After 10 minutes after power-up, the blue light on my gps board shuts off. But the gps antenna stays solid blue indicating I have a good fix. I discovered this issue while observing the craft hovering around the "position" during PH. Suddenly the craft slowly creeps away, at about 50 or 60 feet off the position I am forced to release PH and bring it back in. Every time this happens I notice the blue light is off. I ran some ground tests to see if I could repeat it and sure enough, right around 10 minutes after power up the light turns off. I ran thermal scans with FLIR camera and found a component on the gps board, might be a voltage regulator, gets to about 122 F at 10 minutes. Its the 3 legged chip next to the silver capacitor. Not really sure if its a thermal issue so I tried moving the gps antenna as far away from the boards as the wires will allow, still turns off after 10 minutes. Tried re-orienting the receiver, still turns off.
I'm probably doing something wrong, but shouldn't the light change to different colors to indicate gps health? And, why would it turn off right at the ten minute mark? I conducted my ground tests by staying more than five feet away from the craft so I wouldn't interact or disturb the satellite view and didn't arm during the ground tests. I am puzzled! I hope someone out there has seen this or resolved this and can help me.

Hmmm...I will check on this

I wonder if it is possible that this is a low voltage issue. I can tell you with my 4lb quad running 11x4.7 props and using a 4s 5000mah lipo, I will generally get about 10 to 12 minutes leaving a 10% reserve.

David

I don't think it's voltage because in ground tests I can cycle power and then it takes another 10 minutes to fail. I proved this over and over again.

Ok, I just completed a couple of flight tests. Two tests using two different batteries.

First test: I lost the board mounted blue led at about 6 minutes but without landing I went back up to altitude and let it attempt to continue to hold position at 40 ft. I resisted the temptation to provide input and it actually did hold the position. I descended 2 or 3 times to check the led and it was off throughout the remainder of the flight.

Second test: I connected to the setup client and increased the "smoothing" to be more aggressive. This time the led extinguished around the 8 minute mark but the PH was remarkable! Not sure if smoothing is related to PH and maybe the winds were mostly dormant during the second flight but the craft deviated less than about 10 or 15 feet from "ground zero". Again I checked throughout the flight and the board mounted led remained OFF.

Summary: The GPS board led turns green around 15 seconds after power-up and the tiny blue antenna led flashes for about 1 minute then is solid, at that point the gps board led turns from green to blue. After about 6 to 10 minutes the gps board led turns off but the tiny blue gps antenna led stays on solid. I have found that if the tiny gps antenna is solid then I can use the Position-Hold feature.

I sure would like to see the GPS board led remain ON throughout the flight.

Nobody?

Sorry 141, I've never seen this. Gonna do a little flying today and I'll let it sit for 10 minutes or so to see. I'll let you know..

Yesterday my hf was blue and then it became red after 10 minutes.

If the red element in my led chip was out then that would make sense, I have seen it show green and blue and a kind of bright aqua color but never seen it show red. I'm going to confirm this tonight.

How many volts are you putting into the HoverflyPro?

Originally Posted by part141

After 10 minutes after power-up, the blue light on my gps board shuts off. But the gps antenna stays solid blue indicating I have a good fix. I discovered this issue while observing the craft hovering around the "position" during PH. Suddenly the craft slowly creeps away, at about 50 or 60 feet off the position I am forced to release PH and bring it back in. Every time this happens I notice the blue light is off. I ran some ground tests to see if I could repeat it and sure enough, right around 10 minutes after power up the light turns off. I ran thermal scans with FLIR camera and found a component on the gps board, might be a voltage regulator, gets to about 122 F at 10 minutes. Its the 3 legged chip next to the silver capacitor. Not really sure if its a thermal issue so I tried moving the gps antenna as far away from the boards as the wires will allow, still turns off after 10 minutes. Tried re-orienting the receiver, still turns off.
I'm probably doing something wrong, but shouldn't the light change to different colors to indicate gps health? And, why would it turn off right at the ten minute mark? I conducted my ground tests by staying more than five feet away from the craft so I wouldn't interact or disturb the satellite view and didn't arm during the ground tests. I am puzzled! I hope someone out there has seen this or resolved this and can help me.

hummmm this flight that I lost my gps signal finished with a very low voltage (9,8V).
I will fly again to chek if a charged battery changes this.

I'm running a 3 cell so at startup it's at 12.6v and I run the the balance plug into a beeper so it alarms at 10.8. I checked the voltage live and it was 12.1v, this is at the power plug that connects to the hoverflypro board.
But the ground tests were not armed so less draw on the battery and still drops the led out.
I performed another ground test today looking at the hoverflygps board led colors. I am only seeing 2 colors, green and blue. I cuffed my hand about 1 inch over the gps receiver to try and simulate poor satellite reception and after about 20 seconds the gps board led turned off. The little blue led on the gps receiver remained solid on. Different variations of the same tests yielded the same results. The led will not show any color but green or blue. George, I wish there existed a temporary firmware snip to load into the gps board to test the led functions, sequential colors at 1 second intervals just to test.
Anyway, I don't understand why its not showing red.