Phantom 4 Gimbal erratic movement

ryanmanchester · Mar 28, 2017

Saw a fire and decided to investigate further, have many hours experience. On return home I noticed the gimbal acting funny, now I see many have had this problem, my question is what actually causes this?

Video from cache.

alokbhargava · Mar 28, 2017

Where did you see the fire? Your question is not clear to me.

ukracer · Mar 28, 2017

Something similar happened to me in daylight and got worse wherever the P4 went berserk. I have put it down to RF interference as after much investigation I could not identify a fault with the drone, the controller of the waypoint mission. Thus I determined this had to be an external force.

ryanmanchester · Mar 28, 2017

alokbhargava said:
Where did you see the fire? Your question is not clear to me.

the fire was at a local flying spot I use regular, my question was about the gimbal movements which to someone else who is not confident could lead to panic (and we know what that leads too). if you skip to 00:17 in the video you'll see what I mean. thanks

ryanmanchester · Mar 28, 2017

ukracer said:
Something similar happened to me in daylight and got worse wherever the P4 went berserk. I have put it down to RF interference as after much investigation I could not identify a fault with the drone, the controller of the waypoint mission. Thus I determined this had to be an external force.

it had me confused, and it does look like the bird is free falling, at first I thought something had flew into her, then I dropped 100ft, happened again. The area is pretty good for signal, spent many hours over these waters, I did have a motor overload error, thats about it, fully charged battery, sport mode, think i was in the air no more than 9-10 mins.

alokbhargava · Mar 28, 2017

If if is related to fire you had seen, check for the soot deposits in gimbal and specially on the end of motor rotors.

Motor overload message indicates either obstructions to motor movements or reaching the extreme end. How was the wind?

ryanmanchester · Mar 28, 2017

alokbhargava said:
If if is related to fire you had seen, check for the soot deposits in gimbal and specially on the end of motor rotors.

Motor overload message indicates either obstructions to motor movements or reaching the extreme end. How was the wind?

I was filming the fire, that's not linked, just checkout the gimbal movement at 00:17 in the video above.

John Locke · Mar 29, 2017

Gimbal flip like that can be caused by high winds or the gimbal being out of balance. Was it windy? Do you have a new filter installed that might be heavier than standard filters?

Have you flown again? If yes, did the gimbal flip again?