Compass Help with new quad frame

ArduCopter Copter 3.3
1

[attachment=0]20160118_172907.jpg[/attachment]Hi guys!

I recently designed and built a new quad frame. It is a standard style carbon fiber plate folding quadcopter. I built this one to be large enough that i can stow the flight controller inside the plates. I had it on top before and always had to worry about bumping it. I took a maiden flight today and it flew well. I then broke it down and put it in its box for a little bit to move to a different location. When I pulled it out of the box and tried to fly, it wouldn’t take off due to compass inconsistency. Best I can tell, the gps/compass combo got bumped and threw things off.

This happened with the GPS/Compass on a folding mast that was roughly 4 inches tall. In order to make everything more compact and less likely to get bumped, I pulled the GPS from the mast and stuck it directly to the top plate. I redid the compass calibration but it now has huge z axis offsets.

Does anyone know if the new high offsets are caused by interference from the frame, or from proximity to the flight controller which is right under the gps inside the frame?

Does anyone know if there is anything that could be done to retain the gps location but reduce the compass offsets?

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Anyone with insight? If this should be posted elsewhere, please let me know.

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It could very well be it’s closeness to the flight controller, ESC’s or something else. Put it back on a mast and see. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for your response cooterwo, much appreciated. I remounted the gps on a puck I cut from 1/2 inch delrin. Doing this keeps the compass tightly installed but gave me enough distance to avoid the super high offsets that I had when I was mounted directly to the frame top plate. I guess we will find out if the gps/compass performance suffers being only 1/2 inch from the frame.

Jeremy