Took me 3 days to figure out why my drone mapping was glitching

Turns out the GPS module on my drone was getting interference from a steel rebar grid in the concrete floor I was flying over. Swapped to a different launch spot 15 feet away and it worked fine after that. Has anyone else run into random magnetic interference messing with their survey data?

2 comments

2 Comments

leep8923d ago

Did you ever check if there was any metal framing in the slab nearby? I read a post on a surveying forum where a guy had the same problem flying over a parking garage with rebar every 4 feet. He had to switch to a ground launch point that was clear of any steel for about 20 feet. Something about the grid messing with the magnetometer in the GPS.

troy_palmer7623d ago

Man that actually makes a ton of sense now that I think about it. I used to write off those sorts of interference issues as just bad GPS signal or something simple like that. But after reading your post I went back and looked at some old drone flights I did over a warehouse with a concrete floor and sure enough the logs showed a weird magnetic spike right over a spot where I know there was some rebar mesh. Never would have connected the dots without you mentioning the parking garage thing. I'm definitely going to check for metal framing closer to my launch points from now on.