Disable GPS in Olympe/Sphinx

ANAFI USA / ANAFI Thermal / ANAFI 4K
1

I am looking to disable the GPS in Olympe so that the drone operates based its other sensors. How would I go about doing this?

2

Hello,

With Parrot-Sphinx, you should be able to disable the GPS through the web interface of the simulator.

  1. When the simulator is running, open its web interface at http://localhost:9002/ in your browser.

  2. Drag and drop an “Inspector” widget in the content area : https://developer.parrot.com/docs/sphinx/_static/videos/web_inspector.mp4

  3. In the newly created “Inspector” widget browse to the “root/anafi4k/gps/gps/out_of_order” parameter and set it to “true”.

This should disable the simulated drone GPS entirely (from now on, no new NMEA GPS frames will be sent to the simulated drone).

You might want to do that before the drone get a chance to acquire a GPS fix. In order to do that, you must first start the simulator with a “paused” drone firmware, set the GPS out_of_order parameter to “true” and then start the drone firmware.
See the how-to-modify-runtime-parameters-before-firmware-startup section in the Parrot-Sphinx documentation.

Regards

Nicolas

1 Like
3

I did not know that this existed! This web interface is very useful, thanks!

1 Like
4

Any ideas on how to disable the GPS on a physical drone, not through Sphinx?

5

Disclaimer: disabling the GPS signal of a physical drone in an outdoor environment is asking for trouble. Without the GPS, the drone RTH feature won’t be able to bring back your drone. In some specific cases (altitude > 5m and/or flying over a cliff with the GPS disabled), the drone might get tricked by its other sensors (ultrasound and vertical camera) and drift. If you try the following procedure I highly recommend staying indoor and/or at a low altitude < 3m.

This is hardly a standard procedure but you should try covering the top of the drone body (between the camera and the battery) with one or two aluminum foils and some adhesive tape. This should do the trick. You can always apply foils more generously if needed!