Newbie questions: hovering rises unexpectedly, replacement battery,

[racketteer]

Hi,

I just got a working(?) Bebop from Craigslist. The old batteries were GiFi and didn't even run a minute, so I bought a For "2500mAh" from Amazon. I am using FreeFlight Pro on iOS. It is set as "joypad" so I can tilt the mobile to my hearts desire without affecting the drone. The only thing I have done with it so far is put on the hull and try to hover in my living room. I only command movement when it drifts. I have a few questions:

1. It's pretty clear that the battery isn't 2500. It is physically sized like the 1600 GiFi's and allows hovering with the hull for only 7-8 minutes. Given that the drone has been discontinued for a while, is that about as good as any battery still available, or do you recommend I return it in favor of a different brand? If so, which brand?

2. About 2 minutes into the hover, the drone will start rising for no reason until it hits the ceiling. Sometimes I can command it down, but a couple of times either I am not fast/aggressive enough with the down command or it ignores me and hits the ceiling. What is going on and how do I fix that?

3. In the FreeFlight Pro, there is an icon on the lower left, a circle with either one or four blue dots in it. What does that do?

4. Is there some type of calibration I could or should do? If yes, where is that on the FreeFlight Pro? I don't see the same icon as shown in the manual (which is Freeflight 3)?

Thanks!
Daniel

 

[ParrotAnafiFan]

1 The 2500 should give you way more than 8 minutes, since stock is 1500.

2 May not help but since flying indoors do you have outdoor button ticked off while in the settings cog wheel? Otherwise it will try to get GPS indoors. The heaviness of the battery may be causing the instability, but i doubt it. I know the weight of the 2500 on mine makes the internal fan cause a grinding noise, if lightly pressed. May have to tighten the dampers to stop that. Others claim it is the barmometer, it rises and falls because light hitting barometer. There are barometer shields you can buy off ebay or thingverse that the stop light. Others also color the inside of their nose with black sharpie. My experience is that it stabilizes the higher you go 200-250ft. If hovering, taking off or landing around dark trees or dark ground shadows it starts drifting again. I have not tested clear sunny day vs sunny with clouds vs cloudy day. It may improve on cloudy overcast or pure sunny days. I will have to test more. This could totally also be a GPS signal issue and not a barometer because of the drifitng, I notice when I do flips the gps will go red for a couple of seconds.

3 Not sure

4 Yes you should! For Bebop 1 there are 2 calibration settings called flat trim and calibration. flat trim trims your drone out to stabilize in the air put it on a flat surface and test it with a separate level then press calibrate and you are done. The other option is regular calibration where it give you instructions to spin your drone on certain axis. You get to this menu by clicking the name of your drone in the FF Pro app where it lists your drones hardware/gps version etc.

 

[racketteer]

Thank you for your answers.

1. This was more a question of which brands of batteries spec them accurately rather than overstate? This particular one is the same size as the bebop, not the taller version, so I assume it is exaggerated labeling.
2. Yes, outdoor was off. Thank you for the other insights. The original community.parrot.com is gone so I don't see all that discussion and info.
4. There it is! Thank you. Could you clarify what you mean by testing it with a separate level? The drone has a curved body, so I'm not sure how to put a level on it.

 

[ParrotAnafiFan]

Could you clarify what you mean by testing it with a separate level? The drone has a curved body, so I'm not sure how to put a level on it.

You test the flat surface, where you place your drone with a bubble level or phone level app, before you flat trim. One of my bebop 1s flat trim level lines for center is off, but table is level. Not sure why. You also get no acknowledgement once flat trim is done. Something Parrot will have to fix in FreeFlight Pro on Android

 

[ParrotAnafiFan]

#3 Another FF Pro item that only works on apple devices, it is the compass, you can lock or unlock your facing direction. Sadly you are better off with using these older drones with an old apple device off ebay.

According to Apple App Store, The Free Flight Pro App works if your device has the following Ios 9 or later. Luckily the used are pretty cheap.

 

[ParrotAnafiFan]

#3 The 4 dot circle one goes to you and the 1 dot one zooms to your drone on the map, You can find a downed drown this way as well.