Compass Calibration

This article explains how to perform basic compass calibration.

Note

1.If want to calibrate compass of GPS and board's internel compass, make sure the flight control arrow and the GPS direction arrow remain the same. The GPS module is bound, and the flight control and GPS module must be moved at the same time.

2.This article assumes that you are using the most common configuration — a flight controller and compass mounted with the arrow on each facing toward the front of the vehicle. If you’re using a different configuration see Advanced Compass Setup.

Calibration first steps

• Under Initial Setup | Mandatory Hardware select Compass.

• Select your flight controler configuration to automatically enter the most important configuration information for your board:

  • For any modern flight controller (Pixhawk, NAVIO2, etc) select the button Pixhawk/PX4

Double compass calibration

Ardupilot supports internal and external compass,if you add GPS with compass, you can use double compass. Take a calibration of Compass.

Compass #1 is external compass,Compass #2 is internal compass. Do not mark compass#3 "Use this compass".

Select None for the external compass’s orientation.

You may wish to disable Compass #2 (the internal compass) if you are seeing the dreaded “inconsistent compasses” pre-arm message often and you are sure that the external compass’s orientation is correct.

Click "Start" Button to start calibration of compass.

You normally shouldn’t need to change any of the “General Compass Settings” or compass specific values (i.e. “Compass #1” section), but you might want to confirm that the Enable compasses and Obtain declination automatically boxes are checked.

Internal Compass Clibration

if you do not use external compass, only use internal compass, select parameter like here.

the compass#1 is internal compass.

if meet this problem “compass not calibrated” after calibrate compass. It means that you select the wrong parameters .

How to fix?

Remove the mark of compass#2 and compass#3 “Use this compass” if you only use pixhawk without external compass.

Remove the mark of compass#3 “Use this compass”,if you only use pixhawk with external compass.

Additional information

More information about compass configuration can be found inAdvanced Compass Setup. This includes instructions for how to set up additional compasses, non-standard compass alignments,compassmot, etc.

General discussion on magnetic interference and ways to reduce it can be found inMagnetic Interference.