I reported a week ago about my extreme gimbal drift issues (and posted a video as well, see above), even after the latest fw upgrade.
Today, I'm happy to report that I think I found a fix (at least it worked for me). I would like to do some more testing before I emphatically say my issue is gone, but today when I flew, it was a million times better. Some of you may have heard of this method, but I went extreme and was super careful to get a perfect IMU and gimbal calibration. Here's what I did.
1. Went to Lowes and got a 18" x 18" pane of glass (probably could have been a little smaller too, but it worked). Also got a bubble level and a mini torpedo level.
2. Still have cold nights here, so set the drone outside for a few minutes to get it cold before IMU calibration.
3. With drone still off, I balanced my pane of glass on top of the 4 motors and set my bubble level on it.
4. Used playing cards under the landing gear to get a perfect center on the bubble level. Also checked with torpedo level for good measure.
5. Removed the glass pane without touching the drone, and placed it on the ground.
6. Again used my levelers to get the pane of glass perfectly level on the ground (if your house is like mine, it's nearly impossible to find any table or floor that is 100% perfectly level).
7. Turned on drone and immediately began IMU calibration. Kept drone in place thru step 1 of calibration.
8. Then I used my level pane of glass on the floor for steps 2 thru 6 of IMU calibration.
9. After that was done, I put the drone back on the floor and glass back on top of motors. Leveled it again using bubble leveler and playing cards.
10. Gimbal auto-calibration.
11. Flew again this morning, and my gimbal was remarkably better. It was level, and even more importantly than that, it did not tilt and sway as I yawed the bird.
I still want to fly a few more times before I say it's definitely fixed, but I was very happy with today's flight compared to last time I flew. I hope this info helps you guys with the same issue!
Has your improvement lasted since your first test?
Fortunately, I have a table that's pretty level, but the bubble isn't perfectly centered in one direction, so I tried the glass trick described above with a couple playing cards--making sure it was PERFECTLY level in several directions. It made no difference with my gimble tilt though after re-calibrating my IMU while the motors were all perfectly level with each other. In fact, it seemed to have gotten worse--especially when flying sideways into a wind--getting up to 5 degrees slant, which is the worst I've ever seen with any of the Phantom's I've owned. I was about to send it back to DJI with hopes I'd win the lottery with another gimble that would behave better... However, over the weekend, I came across someone's YouTube video on undocumented tips for the P4P. He mentioned that by holding down the C2 button (like you do to adjust the gimble roll with the dial) that it would "auto-level" itself! So last night I was going to have my wife twirl the P4P around (as gimble tilt always happened in a yaw)... but the gimble behaved perfectly. So, then I wondered if perhaps the gimble was affected by flight under power--so I flew it around the kitchen, and once again during yaw, the gimble stayed nice and level.
So this morning, I flew outside with a 15mph wind. To my surprise the gimble still worked perfectly while yawing (which has never happened before), and when I flew sideways into the wind, the gimble did tilt a little but less than 2 degrees--much more tolerable than the 5 degrees I was getting earlier. In any case, holding the C2 button down did NOTHING to "auto-level" the gimble.
Maybe I'll hold off on sending my P4P back to DJI--perhaps it decided to start behaving itself once under threat of getting shipped to California.