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How do you turn off sonar ?

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Jun 24, 2015
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I took my Inspire out for the first few flights today and I was surprised to see how angry birds get at it. With my Phantom 2 and 2+ I never had this problem. Sometimes they would fly near it but leave.

With the Inspire I can't fly more than 100' up before they swarm.

Thanks to some quick maneuvering I was able to avoid a really nasty attack where a seagull tried to dive bomb and grab it with their legs. That would have been a very messy accident.

So after some testing I determined the problem is the sonar. After the seagulls showed up I landed and they hovered over head. I was hoping they would leave but never did. After 10 minutes I turned off the inspire and they left 5 minutes later.

Turned the inspire back on (not taking off), no blades spinning just idle on the ground. A few minutes later, they were back overhead.

Please tell me there is a way to disable the sonar. I know that will remove auto takeoff but I don't care about that. If I can toggle it in the air that would be even better.

I tried different flight modes and no luck. Each flight mode still had it going.
 
Not sure if sonar is causing the problem although I respect your testing conclusions. Bats rely on sonar and I would think they would have the biggest problems. With the other birds, they could be just seeing your bigger bird as a threat to their territory. I see it all the time. Just today I saw two hummingbirds freak out on a crow - and it was effective. The crow was high tailing it outta there! Just my opinion. The sonar is a huge development in safety IMO. Seems to me that you might risk more by disabling the sonar. But hey, I am sure there is some kind of hack for that.
 
I never had them do this with my other one. And idle on the ground they were hovering over head. They only came around once I turned it on.

The sonar only really works at lower altitudes. When I am outside GPS altitude works just fine. The sonar is only really useful for flying low to the ground. And for take off and landing.

I have read many people experiencing bird attacks specifically with the inspire. Seagulls seem to be the most angered at it.
 
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I never had them do this with my other one. And idle on the ground they were hovering over head. They only came around once I turned it on.

The sonar only really works at lower altitudes. When I am outside GPS altitude works just fine. The sonar is only really useful for flying low to the ground. And for take off and landing.

I have read many people experiencing bird attacks specifically with the inspire. Seagulls seem to be the most angered at it.

Just unplug the sonar?
 
It appears that I would have to disassemble some stuff to get at it. I wonder what the impact would be of disabling it in hardware.

Really hoping to find a method of doing it in software
 
Interesting idea. I noticed when flying the Phantom 3 yesterday that it has an option in the pilot app to disable VPS so the functionally already exists in the app.

I'm guessing that it's unavailable on the i1 as that would also effect landing gear auto sensing and travel mode activation.
 
Ugh, this is a real serious problem. DJI has been non-responsive about it. Why on earth do they have a link that says 24 hours support when 3 days later still no response.
 
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Ugh, this is a real serious problem. DJI has been non-responsive about it. Why on earth do they have a link that says 24 hours support when 3 days later still no response.
Are you sure it was not just angry Seagulls during nesting times? They get extremely territorial given they return to the same nest each year.
 

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