Gopro drone Karma, unable to fly due to GPS error early this year?

In 2020, there are increasing reports around the world that the GoPro drone, Karma, is suddenly unable to fly from the new year. It seems that there is a high probability of problems with Karma’s GPS signal processing, as several users report flashing error indicators indicating that they cannot receive GPS signals.

The drone locates itself and mounts a GPS for stable flight. However, in GPS, when the system design main counter value reaches the maximum value of 1,024, there is a phenomenon called rollover that returns to zero. Numerous drone manufacturers have provided software updates to cope with this phenomenon, but Karma’s case was updated in September 2018 after GoPro ceased its drone business, and has never updated the software. GoPro users are reporting that the karma controller is flashing an error indicating that it cannot receive GPS, and disabling GPS cannot solve this. There are reports that it can fly if the GPS is turned off after restoring the controller to the factory default state, but the drone’s maneuverability changes significantly when the GPS is lost.

GoPro has identified the occurrence of the problem and says it is actively working on solving it. It is also said that the GPS rollover occurred in 1980 and 1999, followed by April 6, 2020. In addition to GPS, many drones these days also support the Russian GLONASS system. This is a daily counter, not a week counter, and a rollover occurs every 4 years. GoPro says Karma is using both GPS and GLONASS. Related information can be found here .