UPDATE:
As of April 13, 2014, there are 87 P2x users in the forums reporting the same issue. If you are affected, make sure you say so here! What we know so far:
Fixing DJI's Compass Problem
Some of you know about this and some of you aren't affected. If you live in the following areas, you are subject to this problem even if you don't know it:
Your compass and GPS are disagreeing over which way is forward. This results in curving (hooking), tracking to the left or right in GPS and course lock, and/or not hovering in place. This is a caused by a defect in DJI's firmware which they need to fix.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUilGeH74Q[/youtube]
I am working through some contacts to get in touch with DJI's LA office to present the issue in a clear fashion along with the backing of the user communities like this one. Most importantly, I want to show them how many other people have this issue.
If you are in one of the areas above, confirm in this thread that you have experienced this issue. I have written a complete summary of the issue here: DJI Phantom and Magnetic Declination which I will be sharing with DJI as well. Please share this so that we can collect as many of the affected users as possible.
And before anyone says "Just rotate your compass", that is not the answer. DJI has said so themselves.
As of April 13, 2014, there are 87 P2x users in the forums reporting the same issue. If you are affected, make sure you say so here! What we know so far:
- Affects all P2x in areas of high magnetic declination (+/-10 or higher).
- Curved flight and hooking is worst when first flying. It improves during flight but may take several minutes.
- Once power is removed, the P2 forgets any adaptions it made during the previous flight.
- It appears to not affect the P1.
- Areas with very high declination will experience TBE during initial hover.
- Several people have returned their P2x thinking it was defective only to get a new one with the same problem.
- This is a firmware defect. Possibly a signing bug in the code.
- This defect is still present in versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the firmware.
- Measuring the angle between initial true heading and initial course lock heading will give you the real margin of error.
- Rotating the compass is not a recommended workaround. Some further testing is being done here.
- Using a very rough bottom up model, it is expected that at least 1 in 4 P2x users experience this problem.
- DJI is looking at the problem and has selected 5 of us to do some testing to help diagnose the problem. We will be evaluating the same raw data to see if we can further identify the source of the problem.
Fixing DJI's Compass Problem
Some of you know about this and some of you aren't affected. If you live in the following areas, you are subject to this problem even if you don't know it:
- Western US and Canada
- Northeastern US and Canada
- Eastern OZ and all of NZ
- Northeastern South America
- Southern Africa
Your compass and GPS are disagreeing over which way is forward. This results in curving (hooking), tracking to the left or right in GPS and course lock, and/or not hovering in place. This is a caused by a defect in DJI's firmware which they need to fix.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUilGeH74Q[/youtube]
I am working through some contacts to get in touch with DJI's LA office to present the issue in a clear fashion along with the backing of the user communities like this one. Most importantly, I want to show them how many other people have this issue.
If you are in one of the areas above, confirm in this thread that you have experienced this issue. I have written a complete summary of the issue here: DJI Phantom and Magnetic Declination which I will be sharing with DJI as well. Please share this so that we can collect as many of the affected users as possible.
And before anyone says "Just rotate your compass", that is not the answer. DJI has said so themselves.