Inspire 1 sudden altitude drops

Eagle33331 · Sep 10, 2016

Hi All,

Does anyone else suffer sudden altitude drops when hovering? Specifically, often (but not exclusively) when I'm at low level, like 3 metres above a wheat crop, my I1 will suddenly drop a metre or even two with no warning. Mostly it then slowly climbs back to its original position but I've had some near ground misses. Also, whilst in free mode the gimbal does a great job of smoothing craft wobbles on video, it can't handle the often constant up/down movements the I1 makes and the footage is useless.

Compass and IMU are calibrated; batteries are fine; GPS signal fine; there are no external factors that would influence. I fly in P-GPS - could there be an issue with the VPS? Also, I'm using the X5R camera on the original I1 motors and it's definitely less stable than it used to be with the X3.

Thanks folks.
Ian

pwackinspire · Sep 10, 2016

I would disable vps and fly same manouveres.mat be crop blowing in the wind is affecting vps?

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Eagle33331 · Sep 11, 2016

pwackinspire said:
I would disable vps and fly same manouveres.mat be crop blowing in the wind is affecting vps?

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Thanks pwack'. That's worth a try. It happened over a gravel driveway too. I've got video of it hovering at 3m and constantly dropping and rising 1m and 2m which I sent to my dealer with the I1. They couldn't find a fault, but this can't be right?

tbruegg · Sep 11, 2016

happened to me too. several times. hovering about 2 meters over a high grass field in the mountains, doing some camera adjustments on the app and suddenly realize that the drone has drpped in hight and the rotors are just before reaching the grass, pretty frightning.

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Eagle33331 · Sep 11, 2016

tbruegg said:
happened to me too. several times. hovering about 2 meters over a high grass field in the mountains, doing some camera adjustments on the app and suddenly realize that the drone has drpped in hight and the rotors are just before reaching the grass, pretty frightning.

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

Precisely my experience. Has anyone diagnosed it?

ge0se · Sep 14, 2016

This behavior was introduced after firmware 1.5 or something like that, prior to this altitude hovering was rock solid. We did make lots of noise on DJI forums about this but no chances/improvements have been noticed since. Maybe worth logging in again and reviving the old threads so DJI fixes this once and for all.

Eagle33331 · Sep 15, 2016

ge0se said:
This behavior was introduced after firmware 1.5 or something like that, prior to this altitude hovering was rock solid. We did make lots of noise on DJI forums about this but no chances/improvements have been noticed since. Maybe worth logging in again and reviving the old threads so DJI fixes this once and for all.

Thanks Geo. I'll make some more noise, then. This problem just kills the quality of the video, not to mention increasing risk of a ground impact when low level hovering.