amount of yaw drift and also drifts while it is hovering.

2. The drone sometimes loses its GPS signal and once lost its signal altogether.

If anyone has any ideas about how to fix these problems, or why they happen, that would be great!
Mind uploading some flight logs of any flights where you have encountered any of these issues? Here is a guide and a great website for doing so: Phantom Help Flight Log Viewer
This will help us evaluate your flight and allow us to get some more data. Cheers!
 
Hello Wollef,
have you seen thisThread P4P Loss of GPS Satellites here in the forum? Many things you describe sound similar to what is written there. Maybe an admin can put those threads together to get an overview of the problems and answers? I also had similar issues, and more: when my P4P lost GPS, all four lamps turned red, so I could not see the flight direction. That was "amazing", too.
U.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Capt KO
Sorry for the delayed response. Thank you UweF for the link to that thread, those do seem like similar problems to mine. I do have a few questions, however, if the GPS module is responsible and the drone does need to be sent in, how can I tell whether my drone is covered under warranty. I bought it used, so I am not sure whether the warranty is still valid. And if the warranty isn't valid, how much would it cost to send it in to be repaired? Also, in the link to the thread that you posted, you said that you weren't sure whether or not the problem was fixed after you sent the drone to DJI and they repaired it. Do you have any update on this?

Here are the flight logs, the first one being the flight data taken from the flight over a flat, level field, and the second one was the data from the flight over the lake.
DJI Flight Log Viewer - PhantomHelp.com


Thanks for all your help!
 
Last edited:

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,357
Members
104,935
Latest member
Pauos31