Low number of GPS satellites
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I have two sentinels side by side. One gets almost 20 satellites while the other gets 5-7 much slower. This other drone did not used to have this issue and I am unsure what caused it. Could the answer be anything but hardware? Is there any troubleshooting for this?
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@groupo any traction?
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@groupo We have never encountered a situation where it was working well and then suddenly started working poorly. I would also guess that it is some sort of hardware issue unless there is a new source of interference. WiFi and RC RF signals can cause issues so if they weren't being used before but are now then that could help explain it.
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@Eric-Katzfey that’s what I figured… I’ve used the drone before with both WiFi and the RC link and not had this issue. Can we purchase a new GPS antenna and install ourselves? Or is this something we’d have to send back for? I traced the wires and doesn’t look as simple and plug in a new one
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@groupo USB3 operating is also a known interferer for GNSS signals, since there is a sub-harmonic rate right at 1.25GHz that can bleed into the GPS band of 1.57GHz.
Do you have any extra peripherals plugged in and operating now as Eric pointed out?I'd really start with any changes (or crashes) that were recently made (occurred). Neither HW nor SW should just "suddenly stop" working. Something must have changed, unless you had a latent ESD event now rear it's ugly head from a new power cycle/reboot.
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@Vinny thanks for the info. I will dig into this some more. I thought when I was testing I did not have the USB-C connected but I will do another test to confirm. I will also reflash afterwards to see if that improves anything. I started thinking about the hardware suddenly stopping because these drones are constantly being moved around in the pelican and the GPS antenna is always moved to and from its holder. Thought me or someone else could have damaged the wiring.
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@Vinny actually speaking of SW changes, this drone did brick and I had to go through the entire QDL process. The GPS issue was reported to me before I noticed it was bricked but obviously has persisted even after a clean wipe. Previously, I had only bricked them when I lost power during a flash. I have no idea what could have caused this brick… I don’t think that could be ESD related though?
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@Vinny I had to QDL the drone again. I am not sure why this is happening. The first time was extremely obvious but these last two I am not sure what has went wrong. I will be extremely explicit about 'poweroff -f' going forward. Anyway I wiped and flashed it again. I am getting 13 satellites on one now and 20 on the other. This is obviously an improvement. A theory I had is maybe they are looking at different constellations? that would not make sense as I just wiped the 'bad' drone and do not recall ever seeing an option to change the constellation, let alone changing it. I asked earlier.... if I cannot resolve this can we either order a new antenna or send the drone back to have the antenna swapped? I am worried our pilots will not fly if the GPS is sub-optimal
