Flying indoor: MA is unstable

[Jhun80]

My dji spark was very stable when i hover it inside the house, but when i use my MA, it is not stable. Do i have to turn off the sensors? Because somehow it detects that its closed to an object etc.

 

[TroutboyNZ]

Flew mine inside today and was amazed how stable it was! Far more than the Mavic Pro, need good light, and preferably a pattern for the vision sensors to lock onto (although my carpet is plain) but the sensors would not let it go far at all, was amazed it hovered soooo steady!

 

[synaesthesia]

My dji spark was very stable when i hover it inside the house, but when i use my MA, it is not stable. Do i have to turn off the sensors? Because somehow it detects that its closed to an object etc.

What do you mean by it's not stable?

The sensors will prevent you from flying near other objects so if you find you can't fly it in enclosed spaces then yes you'll need to turn them off but with them off there is nothing stopping you from crashing it into a wall.

 

[Jhun80]

What do you mean by it's not stable?

The sensors will prevent you from flying near other objects so if you find you can't fly it in enclosed spaces then yes you'll need to turn them off but with them off there is nothing stopping you from crashing it into a wall.

It just keeps moving

 

[synaesthesia]

Basically you have three levels of stability depending on which sensors are contributing/working/had time to detect satellites. To manage expectations you shouldn't be expecting the drone to hold position 100% perfectly under any condition and there will always be slight movement even with the strongest GPS lock and best light.

If the drone is in attitude mode (which will show up as ATTI on the mobile device) then the drone is not relying on sensors for stability and is expecting you to fly it completely manually. As such it will always keep moving, since it's not locked in place and you're flying it. Since you've said won't let you fly into things I'm going to assume that you were not in attitude mode.

The next level up is OPTI (optical) mode, which is still not GPS locked. Optical mode uses the visual sensors on the front/back/bottom to determine the drones location and attempt to hold that location on conjunction with the sensors in the IMU and compass. It's extremely dependant on light quality and you can go from relatively stable flight to crashing simply by turning off the lights. Also if you have not properly calibrated the IMU and compass or either experiences a large amount of interference during operation, it is possible to drop down to ATTI mode with nothing more than your remote controller stating "ATTI mode". Likewise if they're not fully calibrated or incorrectly calibrated this will also impact the stability of flight.

The last mode is GPS mode. If the drone has GPS lock and enough light for the sensors it will still not hold a perfectly stationary position but will largely hold it's current location and altitude unless acted on by an outside force. It will also correct its position for wind or other outside forces.

 

[Jhun80]

Thank you. Can i manually switch between these modes?

 

[synaesthesia]

Not as far as I'm aware with the Mavic Air, you can with the other DJI drones though. With the Mavic Air I'm pretty sure it's all driven by failure states, that is - based on which sensors are available and which ones are failing. I'm sure somebody will correct me if I've got this wrong:

GPS mode is the preferred flight mode for this drone.

GPS mode fails to Optical mode if the GPS signal is insufficient (ie: you're indoors or between tall buildings).

Optical mode fails over to Attitude mode if the light conditions are too poor for the optical sensors to work.

If the compass or IMU fails (due to very high interference) in GPS mode or Optical mode it will fail over to Attitude mode.