Hi everyone,
This might be a dumb question. According to the IRIS operation manual and from what I've read in most discussions, the WiFi capabilities on the GoPro have to be turned off. I'm wondering if this true for both manual and automatic flights?
Thank you,
Kate
Replies
Since my tablet doesn't have data, I have been tethering my cell phone and connecting my tablet to it via wifi, my tablet is mounted on a bracket on the transmitter. I have to imagine this is just as bad as having the wi-fi on the GoPro. I am not sure and the reason I ask is because I notice very spastic changes in signal strength when the Iris + and I were stationary.
The difference is that if the GoPro WiFi is on, the interference is at your IRIS. As the signal gets weaker between the IRIS and your transmitter, the likelihood of interference from the WiFi increases. With you using WiFi from your phone to you tablet, your WiFi interference is known and less likely to change over your flying session.
So I'd say the risks are greater when the GoPro WiFi is active. It doesn't mean that the risks go away completely, as you have noticed, with the fluctuations in signal at your ground station.
Generally the approach I've seen (but not tried myself yet) is to have the gopro feed video to a FPV setup on a different band. 900Mhz or 1.2Ghz or even 5Ghz (although looking out for harmonic interference would be wise in any case, regardless of band separation).
WiFi needs to be OFF, or bad things will happen. WiFi and your RC transmitter / receiver both operate on the 2.4GHz band, so if WiFi is on you'll make it harder for your Rx and Tx to communicate, hence how people loose their UAVs.
The receiver inside iris has failsafe capability if it loses the signal. If you set the failsafe so that Iris will RTL on signal loss, you shouldn't lose it, even if the WIFI is turned on. My Iris didnt have this enabled by default, but now I can completely turn off my transmitter and the Iris will simply fly back to me and land. IMHO, this is a critical setup step and should be done before flying anywhere near the max range of the transmitter, which lets face it... that why you bought a quad with an autopilot!
http://ardupilot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=6639
Hi Mike,
I didn't know much about configuring the fail safe operations until I investigated with the link you provided. After going through them with the mission planner, it seemed like most of mine were already set up... right now I'm having issues with the throttle fail safe though. Whenever I turn my transmitter off, not only does my channel 3 PWM remain the same, but my IRIS does not blink yellow to notify a loss of the RC signal. Does this issue sound familiar to you at all?
Thank you!
Yes, please turn the WiFi of the GoPro off or your UAV will have a mind of its own. I almost had a catastrophic event with that issue. The WiFi was originally off but I turned it on accidentally while on the gimbal (there is a little button on the side of the GoPro that turns the WiFi on). There are many videos online of people losing their UAVs due to the GoPro WiFi.
Darn, sorry that happened. Noted. Thank you, Eric!