Max flight altitude and distance have changed out of nowhere.....

milo187 · Jun 19, 2019

elijahallen said:
Hey guys, I haven't been on here in a while. I don't fly much anymore but when I do I enjoy my rural location in Michigan near Lake Michigan and inland lakes and like to take shots of the lakes from 300-500m up but I got the DJI phantom 4 out today and took off and it stopped at 30m and said max flight was reached!? I went into settings and max height was still at 500m and max distance was still at 8000m but my aircraft would not budge. I haven't done any updates in a long time because I was worried this would eventually happen but did this just happen out of nowhere? Thanks for any help

How many satellites do you acquire? If you don't have enough it will stop you waiting to acquire more.

tribar · Jun 19, 2019

milo187 said:
How many satellites do you acquire? If you don't have enough it will stop you waiting to acquire more.

That's Nonsense !

Meta4 · Jun 20, 2019

tribar said:
That's Nonsense !

He didn't explain it very well but poor/no GPS will limit your height
From the manual:
Height is restricted to 26 feet (8 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and Vision Positioning is activated. Height is restricted to 98 feet (30 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and VPS is inactivated.

Harleydude · Jun 20, 2019

Meta4 said:
He didn't explain it very well but poor/no GPS will limit your height
From the manual:
Height is restricted to 26 feet (8 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and Vision Positioning is activated. Height is restricted to 98 feet (30 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and VPS is inactivated.

The manual is lying. Just last Sunday I was in a hurry to get in the air and I took off with zero satellites and then just floored it to get to 400'. Of course the P4P acquired satellites on the way up. But I'm sure I exceeded 26 feet with only two bars. Here's a screen shot. Note the camera view shows I'm higher than the street light. But because I just barely acquired those satellites, you can see mph and altitude is being reported as zero:

Here you can see that I have enough telemetry to get altitude data (47.2 ft), but still just 2 bars.

That said, I never use VPS (have had it turned off since day 1), so maybe that has something to do with it.

D

Meta4 · Jun 20, 2019

Harleydude said:
The manual is lying.
Here you can see that I have enough telemetry to get altitude data (47.2 ft), but still just 2 bars.
That said, I never use VPS (have had it turned off since day 1), so maybe that has something to do with it.

The second sentence from the manual seems to address what you are reporting.
Height is restricted to 98 feet (30 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and VPS is inactivated.
If you got past 100 ft without getting enough sats for P-GPS mode it would be unusual.

Which app is the screenshot from?

Harleydude · Jun 20, 2019

Meta4 said:
The second sentence from the manual seems to address what you are reporting.
Height is restricted to 98 feet (30 meters) when the GPS signal is weak and VPS is inactivated.
If you got past 100 ft without getting enough sats for P-GPS mode it would be unusual.

Which app is the screenshot from?

GS Pro.

D

milo187 · Jun 26, 2019

It's not the number of signal bars it's the number of satellites you have acquired. 9 is the minimum needed before Go4 will let you fly higher and of course you'll typically acquire more as you climb. It may hold you for 30 seconds and find more. I usually wait for a dozen just after lift off so I get a good home point fix especially in heavily wooded areas where I fly the most ... just like to be safe and not sorry I didn't wait and risk losing by

milo187 · Jun 26, 2019

Harleydude said:
The manual is lying. Just last Sunday I was in a hurry to get in the air and I took off with zero satellites and then just floored it to get to 400'. Of course the P4P acquired satellites on the way up. But I'm sure I exceeded 26 feet with only two bars. Here's a screen shot. Note the camera view shows I'm higher than the street light. But because I just barely acquired those satellites, you can see mph and altitude is being reported as zero:

View attachment 112180
Here you can see that I have enough telemetry to get altitude data (47.2 ft), but still just 2 bars.
View attachment 112181

That said, I never use VPS (have had it turned off since day 1), so maybe that has something to do with it.

D

You had 9 sats ... so you were good to go. Albuquerque is pretty wide open and from the looks of things the area you're in has little to no significant vegetation so I'm sure you had lots of them quickly.

Harleydude · Jun 27, 2019

milo187 said:
You had 9 sats ...

When I first started the motors I had zero. But, yes, I acquired 9 satellites rather quickly. I have taken off with less. I'll have to get video of that.

milo187 said:
so you were good to go. Albuquerque is pretty wide open and from the looks of things the area you're in has little to no significant vegetation so I'm sure you had lots of them quickly.

Yessir. Those launch points are chosen on purpose.

D

milo187 · Jun 27, 2019

Harleydude said:
When I first started the motors I had zero. But, yes, I acquired 9 satellites rather quickly. I have taken off with less. I'll have to get video of that.

Yessir. Those launch points are chosen on purpose.

D

Cool ... you'll always be able to take off but not be allowed to climb beyond the limit until you have 9 or better.

Meta4 · Jun 27, 2019

milo187 said:
It's not the number of signal bars it's the number of satellites you have acquired. 9 is the minimum needed before Go4 will let you fly higher

Quite the opposite.
There is no fixed number of satellites for good GPS.
If the satellites are bunched, tou will get less accuracy than with a good spread.
The bars are not an indication of GPS signal strength.
The Phantom calculates the quality of the GPS position data and rates it up to 5/5 (5 bars).
You might have 5 bars with 9 sats and other times you might not.
It all depends on the geometry of the sats.