I am a novis and would like feedback on settings to fly over turbulent water. I have a P4P and would like to fly over a fish ladder the water is white coming over the
ladder and where there is no turbulence the water is dark green in color. Altitude will be anywares from 10ft to the 50ft. any experience flyers input would be
appreciated.

Some people say that being low over water the downward positiong system has problems.
I fly a lot over water and only once had a problem around 3 feet above.
The drone was slighly descending (downward positioning system was on). So i keep it off now when flying real low.
In addition to this I would recommend to fly in Tripod mode in your situation.

Great, thanks for the tip, I haven't flown over water yet but when the weather gets better here I am going to try it. Listening to everybody's input and then I will go from there experience.

The downward position system looks for patterns and tries to hold onto these to achieve stability.
When those patterns move the drone will move as well. Check also the manual. It's being described there.

An interesting demonstration is here. Seems that on a P4 the vision system cannot be deactivated via the app.

Thanks for the video very well done. I hope I have more comments.

Eric13 Posted at 2017-5-1 09:33
The downward position system looks for patterns and tries to hold onto these to achieve stability.
When those patterns move the drone will move as well. Check also the manual. It's being described there.

Without seeing the video (I'm not at home currently), VPS can be turned off under 'Visual Navigation Settings'/'Advanced Settings'/'Enable Visual Positioning'.

Anyway, I fly over water often without turning VPS off. But then I don't go within 10m of the surface, which is where is starts to operate effectively. Otherwise it's more than just patterns it looks for - the ultrasonic sensors need to bounce off something also, so we're also talking surfaces which are non-reflective and which don't absorb sound for 100% reliability.

The VPS does not work on reflective and soft surfaces like water. Flying that low to the water would not be recommended.

DJI-Jamie Posted at 2017-5-1 19:44
The VPS does not work on reflective and soft surfaces like water. Flying that low to the water would not be recommended.

Hey Jamie. Just to clarify, my understanding is not that it doesn't work close to water, but that it isn't reliable. If that's correct, that's an important differentiation, as I've heard stories of the craft actually descending into water as it's trying to work out where the surface is (unsuccessfully, it seems).
So the bottom line sounds like you turn VPS off if you plan on taking the risk of flying closer than 10m. Correct?

Turbulent water can produce signal scatter, so be careful

Punchbuggy Posted at 2017-5-1 21:31
Hey Jamie. Just to clarify, my understanding is not that it doesn't work close to water, but that it isn't reliable. If that's correct, that's an important differentiation, as I've heard stories of the craft actually descending into water as it's trying to work out where the surface is (unsuccessfully, it seems).
So the bottom line sounds like you turn VPS off if you plan on taking the risk of flying closer than 10m. Correct?

I suppose "less reliable" would be a better term, as the VPS will try to read the water's surface when it's enabled with poor results. Disabling the VPS will alleviate the drops from happening, but flying under 10m will mean that evey stick command would be paramount to its survival. You won't have a lot of room for error if you're not paying attention.