Never calibrated IMU nor compass and after 20+ flights it's all good, but?

[Vilco]

I never calibrated none so I'm guessing this: am I simply lucky that I always had good GPS signal because without GPS I would have an unstable bird? Or maybe things are just fine like this?
I ask it because I live on the opposite side of the world in recpect to where this bird got calibrated.
I had some 20 flights with this mavic all flawless, but it always was under good gps, but then I think the mavic should have signaled to me if there were conflicting infos between the compass and the gps, isn't it?
Share some light, plz

 

[msinger]

I think the mavic should have signaled to me if there were conflicting infos between the compass and the gps

It'll signal you by auto switching to ATTI mode. At that point, it'll still maintain a steady hover, but will drift horizontally with the wind.

 

[Vilco]

It'll signal you by auto switching to ATTI mode. At that point, it'll still maintain a steady hover, but will drift horizontally with the wind.

Even with a China calibrated compass? Glad for this, so one can drive it back

 

[halley]

The Mavic knows where it is on the globe with the GPS, and from there it knows how to compensate for different parts of the globe when considering true north vs magnetic north compass readings. It only needs a moment of GPS lock to update this compensation factor. If you traveled 6000 km away, unpacked your Mavic and flew without ever having any GPS lock, then it would surely be confused by the magnetic error and may drift more aggressively, or tell you on-screen to calibrate your compass. If you acquire GPS lock but lose GPS mid-flight, then as @msinger says above, it won't be too confused about compass error but it will be less able to hold position and will drift.

 

[Robbyg]

The Mavic knows where it is on the globe with the GPS, and from there it knows how to compensate for different parts of the globe when considering true north vs magnetic north compass readings. It only needs a moment of GPS lock to update this compensation factor.

Are you 100% sure about this?
I have never calibrated my IMU but I have done compass calibration twice. As you can see I am not a big believer in calibrations unless you have a crash. Your statement sounds plausible but the earths magnetic fields are not uniform in deviation from location to location and they change year by year. So in order to do what your saying they would need a lookup table. Are you sure that it really uses GPS to compensate?

Rob

 

[halley]

Are you 100% sure about this?

I am not 100% sure about this as I don't know the Mavic's magnetic compass chipset, but it would be very consistent with other aerospace and consumer devices that combine GPS and magnetic compass chipsets. The early days would require a lot of software on the host device to do this math (and many would just punt), but now the compass modules just do this. The lookup is probably not very fine, it won't have errors for nearby mountains, but the flight system will have to compensate for this kind of error anyway. It's only when the front compass and the back compass disagree that the Mavic seems to have a problem, which indicates a very local distortion.

 

[triumphrider]

I've made 20+ flights between New York and California, haven't calibrated anything, ever.
I haven't been alerted to do so by the app, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

[SafariMan]

I never calibrated none so I'm guessing this: am I simply lucky that I always had good GPS signal because without GPS I would have an unstable bird? Or maybe things are just fine like this?
I ask it because I live on the opposite side of the world in recpect to where this bird got calibrated.
I had some 20 flights with this mavic all flawless, but it always was under good gps, but then I think the mavic should have signaled to me if there were conflicting infos between the compass and the gps, isn't it?
Share some light, plz

I live on the same part of the world as you and only calibrated once the compass when the app told me to do it.
If I'm not prompted to calibrate i just dont do it. (Already had more than 40 flights with zero problems, i like the Mavic a lot)
Only exceptions would be if i had a crash or if i move to a different country