Guys,

Yesterday i travelled from Europe to Peru (Lima) to film a wedding. While testing my equipment, i could not get the compass sensor of my MA calibrated. I tried inside, outside, and various (10+) different locations within a radius of 10 miles. Without success. In Europe i never had a problem and was always successfull after the first try, so i know how to perform the calibration properly.

User arg_tigger posted exactly the same issue that i experience before in post: https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... 778&pid=1499698

Do you guys have tips to:

• perform a hard reset to (re)initialize the MA within Peru?
• somehow force or ignore the compass calibration so i can (manually) fly the drone to get some basic shots?
• other related tips and tricks?
  

Any advise would be helpful. The wedding is within 24 hours, and i'm still overthinking a emergency plan.

Best, Pjotr

I live in Chile.  Out of the box Mavic Air would not compass calibrate whatever we did.  Brought it back to California with the intention to return it.  Quick test and it calibrated.  Brought is back to Chile.  It needs calibration every flight.  But it calibrates.   From another post I saw if you download the DJI Assitant SW and *reload* the latest firmware it solves compass calibration issues.  A long shot but worth it.  I have just done that but won't have the results until tomorrow.
Best of luck in the wedding.

Saludos
Abu(elo)

Abu Abú Posted at 2018-8-17 17:40
I live in Chile.  Out of the box Mavic Air would not compass calibrate whatever we did.  Brought it back to California with the intention to return it.  Quick test and it calibrated.  Brought is back to Chile.  It needs calibration every flight.  But it calibrates.   From another post I saw if you download the DJI Assitant SW and *reload* the latest firmware it solves compass calibration issues.  A long shot but worth it.  I have just done that but won't have the results until tomorrow.
Best of luck in the wedding.

Thanks for the tip. Just tried reloading the firmware using DJI Assistant 2 and USB-C cable. Without succes, i still cannot calibrate the compass sensor. The compass interference is still more than 700 in the Advanced menu.

I also tried a Factory Reset without success.

Do they run their power lines underground?

This seems really strange to me. I doubt the North/South Hemisphere problem, cause i personally have travelled within a year ( with Spark, not MA) from Latvia ( Northern Hemisphere) to South Africa, Maldives and Thailand and in no one country Spark asked for compass calibration and i never done this, notwithstanding big travel distances and had successful experience with it.
Maybe this is specific MA problem?

LordoftheFlies Posted at 2018-8-17 19:58
Do they run their power lines underground?

Could be the case, but i also tried some large fields without any power lines under or above ground. Also in Europe the ground is full of power lines and i never had a problem there.

After hours of walking around, i found a round cage made of metal on a children's playground. Inside that object i was able to calibrate the drone! I think it's like a faraday cage. :-)

I am hoping that i don't have to walk to the playground every time i want to take off the MA...

Pjotr2382 Posted at 2018-8-18 07:58
After hours of walking around, i found a round cage made of metal on a children's playground. Inside that object i was able to calibrate the drone! I think it's like a faraday cage. :-)

I am hoping that i don't have to walk to the playground every time i want to take off the MA...

Dude that's crazy.

Nope. My firmware reload didn't work. It flew once and now repeatedly requests and fails to compass calibrate.  Annoying.
Gald you got yours up and running.  

I get this frequently with my MA, I think there is something wrong with the hardware design or firmware on these things.

Pjotr

Follow up. I found another post which suggests keep the Mavic Air upright (ie do not turn it upside down), level and stable when turning it on. I tried this after a long frustrating day of three flights with 10s of requests to recalibrate the compass. So far it has worked 100% of the time. It’s dark now so further testing tomorrow. But it looks like it is SOLVED.  
(Interested in your feedback).