Jack Cutrone
 lvl.1
Flight distance : 86227 ft
United States
Offline
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I have been using the Trackmo on my Mavic Pro and have been happy with it. Let me share an experience with you that shows its value as well as that of DJI care.
Over a year ago, I was flying my MP toward a grove of trees in a nearby forest preserve. After 3 minutes of flight with 85% battery, at an altitude of 365 feet and at about 16mph it suddenly lost all power. I posted on Mavicpilots.com and some very knowledgeable people helped by showing the likely crash site from the DJI Go4 app on my iPad. It crashed in a dense grove of trees when they were fully leafed. The probable location was just not definitive enough to allow me to locate the drone. They suggested that given the absolute and sudden loss of power from a nearly full battery that I probably had not fully latched the battery and that it just ejected from the aircraft. I searched for it for weeks and weeks with no success. I kept looking up into the leaf canopy but could not find a dull, grey object in the branches which were also grey. I started a DJI Care claim but they would not honor it without me sending back the MP. Catch 22. After two hellacious wind storms I went back and got extremely lucky and found it in a creek that runs through the woods. I had searched that creek several times before and the MP was not there so I conclude that the windstorm knocked it out of the tree and into the creek. When I recovered the sodden drone, the battery was still firmly in place. So, it will forever reman a mystery why it suddenly shut down completely.
After this experience using the Go4 App records and not being able to find it, I opted for the most protection I could think of. I got a Trackimo, a Tile bluetooth keyfinder and a small strobe. I also put a number of different colored strips of florescent tape on the MP, all to increase visibility. I sent the crashed drone into DJI and for about $100 got a rebuilt drone form DJI. Luckily I did not have to make another claim before the Care period ran out. So I saved about $500 by having the insurance.
I was careful to mount all the items where they would not interfere with the compass or the signal to the drone. I bought one of those 3d printed plastic mounts for the Trackimo, mounted the Tile with
Velcro to the back of the battery and mounted the strobe at the back of the body. I also bought and mounted a set of florescent orange Styrofoam balls on each leg of the type that will keep the MP afloat if it crashes into water but did this mostly for added visibility. From knowing where the antenna and compasses were, the locations seemed to create the least possibility of interference. I have flown many flights in that configuration with no problem. The weight was not significant and did not noticeably reduce flight time and the gyros in the MP took care of any balance problem.
Then about a month ago, I started having issues - compass errors, compass redundancy errors, wireless interference, yaw errors and IMU errors, none of which I had before. I have been trying to figure out what is causing the errors. I did a compass calibration just before the first flight with problems and every flight at a new location since. I will add that I did a firmware update just before the problem flight. I did a number of test flights at my RC flying field which has no possible source of magnetic error or electrical interference and still got those problems. I started a thread on Mavicpilots.com: https://mavicpilots.com/threads/ ... g-strangely.102991/ if you are interested.
Some knowledgeable people there have been helping me try to sort this out. Most suggested that one or more of the add-ons were the likely cause of the problem (which doesn't explain the many flights I have had without any issues before) and they suggested also that I do an IMU calibration which I did. I have only done a few test flights since the calibration. The first three were without any equipment whatsoever. I experienced no problem. I then mounted the Trackimo only in the plastic holder. I got several compass errors. I removed the Trackimo and flew it without errors. Which is suggestive of the Trackimo being at least one source of issues. However, that is not enough data to come to any reliable conclusion. It also begs the question of why I never had problems in dozens and dozens of flights with the Trackimo mounted. I will do a lot more test flights with and without the external equipment and also will try rolling back the firmware to what it was before I started having problems.
At any rate, in trying to answer the question of whether Trackimo can cause compass errors I searched and found this thread. I decided to post here to address some of the questions that were raised.
I also noticed that one of the first posts said that some people were experiencing problems with the Trackimo causing interference when mounted as I have it mounted and am going to messaged that poster for more information. |
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lvl.4
Second Officer
Captain
