Raspberry Pi Camera and Bad GPS Health

This is how i did it.

But still i get allot of interference.

Any news on this or do I need to get the aluminium ducting tape roll out…Is there no alternative to using the noisy pi camera?

I believe that C920 is another option, it should be less noisy.

OK… So basically any USB webcam could substitute?

It should be supported by RPi (have linux drivers). You can simply google the name of your webcam + RPi. Regarding noise issues USB cam should be better, but also could be a source of interference. Please test that it won’t affect GPS performance before flight.

I’m having problems with interference form the PiCam as well. Hdop increases from 1,4 to between 2 and 5 and sat count drops from 12 to between 6 and 0 when turning the camera on. I shielded the cable and camera with tin foil and insulated it with masking tape. This had no effect. I also installed a mast for the GPS antenna but this also had no effect. That led me to believe that the problem is how close the NAVIO/GPS-chip is to the PI.

Would it help to move the PI away from NAVIO using an extender cable like this?

There is also the option of using a HDMI, but my guess is that there would still be interference from the “converters” and the of course the camera. Pi Camera HDMI Cable Extension from Petit Studio on Tindie

@Shagma There’s no need to move away the Navio, only the GPS antenna. The noise is mostly “in the air”, it’s just that 40cm may not be enough.

There are special EMI shielding tapes that should perform much better than foil, like this one:

For anyone interested, the new camera seems much better than the old one.
I made a quick test (Raspberry Pi Camera V2 & GPS | DIY) and the interference was way smaller than with the V1 camera.

2 Likes

That is my experience too!