Enable Vision Positioning on or off

bkushner · Dec 16, 2016

I know this issue has been belted around a bit but is there any list of pros and cons that might help one decide whether to use this or not? I haven't before now but wondering with all the sophisticated sensors and such on the P4P if I should enable. Thanks for any insight.

smiller · Dec 16, 2016

bkushner said:
I know this issue has been belted around a bit but is there any list of pros and cons that might help one decide whether to use this or not? I haven't before now but wondering with all the sophisticated sensors and such on the P4P if I should enable. Thanks for any insight.

Maybe I'm not understanding your question but except for some rather limited special circumstances, why wouldn't you enable CA and/or visual positioning? CA is the sort of thing you hopefully will not need but are very glad to have if you do, and visual positioning (bottom sensors) only makes the craft more stable. I suppose there might be a few special-use cases where you might want them off but generally I would leave them on.

bkushner · Dec 16, 2016

smiller said:
Maybe I'm not understanding your question but except for some rather limited special circumstances, why wouldn't you enable CA and/or visual positioning? CA is the sort of thing you hopefully will not need but are very glad to have if you do, and visual positioning (bottom sensors) only makes the craft more stable.

The main reason why I haven't used it is I saw some posts about not using it when you fly over water. I fly over water a lot. With that said when I did use it over water I didn't have any issues.

smiller · Dec 16, 2016

Ah, OK. I think that advice applies only if you are flying 'nap of the earth' (very low) or in your case nap-of-the water. If you have any significant amount of altitude (10 meters of more) visual positioning wouldn't be employed anyway. Less than that and I guess you might want to disable it if you experience any undesirable effects.

Meta4 · Dec 16, 2016

smiller said:
Maybe I'm not understanding your question but except for some rather limited special circumstances, why wouldn't you enable CA and/or visual positioning?

One good reason to disable obstacle avoidance is that you don't need OA because you are flying out in the open and you want the extra speed you get by disabling OA.
I rarely use OA at all.

F3honda4me · Dec 16, 2016

Meta4 said:
One good reason to disable obstacle avoidance is that you don't need OA because you are flying out in the open and you want the extra speed you get by disabling OA.
I rarely use OA at all.

In that case just switch to sport mode and then if you have to RTH OA will work. If you turn those systems off you get no OA. Though not a concern if there is literally nothing around to run into. Otherwise there's really no reason to turn them off in my opinion.

Traveler · Dec 16, 2016

I fly over a small body of water often and have never experienced any issue with the downward sensors. Or them bothering animals for that matter. Time for a shameless plug for a recent picture.

Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots

Meta4 · Dec 16, 2016

F3honda4me said:
In that case just switch to sport mode and then if you have to RTH OA will work. If you turn those systems off you get no OA. Though not a concern if there is literally nothing around to run into. Otherwise there's really no reason to turn them off in my opinion.

Engage Sport mode and say goodbye to battery life.
I think I'll stick to OA off and keep my speed and range.
I don't want to run out of battery out here and there's no need for OA.

bkushner · Dec 16, 2016

Meta4 said:
One good reason to disable obstacle avoidance is that you don't need OA because you are flying out in the open and you want the extra speed you get by disabling OA.
I rarely use OA at all.

How much does it cut down speed by?