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Inspire 2 - Unstable hover

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Jul 24, 2019
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My Inspire 2 is unstable in the hover... is this normal!?

It moves slightly but constantly side to side and up / down. Same at low and high altitude. Same in no / low / high wind conditions.

Drone now has about 3 hours of flight time or so (all for troubleshooting basically).

Tried several careful IMU-calibrations (followed by careful compass calibration)... also tried doing calibrations very quickly after power on and after waiting a bit.

Tried with both sets of propellers that came with the drone.

Tried in a few totally different locations to eliminate that this is due to external factors.

Also tries calibrating the controller sticks, gain adjustments and all other far fetched stuff found in forums, reloading firmware etc etc.
 
MY I2 is quite similar. I suspect it is just the design. My P4 does much better. Maybe the penalty for big gimbal/camera.

I wonder if DJI could push down a software fix to make it a bit better. I probably won't download ANY updates anyway.
 


My Inspire 2 is unstable in the hover... is this normal!?

It moves slightly but constantly side to side and up / down. Same at low and high altitude. Same in no / low / high wind conditions.

Drone now has about 3 hours of flight time or so (all for troubleshooting basically).

Tried several careful IMU-calibrations (followed by careful compass calibration)... also tried doing calibrations very quickly after power on and after waiting a bit.

Tried with both sets of propellers that came with the drone.

Tried in a few totally different locations to eliminate that this is due to external factors.

Also tries calibrating the controller sticks, gain adjustments and all other far fetched stuff found in forums, reloading firmware etc etc.
Normal.
 
This issue is the same for I2 and I1. As I remember in 2017 (what ever version software) the aircraft seemed to be a lot more stable when hovering. I recall noticing after several updates that hovering stability seemed to change or it was just me thinking it had change.
 


My Inspire 2 is unstable in the hover... is this normal!?

It moves slightly but constantly side to side and up / down. Same at low and high altitude. Same in no / low / high wind conditions.

Drone now has about 3 hours of flight time or so (all for troubleshooting basically).

Tried several careful IMU-calibrations (followed by careful compass calibration)... also tried doing calibrations very quickly after power on and after waiting a bit.

Tried with both sets of propellers that came with the drone.

Tried in a few totally different locations to eliminate that this is due to external factors.

Also tries calibrating the controller sticks, gain adjustments and all other far fetched stuff found in forums, reloading firmware etc etc.
I do not know if this is "normal" but all Inspire drones I have seen do that. Just a note for IMU calibration. It should be done with drone cooled down bellow 10C or 50F. This can make quite a difference.
 
I do not know if this is "normal" but all Inspire drones I have seen do that. Just a note for IMU calibration. It should be done with drone cooled down bellow 10C or 50F. This can make quite a difference.

OK, what I'm looking for here is wether to send it for service it not... so if someone has an Inspire 2 that is more stable I would do that... but if it is not going to help I want to avoid it of course.

Must say that I expected more from it!

I have actually tried putting it in the fridge for a few hours and then doing the IMU calibration straight away... but no difference there.
 
OK, what I'm looking for here is wether to send it for service it not... so if someone has an Inspire 2 that is more stable I would do that... but if it is not going to help I want to avoid it of course.

Must say that I expected more from it!

I have actually tried putting it in the fridge for a few hours and then doing the IMU calibration straight away... but no difference there.
Well if you have done all of that I am affraid that is the end of the road. The only other thing I'd check is the angles of the arms if they are equal. Point the tips of the front props towards each other in landing position and see if they face each other exactly. There should not be more than 1/4" difference. Inspires for whatever reason float a bit in hover. IMHO sending it in for repair would be futile. Yours actually hovers better than most I've seen?
 
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i Know the Inspires aren’t as stable in a hover. I believe it’s because of their weight. But that extra weight also makes them more stable in wind. A bit of a trade off.

I’m wondering though, if controller sensitivity settings would make a difference.ie, if you set gain and sensitivities down to make the bird less control movement sensitive (in an effort to smooth out movements in-flight), then the Inspires stability might go down as well since it would be slower to react to corrections in hover?p
 


My Inspire 2 is unstable in the hover... is this normal!?

It moves slightly but constantly side to side and up / down. Same at low and high altitude. Same in no / low / high wind conditions.

Drone now has about 3 hours of flight time or so (all for troubleshooting basically).

Tried several careful IMU-calibrations (followed by careful compass calibration)... also tried doing calibrations very quickly after power on and after waiting a bit.

Tried with both sets of propellers that came with the drone.

Tried in a few totally different locations to eliminate that this is due to external factors.

Also tries calibrating the controller sticks, gain adjustments and all other far fetched stuff found in forums, reloading firmware etc etc.
I had a similar problem and only discovered after much investigation that I had somehow acquired some high altitude props. Check the props to make sure they're all standard.
 
Hey guys yeah this is a fairly familiar problem ... mine suffers the same issue and it means I can barely use my 50mm lens for video due to parallax when it moves like this in flight. However I don't subscribe to the "more weight" explanation - both my S900's were vastly heavier and both were absolute tripods in the sky. This I2 however .... well for the money paid I would have expected DJI to answer this call...
 
I have flown most of the DJI drones at one time or another and my I2 used to be one of the more stable of the lineup until firmware updates were done. It is now at the bottom of list in terms of hover stability.
 
My Inspire 2 is unstable in the hover... is this normal!?

[It moves slightly but constantly side to side and up / down. Same at low and high altitude. Same in no / low / high wind conditions.]

My experience, (since 2012 when I built my first Naza) is that it is GPS. Put it in ATTI mode on a calm day. My bet is it becomes the rock. GPS without RTK ground reference is not reliably accurate enough for the small deviations we want to have. The bird keeps being issued small corrections (move left, move back, no left again, no right...)

I also have learned to put the nose of the bird into the wind when I need to hold position and rotate the camera for the shot. Aerodynamically, the I series are obviously streamlined for forward motion and absolutely atrocious from the sides.
Jim
 
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Hi Jim,

Interesting idea, turning into the wind / ATTI mode. I'll try it, thanks. To add my $.02 to the discussion, I have a Mavic 2 Pro, Inspire 1 v1 (spare, camera's broke), Inspire 1 v2 (Zen Z3) and Inspire 1 V2 pro (Zen X5). I've flown the heck out of the I1V2's and the M2P, and here's what I've noticed:

1) In any kind of wind over 15 MPH, I find the I1's too unstable to get consistently usable video at any altitude (yes, everything's properly calibrated). The M2P Is steady as a rock at all altitudes up to about 23MPH of wind.
2) In close quarters (shrubs on both sides, tree branch overhead) the I1's tend to drift left and right. The M2P is steady as a rock. I had to fly through a partitioned sign for one shot, wouldn't attempt it in the I1 but the M2P handled it fine
3) One of the I1's is prone to sudden and unpredictable drifting upon takeoff. It's highly dangerous unless you take off well away from you and climb immediately. The other I1 is better but still drifts. The M2P doesn't.
4) I had to do a shoot where I follow a car down a tree-lined road (canopy intermittently overhead) at about 5' AGL. Could not get usable footage from the I1Pro; it kept drifting from side to side on the road and constant corrections ruined the shot. M2P flew straight down the middle of the road, so it got used.

I think that certainly near the ground, the M2P has a distinct advantage over the I1 since it relies on optics as well as GPS and the compass to know where it is. The I1's have a downward-facing camera as well as sonar - do they use optics for stationkeeping as well?
 
Hi Jim,

Interesting idea, turning into the wind / ATTI mode. I'll try it, thanks. To add my $.02 to the discussion, I have a Mavic 2 Pro, Inspire 1 v1 (spare, camera's broke), Inspire 1 v2 (Zen Z3) and Inspire 1 V2 pro (Zen X5). I've flown the heck out of the I1V2's and the M2P, and here's what I've noticed:

1) In any kind of wind over 15 MPH, I find the I1's too unstable to get consistently usable video at any altitude (yes, everything's properly calibrated). The M2P Is steady as a rock at all altitudes up to about 23MPH of wind.
2) In close quarters (shrubs on both sides, tree branch overhead) the I1's tend to drift left and right. The M2P is steady as a rock. I had to fly through a partitioned sign for one shot, wouldn't attempt it in the I1 but the M2P handled it fine
3) One of the I1's is prone to sudden and unpredictable drifting upon takeoff. It's highly dangerous unless you take off well away from you and climb immediately. The other I1 is better but still drifts. The M2P doesn't.
4) I had to do a shoot where I follow a car down a tree-lined road (canopy intermittently overhead) at about 5' AGL. Could not get usable footage from the I1Pro; it kept drifting from side to side on the road and constant corrections ruined the shot. M2P flew straight down the middle of the road, so it got used.

I think that certainly near the ground, the M2P has a distinct advantage over the I1 since it relies on optics as well as GPS and the compass to know where it is. The I1's have a downward-facing camera as well as sonar - do they use optics for stationkeeping as well?

The sudden side lurch on takeoff you describe is something I have seen before. Check for rotation of the arms in their junction with the main center arms used for raising/lowering. I have seen it where one arm (e.g. left) has slipped and rotated slightly and is not aligned symmetrically with the other arm. Rotate the props until the blades are near the nose and see if the extended prop lines cross exactly in the center of the aircraft. Mine turned out to be loose at the juncture and could shift slightly as the screw was loose or stripped. During takeoff, the controller starts with equal power to all motors. Normally then it has to immediately adjust for imbalance fore/aft caused by the camera weight. If the arms are not symmetrically aimed left right, there will be immediate sideways movement too. It has to detect that also and quickly adjust. The rest of the flight, it is compensating continuously for the constant problem, but invisibly to us as pilots.

Beneath foliage reduces the GPS signal and you are having individual satellites appear and disappear through the trees. The older birds didn't have the additional Glonast (Russian) satellites to work with, so they have more problems. Better in the winter when the leaves are down, but not any better in coniferous forests. I had same problem with my hiking GPS years ago before the Russian satellites were added. The processors in the M2P are faster and can do more image processing to use that to augment the GPS. When the GPS says "I think we have to move to the right," the downward cameras override with a "My image is stable. No we don't!"

Jim
 
Hi Jim,

Interesting idea, turning into the wind / ATTI mode. I'll try it, thanks. To add my $.02 to the discussion, I have a Mavic 2 Pro, Inspire 1 v1 (spare, camera's broke), Inspire 1 v2 (Zen Z3) and Inspire 1 V2 pro (Zen X5). I've flown the heck out of the I1V2's and the M2P, and here's what I've noticed:

1) In any kind of wind over 15 MPH, I find the I1's too unstable to get consistently usable video at any altitude (yes, everything's properly calibrated). The M2P Is steady as a rock at all altitudes up to about 23MPH of wind.
2) In close quarters (shrubs on both sides, tree branch overhead) the I1's tend to drift left and right. The M2P is steady as a rock. I had to fly through a partitioned sign for one shot, wouldn't attempt it in the I1 but the M2P handled it fine
3) One of the I1's is prone to sudden and unpredictable drifting upon takeoff. It's highly dangerous unless you take off well away from you and climb immediately. The other I1 is better but still drifts. The M2P doesn't.
4) I had to do a shoot where I follow a car down a tree-lined road (canopy intermittently overhead) at about 5' AGL. Could not get usable footage from the I1Pro; it kept drifting from side to side on the road and constant corrections ruined the shot. M2P flew straight down the middle of the road, so it got used.

I think that certainly near the ground, the M2P has a distinct advantage over the I1 since it relies on optics as well as GPS and the compass to know where it is. The I1's have a downward-facing camera as well as sonar - do they use optics for stationkeeping as well?

One more thing that helps the little MP2 types. They have a VERY thin wind profile that is essentially the same from all directions. As mentioned, the Inspires are streamlined front back but awful from the side. This means substantially different responses to variable gusts. Therefore, in hover, it seems to drift side-to-side much more than front-to-back.
Jim
 
Is there anyone who would like to upload corresponding videos of an Inspire 2 that is actually stable? That would be much appreciated.
 

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