Hello ModalAI Support,

We received 4 Starling 2 Max drones in March, and overall we’re very satisfied with their indoor performance. However, we are encountering serious GPS issues during outdoor experiments.

Despite conducting tests in open-sky environments, the drones often receive very few GPS satellite signals, and this doesn’t improve even after extended periods outside. We tried connecting the GPS receiver via USB-to-serial and observed that the number of satellites changes erratically between 0 and 9, making the GPS readings unstable and insufficient for flight.

Additionally, the pose estimation is highly inaccurate, especially in the Z-axis, where altitude values are unstable, sometimes increasing rapidly or remaining non-negative even on the ground. This is preventing us from taking off and from testing our algorithms.

After reviewing other forum discussions, it seems that electromagnetic interference (EMI) may be contributing to the problem. Based on those suggestions, we would like to move the GPS unit to the top of the drone, but for this we require the updated GPS support mount.

Could you please add us to the list of recipients for the new GPS support?

@Alex-Kushleyev – we would really appreciate your help in debugging this issue and facilitating the hardware update. We are working under a tight deadline, and at the moment, the drones are not operational outdoors due to this GPS instability.

Thank you very much for your support.

Sara