Earlier this year I bought my first drone, and it’s a DJI Mavic Pro. Without regret, I would say that’s probably one of the best impulsive purchase until one day I crash landed the drone into a glacier lake. Long story short, this is a guide on how you can re-calibrate your DJI Mavic Pro’s sensor for precision hovering and landing after any water or physical damage. In my case, my drone was completely submerged into the water for a few seconds before I fished it out. I wasn’t sure the fact my drone still works to this day is due to the cleanness of the water it has fallen into or DJI’s marvelous engineering or perhaps both. The drone suffered no damage.
After few days of drying the drone, there is this warning message I can’t resolve regardless. It says, “Forward Vision Sensor Calibration Error. Precision Hovering and Obstacle Avoidance may fail.” and indeed it did fail when I try to launch the drone by ignoring this warning message. It no longer stays hovering when no input is given from the remote control. It also says how you can fix this when encountering this issue. You can “Recalibrate Vision System by using DJI Assistant 2“. In this guide, we will explore how to recalibrate a DJI Mavic Pro in Windows.
prerequisites:
- need a micro USB cable long enough at least 4 feet or more
- battery charged
First download DJI Assistant 2, here or find the latest version from DJI’s support page. It’s an Electron app that works across platforms for both Windows and macOS.
Once you have it installed, launch the app and connect the done to the computer.
If there is new firmware available, please make sure to update to the latest firmware.
Next, go to Calibration section. The onboarding tutorial shows you in an animated sequence on what each step will be. Pay close attention to each step.
The first calibration DJI assistant will ask you to perform is to re-calibrate the front facing sensor. Those are the two front facing cameras located on the top of the main camera. You want to follow and adjust the drone to locate and match the on-screen prompt.
This step will repeat and calibrate the bottom facing camera located on drone’s belly. You want to turn the bottom of the drone facing the Windows monitor/screen so it can ‘see’ what’s the on screen calibration. This is VERY important that you have a cable long enough to allow you to move the drone around the screen to full-fill all the necessary adjustment it needs.
Once you have finished calibrating both front and bottom facing cameras, it will take a few minutes to complete the process. The onboard screen says approx five minutes. I have experienced longer than this. So don’t worry if the process takes longer than you’d expect. Be patient.
Eventually, you will see the screen telling you that the calibration has completed. You now need to restart your drone in order for the calibration to take effect. Now bring it to a safe area to take off in GPS mode (precision flying) and test the hovering for both up/down and forward/backward.
This is how to calibrate a DJI Mavic Pro if it experienced precision system failure due to water or physical damage.