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Is my I1 faulty?

Joined
Oct 24, 2016
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Age
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Location
Nashville
Website
ravenflight.net
Hi!
I've had my Inspire 1 for a month now and it is not as stable or intelligent as I was expecting it to be. I'd never even seen a drone in person before Oct 29 and knew very little about them so I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or if my unit is faulty. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out which it is.

I'm pretty sure that the Inspire 1 was advertised to have a Vision Positioning System capable of holding the drone in position indoors without GPS. I've flown mine indoors twice and both times it has drifted badly and scared me greatly. Outdoors with GPS it drifts around in something like a 5' cube. Is it normal for it drift that much?

I was under the impression when I bought it that it would avoid obstacles in certain flight modes but I can't see any indication that it's going to do that in the GO app except in the RTH altitude setting where it specifically says that it will NOT avoid obstacles while returning to home. I noticed today the Inspire 2 is advertised to have this capability.

Neither the 'follow' gimbal mode nor the 'follow me' flight mode do anything at all. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the app or a problem with the drone. I saw someone say this is a problem with the GPS unit in the controller.

I've asked DJI about this but they said my Galaxy s7 isn't supported and that I needed to buy a supported device. I broke down over the weekend and bought an iPad Air 2 (but unfortunately didn't discover until after I made the purchase that the WiFi model didn't have GPS) which will be here in about a week but I'm skeptical that it's going to fix these problems. I just tonight learned about Autopilot and that it will likely help me with some of these issues. I plan to buy it once the iPad gets here.

But still, it just seems like the drone isn't quite 'right,' you know?

Thanks for any input!

Dave
 
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Dave,

The I1 has no sort of obstacle avoidance. The downward imaging system under the battery compartment is to assist in positioning and can help when indoors but, it's not rock steady. The "follow" function just adjusts the image you see while flying to reflect yaw and pitch of the airframe and the "follow me" function only works in the P mode. I live in Nashville and could meet up with you at some point and try to help out but, sounds like you may need to review the operator's manual or the video tutorials.
 
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Dave,

The I1 has no sort of obstacle avoidance. The downward imaging system under the battery compartment is to assist in positioning and can help when indoors but, it's not rock steady. The "follow" function just adjusts the image you see while flying to reflect yaw and pitch of the airframe and the "follow me" function only works in the P mode. I live in Nashville and could meet up with you at some point and try to help out but, sounds like you may need to review the operator's manual or the video tutorials.
Thanks for responding! I understand the downward imaging system is not obstacle avoidance but supposedly it also has sonar. It seems like it would be able to detect and avoid a wall with sonar but mine does not appear to be doing that. On my unit the 'follow me' function becomes available when I switch to F mode. I do not see any 'follow me' option when in P mode. Am I missing it? When in F mode the little controller icon appears and from the resulting menu I can select 'follow me' but the camera does not point at me and the drone does not move with me. About the 'follow' gimbal mode, are you saying that function is not meant to point the camera at me but rather stabilize it as the drone moves? Is the gimbal not continuously doing that no matter what mode it's in?

I have read the whole user manual but the information in it is very basic and does not address my questions. I've looked at the videos at Inspire 1 - Specs, FAQ, manual, video tutorials and DJI GO - DJI but there's nothing helpful there.
 
I spent 100+ hours viewing YouTube videos on flying, maintaining & modifying DJI drones (P2V+ & Inspire-1) and I had never flown one before either. I have owned several & have now flown them for years & 100's of hours & NEVER HAD A CRASH OR EVEN A HARD LANDING! So that's my 2-cents..
Good luck & happy flying!
LEBIII
PS: I almost forgot, I also read EVERY SINGLE POST ON "PhantomPilots.com"


Sent from my iPhone using InspirePilots
 
Last edited:
Thanks for responding! I understand the downward imaging system is not obstacle avoidance but supposedly it also has sonar. It seems like it would be able to detect and avoid a wall with sonar but mine does not appear to be doing that. On my unit the 'follow me' function becomes available when I switch to F mode. I do not see any 'follow me' option when in P mode. Am I missing it? When in F mode the little controller icon appears and from the resulting menu I can select 'follow me' but the camera does not point at me and the drone does not move with me. About the 'follow' gimbal mode, are you saying that function is not meant to point the camera at me but rather stabilize it as the drone moves? Is the gimbal not continuously doing that no matter what mode it's in?

I have read the whole user manual but the information in it is very basic and does not address my questions. I've looked at the videos at Inspire 1 - Specs, FAQ, manual, video tutorials and DJI GO - DJI but there's nothing helpful there.
As stated above - there is NO obstacle avoidance on the I1 - NONE.
The sonar and GPS is for positioning accuracy only, it has nothing to do with detecting obstacles.
The Follow final setting has nothing to do with following you - it is a gimbal mode, like 'Free' and 'FPV'
Additionally, the Follow Me function is not available in P mode (it's not meant to be) - it is a function and therefore the remote needs to be switched tom'F' mode.
It is also very unreliable since there is a hardware design fault (well covered on this forum) which limits it's functionality and safety. My advice - Don't use.

With the greatest respect, I think you need to take time both having a look through YouTube tutorials, familiarising yourself with the manual and taking a look through this forum (using the search function to save going through non-relevant posts) to get completely familiar with your aircraft.
 
Thanks for responding! I understand the downward imaging system is not obstacle avoidance but supposedly it also has sonar. It seems like it would be able to detect and avoid a wall with sonar but mine does not appear to be doing that. On my unit the 'follow me' function becomes available when I switch to F mode. I do not see any 'follow me' option when in P mode. Am I missing it? When in F mode the little controller icon appears and from the resulting menu I can select 'follow me' but the camera does not point at me and the drone does not move with me. About the 'follow' gimbal mode, are you saying that function is not meant to point the camera at me but rather stabilize it as the drone moves? Is the gimbal not continuously doing that no matter what mode it's in?

I have read the whole user manual but the information in it is very basic and does not address my questions. I've looked at the videos at Inspire 1 - Specs, FAQ, manual, video tutorials and DJI GO - DJI but there's nothing helpful there.
Dave,

Sorry, I stand corrected on "F" mode, that's what I intended but, my fingers found another key. Like I said, I'm in Nashville and have the same airframe and can meet up with you once we get past the next couple of days of what I hope will be rain. Good luck with your efforts.
 
As stated above - there is NO obstacle avoidance on the I1 - NONE.
The sonar and GPS is for positioning accuracy only, it has nothing to do with detecting obstacles.
The Follow final setting has nothing to do with following you - it is a gimbal mode, like 'Free' and 'FPV'
Additionally, the Follow Me function is not available in P mode (it's not meant to be) - it is a function and therefore the remote needs to be switched tom'F' mode.
It is also very unreliable since there is a hardware design fault (well covered on this forum) which limits it's functionality and safety. My advice - Don't use.

With the greatest respect, I think you need to take time both having a look through YouTube tutorials, familiarising yourself with the manual and taking a look through this forum (using the search function to save going through non-relevant posts) to get completely familiar with your aircraft.
Hi Editor!
Thank you for the response. I think you may not have carefully read my post though. It was Ifly, not me, that said Follow Me was available in P mode. I said that as far as I could see it was only available in F mode. I also stated that I had read that the problem may be with the way the controller is built, indicating that I have been searching through the forum. I'm obviously new though so I haven't read every single post here yet and wanted further clarification as well as to just make it clear that I'm having a number of problems. As far as the 'follow' gimbal mode is concerned, I'm clearly aware that it's a gimbal mode as I specifically said so in both my initial question as well as my response to Ifly. What I'm not clear on is what it does. The other gimbal modes affect where the camera is pointed, e.g. 'free' keeps it pointed in the same place without respect to the orientation of the drone while 'fpv' keeps it pointed straight ahead relative to the drone. You and Ifly seem to be saying that the 'follow' mode is not like the others though and does not affect where the camera points. I don't understand this and was hoping for clarification. Since it's called 'follow' one would think the camera would follow something in this mode but mine behaves exactly like FPV.

I also stated clearly that I have read the entire manual as well as watched all the videos and the information I'm looking for is not well covered there. In fact, not much of anything is well covered there. The documentation is woefully lacking. I'll be honest, I'm a little frustrated. People keep telling me to read the manual and watch the videos instead of helping me. My very first question someone ridiculed me for not having done that (he later said he was joking and acted like it was unreasonable of me to have thought he was ridiculing me and in fact ridiculed me for thinking he was ridiculing me). But I keep saying that I HAVE done that and the information I'm looking for is not covered there. It makes me wonder if the people telling me to read the manual and watch the videos have done so themselves. If they had surely they would know how inadequate they are.

So, to sum up and for anyone else who may want to respond:
I have read the entire user manual. I have watched or looked through every video on DJI's website. My questions are not covered there. Please stop telling me to look there. Please stop assuming that I'm an idiot who hasn't made any effort to educate himself.

I think I may need to put that in my signature.
 
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Ill try to answer as best I can, let me know if I can be more specific.

If not using dual operator I almost always use follow mode. From what I can tell it smooths the gimbal movements out more and "follows" the nose where fpv keeps your position locked precisely under the nose and pointed forward.

I haven't tried the follow me mode on my inspire at all, but I believe it's supposed to work off the built in GPS in the remote. F mode, select it on screen all that good stuff.

As far as the vps is concerned it only works well with a flat textured surface below it. I've had varying degrees of success in a gym, basketball court, and reception rooms. My inspire seems to hate tile.

The inspire has absoutely zero avoidance. No front facing cameras or sensors to accommodate that.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 
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Ill try to answer as best I can, let me know if I can be more specific.

If not using dual operator I almost always use follow mode. From what I can tell it smooths the gimbal movements out more and "follows" the nose where fpv keeps your position locked precisely under the nose and pointed forward.

I haven't tried the follow me mode on my inspire at all, but I believe it's supposed to work off the built in GPS in the remote. F mode, select it on screen all that good stuff.

As far as the vps is concerned it only works well with a flat textured surface below it. I've had varying degrees of success in a gym, basketball court, and reception rooms. My inspire seems to hate tile.

The inspire has absoutely zero avoidance. No front facing cameras or sensors to accommodate that.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
Thank you for the response! I think I understand what the 'follow' gimbal mode does now. I'm sure that's what Ifly and Editor were trying to tell me as well. It's a subtle difference from FPV that I probably just haven't noticed. Thank you for clarifying!

It sounds like a lot of my issues can be chalked up to unreasonable expectations about the drone's capabilities, apart from the 'follow me' mode which seems to be broken for everyone. I was having a lot of signal issues when I first got it which contributed to me thinking something was wrong with it. The video feed would drop out frequently or sometimes it would completely lose connection to the controller even when only a few feet away. The signal status would flip back and forth between 'good' and 'strong interference' every couple seconds. GPS would often drop out even on clear days with no obstructions or interference anywhere around. I haven't experienced much of that lately though. Maybe it just needed breaking in?
 
Well I double posted and deleted them both some how.

Tl;Dr of the deleted post, what's your environment like and how far was the bird from you? Wifi can make your video feed drop if it's congested.

I've been about 3000ft out and still had perfect video signal.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
 
Well I double posted and deleted them both some how.

Tl;Dr of the deleted post, what's your environment like and how far was the bird from you? Wifi can make your video feed drop if it's congested.

I've been about 3000ft out and still had perfect video signal.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk
I live out in the country a bit. There's no Internet access in my neighborhood so there's little to no WiFi. There is a cell tower about a mile and a half away though. But where at first I couldn't fly anywhere remotely close to that tower, now I can get within a few hundred feet of it. IDK what changed.
 
Can you give us a screen shot of the page on the go app that shows all the firmware status. It is in general settings > about
Sure. I included a screenshot of what I see when the video feed messes up too.
 
Sure. I included a screenshot of what I see when the video feed messes up too.

That is not what I asked for. We want to see what firmwares you have installed. General settings>about, it should look like this.

IMG_0014.PNG
 
That is not what I asked for. We want to see what firmwares you have installed. General settings>about, it should look like this.

View attachment 10933
Oh, I'm very sorry. I didn't read carefully enough. I just assumed you were asking for the same info DJI did when I opened a ticket about this with them and I attached the screenshots I had sent them and already had on hand. Here's one I just took with the information you asked for.
Screenshot_20161128-181553.png
 
Oh, I'm very sorry. I didn't read carefully enough. I just assumed you were asking for the same info DJI did when I opened a ticket about this with them and I attached the screenshots I had sent them and already had on hand. Here's one I just took with the information you asked for.
View attachment 10934

I suggest you roll back the remote controller to version 1.6, after watching this video make sure after you select 1.6 you click save before you downgrade. I suspect your issues will be corrected when you are on version 1.6 for the remote controller.

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I suggest you roll back the remote controller to version 1.6, after watching this video make sure after you select 1.6 you click save before you downgrade. I suspect your issues will be corrected when you are on version 1.6 for the remote controller.

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I only recently upgraded to 1.7 and so far I haven't experienced any signal issues. But the issues in general seem to be trending less frequent. I'm starting to think this thing is just more sensitive than I realized. Lots of things to calibrate and care for; to pay attention to. Things that can be just slightly off and make a noticeable difference. I'm loving learning about it!
 
I only recently upgraded to 1.7 and so far I haven't experienced any signal issues. But the issues in general seem to be trending less frequent. I'm starting to think this thing is just more sensitive than I realized. Lots of things to calibrate and care for; to pay attention to. Things that can be just slightly off and make a noticeable difference. I'm loving learning about it!

These are amazing machines and there's a lot of cutting edge technology. I've been flying DJI multirotors for several years and I still learn something new every day. You mentioned it drifts around, have you calibrated the compass?
 
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Hi!
I've had my Inspire 1 for a month now and it is not as stable or intelligent as I was expecting it to be. I'd never even seen a drone in person before Oct 29 and knew very little about them so I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or if my unit is faulty. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out which it is.

I'm pretty sure that the Inspire 1 was advertised to have a Vision Positioning System capable of holding the drone in position indoors without GPS. I've flown mine indoors twice and both times it has drifted badly and scared me greatly. Outdoors with GPS it drifts around in something like a 5' cube. Is it normal for it drift that much?

I was under the impression when I bought it that it would avoid obstacles in certain flight modes but I can't see any indication that it's going to do that in the GO app except in the RTH altitude setting where it specifically says that it will NOT avoid obstacles while returning to home. I noticed today the Inspire 2 is advertised to have this capability.

Neither the 'follow' gimbal mode nor the 'follow me' flight mode do anything at all. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the app or a problem with the drone. I saw someone say this is a problem with the GPS unit in the controller.

I've asked DJI about this but they said my Galaxy s7 isn't supported and that I needed to buy a supported device. I broke down over the weekend and bought an iPad Air 2 (but unfortunately didn't discover until after I made the purchase that the WiFi model didn't have GPS) which will be here in about a week but I'm skeptical that it's going to fix these problems. I just tonight learned about Autopilot and that it will likely help me with some of these issues. I plan to buy it once the iPad gets here.

But still, it just seems like the drone isn't quite 'right,' you know?

Thanks for any input!

Dave
Hi Dave,

Try recalibrating the IMU. I use a sprit level to make certain it's perfectly level and use different thicknesses of newspaper to shim under each leg, to make sure. Also remember to do the calibration when the AC is cold. Don't try to calibrate when the AC has been on for over five minutes. Do not touch the AC or cause any vibration to the surface that it's on, while the calibration is taking place. Lastly, check the sensor values. When the app is open, touch the three dots. (Top right of the screen.) Touch the AC symbol, top left. Scroll down to "advanced settings" then touch "sensors". On the second line called "acceleration" the mod value should be between .99 and 1.01. Not saying it's the answer to your problem but it never hurts to confirm.

Al
 

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