So, I have made a few post on here about some of the issues I have had. Mainly app crashes and the solo disconnecting from the controller. I even called support talked to an engineer and was ready to send it back. I am an RF engineer and could speak intelligently to the 3DR engineer and we agreed on a few tests before I return it.
Today i was able to get to a really big field (prior to this I was flying on my 5 acres of land but it has a lot of trees). Here are my findings. First, if you don't already know, touching the flight info bar in the app give you extended info including your RSSI level to the craft in db. I wanted a baseline from 3dr of what I should experience with no interference. The engineer said to fly the craft out about 30ft away and go up to about 20ft elevation and yaw the copter around all four sides. You should not see an rssi below -55db.
So I brought out my spectrum analyzer and found that the 2.4Ghz band had a noise floor of around -89db where I was and that there were no devices in the area breaking the noise floor. I then did the test and all was great. I had around -49db on all sides. I then decide to go up higher to see if I get a degredation in signal so I'm going up and boom at a 100ft it goes to return to home. I looked at my rssi and it was -50db that is a Signal to Noise ratio of -39db which is an awesome link. That is when it hit me. I quickly stop the return, went into the app and looked at the elevation limit. IT WAS AT 100ft. So I do it again, fly it up to 100ft boom RTH. I then changed the limit to 250ft and went up again past 100ft to 250ft and again RTH. I determined that my copter, and maybe all solos, automatically trigger RTH when the limits are reached. Furthermore, since I am used to my inspire 1 where reaching that limit just causes the craft to stop, I was interpreting this behaviour as a loss of controller signal. I removed the limits and was able to fly my solo farther than ever today. That is until the forrest preserve police pulled up and wrote me a $75 ticket for flying there :-(
Today i was able to get to a really big field (prior to this I was flying on my 5 acres of land but it has a lot of trees). Here are my findings. First, if you don't already know, touching the flight info bar in the app give you extended info including your RSSI level to the craft in db. I wanted a baseline from 3dr of what I should experience with no interference. The engineer said to fly the craft out about 30ft away and go up to about 20ft elevation and yaw the copter around all four sides. You should not see an rssi below -55db.
So I brought out my spectrum analyzer and found that the 2.4Ghz band had a noise floor of around -89db where I was and that there were no devices in the area breaking the noise floor. I then did the test and all was great. I had around -49db on all sides. I then decide to go up higher to see if I get a degredation in signal so I'm going up and boom at a 100ft it goes to return to home. I looked at my rssi and it was -50db that is a Signal to Noise ratio of -39db which is an awesome link. That is when it hit me. I quickly stop the return, went into the app and looked at the elevation limit. IT WAS AT 100ft. So I do it again, fly it up to 100ft boom RTH. I then changed the limit to 250ft and went up again past 100ft to 250ft and again RTH. I determined that my copter, and maybe all solos, automatically trigger RTH when the limits are reached. Furthermore, since I am used to my inspire 1 where reaching that limit just causes the craft to stop, I was interpreting this behaviour as a loss of controller signal. I removed the limits and was able to fly my solo farther than ever today. That is until the forrest preserve police pulled up and wrote me a $75 ticket for flying there :-(
