Warning! Camera Interfering with GPS lock

Hi All,

Just a quick heads-up for those of you flying with an onboard camera and using GPS. I use a gopro with no problems, it doesn't seem to interfere with anything.

However today I decided to try a different cam 

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=17200

I did a quick auto flight without the camera, everything went beautifully well, so i decided to do an onboard video for your viewing pleasure. 

I turned the camera on, tried a loiter and it just wandered. I checked the mission planner - NO GPS FIX!?!?!?

What? I've just done an autoflight perfectly.

Thankfully before i stripped it all down my helpful friend pointed out that the only thing that i had changed was the camera - so i took it off and hey presto - a instant full 3D fix. This must be one hell of a noisy camera!

Watch this! 

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  • I was wondering why sometimes my GPS was fine and sometimes it would not arm. I finally guessed it was related to whether or not the HK720 camera was on or off, sure enough. Must be a very noisy camera. I may experiment with aluminum foil and moving the GPSs higher away.

  • I just flew again today after theorizing of maybe just having some nice video shots in atti mode and NOT GPS atti....it worked just fine.....I did dare go into GPS and never RTH....good video..Ill upload the youtube vid of it...and put a link...of just flying in atti mode....some of you maybe allready know...just thought It would help some being bummed out with their aicrafts in the air and wanted to shoot some video

  • sir dont be a "mean bean"....I resolved the issue myself

    • I am not mean,always try to help when I can, unfortunately I do not know DJI and I guess on dji forum u get better answers....try RCGroups too

  • Developer

    I wrapped My HK HD wing camera with copper foil and keep it 10 cm below ublox LEA5 (with Sarentel QF ant) HDOP remains Good at 1.5 . (My camera sometimes has color bars when I record, it really is a poor camera!, I was lucky to find a GoPro 3 Black at Pawn shop for $150 with 90 day return! works a charm... Cheers

  • Maybe here you can find some usefool links about EMF shilding...remember, you need to wrap camera completely,think of it as u do waterproofing,any hole in shield will be point where EMF RF can enter

    http://www.lessemf.com/fabric.html

    and I use this

    http://www.aaronia.com/products/shielding-screening/

    Mobius camera is worst of them all....

    Electromagnetic Field Shielding Fabrics
    Make You Own EMF Shields With These Unique Fabrics
  • I can confirm that.

    I had a plane about 2 years ago and had the same issues with the 720P wingcam. It has an efficient jam-range of about 10-15cm. Looking at it with a spectrum analyzer (DVB-T stick) confirmed a massive noise spectrum coming out of it.

    Edit: I was using an uBlox NEO-6, not the 3DR LEA-6.

  • For those of you with the wing camera you may want to try encasing the camera in either a copper or aluminum foil. I had the same problem with my go pro 3. I encased it with aluminum and aluminum duck tape and I get a good gps lock.The other thing is get the camera as far away from the gps antenna as possible. If you double the distance of the camera from gps then you will reduce the interference to 1/4 of the original location. Finally practice putting your aircraft back to stabilize mode. 

  • Cameras are well known source of RF noise. Keep Rx's separated from Tx's. Frequencies of Tx should be higher than freq of Rxs. That way, no harmonics will get you. Most Rx front ends can be swamped be any frequency that is high power and close by. Inverse square law is your friend, use it. ESC and Cameras two big sources of noise.

    • So what do we need to do with these wing cams from HK?.....not use them?......thats my best idea for now.....or can we mount it lower below the deck......I may try to do a calibration that way...doubt it will work, compared to the significantly bad results we are getting so far

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