Have you ever experienced less than 6 satellites on your PV2+ and never ending waiting for more than 3,4 or 5 satellites?
How about sudden flyaways in GPS mode? Any? If not, you are happy. So far so good.
How about screwed up returns to home, when your bird never returned home?
This is simple experiment showing possible reasons. Samsung Galaxy S5 is used in this test as the reference GPS receiver, placed just by the PV2+ in open area, with excellent satellites visibility.
Galaxy S5 have multi GNSS receiver, what means it can receive and process GPS, Glonass and Beidu satellites and of course all auxiliary augmentation satellites like WAAS or SBAS. In addition to this, Galaxy S5 uses Assisted GPS start, where the satellites positions predictions valid for up to 35 days are downloaded and stored in the phone, thus the cold start only takes about 2 seconds.
As the brand new PV2+ uses already obsolete UBLOX NEO6Q GPS module, it can only receive GPS satellites and doesn't have Assisted start.
Yes, there are new series 8 modules made by UBLOX, which are capable of Autonomous Assisted start, calculating and memorizing prediction data for up to 6 days, and providing the same 2 seconds cold start as the Galaxy S5 do, even without internet connection.
But as the DJI wants you to buy many more Phantoms this and the next year, these new modules are of course not used with the Phantom Vision 2 Plus.
While the cost of series 8 modules is only very slightly higher, implementation does not need any extra engineering, DJI don't use them in PV2+.
While having series 8 GNSS receiver would be nice, it will not help too much.
Why?
As you can see, few moments as the Galaxy S5 is turned on and GPS receiver activated, there are 28 of 29 satellites locked, while the Phantom Vision 2 plus is turned OFF.
See what will happen as soon as the Phantom is turned on.
We can see how the satellites signal is being deteriorated from the interferences created by the Phantom's own electronics.
From 28 satellites down to 18 in less than 30 seconds!
From these 28 were 12 GPS satellites, now down to 9 and most of them have seriously degraded signal to noise ratio (green to orange), what have fundamental impact on the GPS reception reliability.
Most likely the imaging subsystem of the camera is radiating way too much in the GPS bands, thanks to the poor shielding and poor EMC design of the Phantom's electronics.
All of this despite the much lower gain of the Galaxy S5 GPS antenna and much more powerful CPU/GPU of the Galaxy S5, placed in the immediate proximity of the phone GPS antenna.
Well, the Galaxy S5 engineering was done right.
PV2+ however not.
What are the possible consequences?
General GPS mode unreliability.
Long GPS lock startup times.
No home locks.
Less than 6 satellites locked.
Flyaways.
Failed return to home.
Unexpected bird behavior.
Frustration.& Desperation.
More Phantoms SOLD!
