DJI Gimbal Calibration. the Copter Fills the Horizon. How to Be?

Some­times there are sit­u­a­tions when, when shoot­ing from a copter, the hori­zon “col­laps­es”. The effect is not fatal, but unpleas­ant, spoil­ing the pic­ture and atti­tude to shoot­ing. The DJI X5 and X7 cam­eras allow this effect to be delib­er­ate­ly achieved with dynam­ic shoot­ing, but in this case it is a jus­ti­fied step.

In some cas­es, prob­lems arise due to errors in set­ting the gim­bal for new drones, and in some sit­u­a­tions, there are no vis­i­ble rea­sons for the appear­ance of such a prob­lem. Cal­i­bra­tion allows you to elim­i­nate a defect in the pic­ture, which almost every per­son can do on their own at home.

DJI Gimbal Calibration

In gen­er­al, the cal­i­bra­tion pro­ce­dure is iden­ti­cal for most DJI quad­copters, includ­ing the Mav­ic series and the Phan­tom fam­i­ly.

Sim­ple cal­i­bra­tion requires you to turn on the air­craft and remote con­troller, con­nect to the remote con­troller via your smart­phone, and turn on the DJI Go 4 app.

After enter­ing the cam­era win­dow, you must click on the image of the ellip­sis (upper right cor­ner)

In the drop-down menu, select the option “sus­pen­sion”

In this sub­menu, the line “Cal­i­brate Gim­bal” is select­ed

Cal­i­bra­tion requires the copter to be on a lev­el, sta­ble sur­face that does not wob­ble.

After the cal­i­bra­tion is done, you need to reboot the quadro­copter.

In the absence of a pos­i­tive result, the prob­lem may lie in the accel­er­a­tor that was dam­aged ear­li­er. It, in turn, can affect the IMU. Its cal­i­bra­tion is rec­om­mend­ed even if the sys­tem does not warn about the pres­ence of prob­lems in this ele­ment.

Calibrating Inertial Measurement Sensors (IMUs)

Cal­i­bra­tion is car­ried out on a flat sur­face. The process begins sim­i­lar­ly to the pre­vi­ous option, by select­ing the three dots in the cor­ner of the screen.

The top­most sub-item in the form of a copter is select­ed

In the pro­posed list, the action “Advanced Set­tings” is select­ed

Next, select the sub-item of the new menu “Sen­sors State”

Under the val­ues ​​of each of the sen­sors there is a but­ton “IMU Cal­i­bra­tion”

Next, the user is required to exe­cute com­mands prompts dis­played by the sys­tem on the cam­era screen.

Upon com­ple­tion of the cal­i­bra­tion, the drone will reboot.

Calibration did not change the situation

Hori­zon obstruc­tion can occur when the copter is turn­ing in flight. Some­times, the cam­era is ini­tial­ly installed with an incli­na­tion to one side, and even with a straight move­ment it gives a block­age.

In such a sit­u­a­tion, prob­lems may lie in the cor­rect oper­a­tion of the com­pass, which is respon­si­ble for the accu­ra­cy of deter­min­ing the direc­tion. It can fail for var­i­ous rea­sons, for exam­ple, due to met­al being locat­ed close to each oth­er, prox­im­i­ty to a car sub­woofer, or oth­er cir­cum­stances.

The com­pass can also be self-cal­i­brat­ed. This will require a waste­land devoid of met­al objects. Met­al, if pos­si­ble, should not be on a per­son (rings, chains, watch­es). It is required to turn on the drone, con­nect to the con­trol via a smart­phone, select the ellip­sis in the cor­ner of the screen.

In the menu that appears, click on the quadro­copter (first in the list)

Select “Advanced set­tings” from the list

In the next sub­menu, select the option “Sen­sors state”

Then click “Com­pass” — “Cal­i­brate Com­pass”.

After that, you only need to fol­low the prompts dis­played on the screen. If suc­cess­ful, it will start flash­ing green. A red flash will indi­cate a failed attempt. It can be repeat­ed in an iden­ti­cal way, but mov­ing even fur­ther away from any met­al objects, so as not to knock down the fine set­tings.

If this does not help, you will need to reset the com­pass. This pro­ce­dure requires the use of spe­cial equip­ment, so for its imple­men­ta­tion you will need to con­tact our ser­vice cen­ter. This pro­ce­dure is car­ried out free of charge, and the own­er of the copter is only required to go through a pre­lim­i­nary appoint­ment using a phone or e‑mail.

Other causes of gimbal instability

The so-called “hori­zon col­lapse” in dynam­ic turns is also wide­spread. It is almost impos­si­ble to com­plete­ly get rid of such a prob­lem, and cal­i­bra­tion will only reduce the size of the effect, mak­ing it less vis­i­ble. In this case, there are two sit­u­a­tions: a flat hori­zon in place with a lit­tered one. In the lat­ter case, mechan­i­cal dam­age may be the cause of the prob­lems, so the drone should be shown to ser­vice spe­cial­ists who will check it and, if nec­es­sary, car­ry out the nec­es­sary repairs.

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