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  4. MRO m10038 heading drift woes

MRO m10038 heading drift woes

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  • wilkinsafW Offline
    wilkinsafW Offline
    wilkinsaf
    ModalAI Team
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    Hello,

    We are using the MRO m10038 GPS unit with mag. We are getting a lot of heading drift which is causing the drone to be quit unstable/not flyable.

    ModalAI had recommended us to use the mRO line of products. Is there a setting/configuration that we can use to get this compass wandering down?

    Thank you

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    • Chad SweetC Offline
      Chad SweetC Offline
      Chad Sweet
      ModalAI Team
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      We have tested connectivity with the mro GPS, but do not have much flight time. Generally though compass performance comes down to a few things:

      1. Calibration
      2. Proximity to magnetic interference. Both the motors and the high-speed electronics are common sources of magnetic interference.

      Do you have the magnetometer mounted far enough away from the motors and electronics?

      wilkinsafW 2 Replies Last reply
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      • Chad SweetC Chad Sweet

        We have tested connectivity with the mro GPS, but do not have much flight time. Generally though compass performance comes down to a few things:

        1. Calibration
        2. Proximity to magnetic interference. Both the motors and the high-speed electronics are common sources of magnetic interference.

        Do you have the magnetometer mounted far enough away from the motors and electronics?

        wilkinsafW Offline
        wilkinsafW Offline
        wilkinsaf
        ModalAI Team
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        @Chad-Sweet Because of our airframe we are a bit closer than we would like to be. However, we have been trying to use mu-metal to block out interference with limited success.

        When we try to place the mu-metal a half-inch beneath the mag and calibrate we get "large offset" errors.

        We have tested on another flight controller and have not seen the same drift issues. That is why we are thinking it is interference.

        However, it is so bad we can not even take off and keep position.

        Is there anything on the VOXL Flight, Microhard, or stereo, tof, hires camera, that we should be shielding?

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        • Chad SweetC Chad Sweet

          We have tested connectivity with the mro GPS, but do not have much flight time. Generally though compass performance comes down to a few things:

          1. Calibration
          2. Proximity to magnetic interference. Both the motors and the high-speed electronics are common sources of magnetic interference.

          Do you have the magnetometer mounted far enough away from the motors and electronics?

          wilkinsafW Offline
          wilkinsafW Offline
          wilkinsaf
          ModalAI Team
          wrote on last edited by
          #4

          @Chad-Sweet We have VIO on the voxl turned on, but our EKF2 is set to only pay attention to GPS (bitmask 1).

          Could our VIO still be feeding yaw and messing up the heading?

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          • wilkinsafW Offline
            wilkinsafW Offline
            wilkinsaf
            ModalAI Team
            wrote on last edited by
            #5

            So, here is how we solved our issue.
            Even though EKF2 bitmask was set to only listen to GPS, heading still appeared to take VIO into consideration.

            After turning off VIO on VOXL we got MUCH better readings. Then, after we realized this, we changed out bitmask to 329 (which is in the instructions for flying outdoors without GPS here: https://docs.modalai.com/flying-without-gps/

            So, our problem appears to be resolved right now. We just need to test repeatability for this solution

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