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Flying drone in high latitudes

bndnchrs

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Hey folks, I do a lot of flying of my Mavic in polar regions - specifically in Northern Canada, where we're quite close to the magnetic north pole.

For a couple years I've been making surface mosaics flying in a grid (like w/ Pix4D or similar). Problem is any quick movements or breezes knock the drone out of GPS mode and into ATTI, which I'm assuming is because of the compass flipping out. I've gotten quite good at controlling in these weird areas without stabilization, flying my own grid and stitching later. I'm doing large mosaics at high elevations so these are full 20-25 minute flights over a few square km. It is very hard in wind!

However, after being pointed to this form I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts for how I might eliminate this GPS problem or abate it. Perhaps a firmware downgrade, or some other change to the sensors. For example, any 3rd party software that might control via the output imagery, etc.
 
Hey folks, I do a lot of flying of my Mavic in polar regions - specifically in Northern Canada, where we're quite close to the magnetic north pole.

For a couple years I've been making surface mosaics flying in a grid (like w/ Pix4D or similar). Problem is any quick movements or breezes knock the drone out of GPS mode and into ATTI, which I'm assuming is because of the compass flipping out. I've gotten quite good at controlling in these weird areas without stabilization, flying my own grid and stitching later. I'm doing large mosaics at high elevations so these are full 20-25 minute flights over a few square km. It is very hard in wind!

However, after being pointed to this form I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts for how I might eliminate this GPS problem or abate it. Perhaps a firmware downgrade, or some other change to the sensors. For example, any 3rd party software that might control via the output imagery, etc.

It's most likely caused by the very large magnetic field inclination at those latitudes, combined with a significant declination, making it difficult to use the earth's magnetic field to determine north. That's going to present quite a challenge to the sensor fusion scheme, and trigger the FC to switch into ATTI mode more often. I'm not really sure what you can do about that - it's a fundamental geometry problem that impacts the flight control algorithms at the most basic level.
 
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i think i read some where some one modded thier bird so they used the sport mode switch to a atti/gps switch instead, is that what u are asking?
 
i think i read some where some one modded thier bird so they used the sport mode switch to a atti/gps switch instead, is that what u are asking?

That would be an alternative approach to the problem, and it's an easy modification to make, but I think the OP was really asking how to avoid the drops into ATTI rather than how to switch it deliberately.
 
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