2.4g and 5g antennas

Joined
Dec 29, 2020
Messages
24
Reaction score
7
Age
62
I stacked my p3s into a tree a few weeks back. Gimbal/camera assembly was left hanging by the black antenna coax. Anti vibration plate was in several pieces but little more visible damage after tumbling through branches to the ground. I made a new antivibration plate from cut up CDs. I found the grey coax line had pulled out of its U.FL connector and the ribbon cable had ripped all the pins out of the connector. I abandoned trying to repair the ribbon connector and bought an OEM cable set from Amazon. I'm glad I did as when the new cable arrived I discovered both empty pins were on one end, and I would probably have centered the 8 pins in the 10 pin connector. I'm surprised my searching found no diagram, pinout or photo.
I then bought an SMA to U.FL cable on ebay and chopped the SMA off, replacing the grey cable and soldering. I managed to avoid complete disassembly by not taking all the cables off the motherboard. The patch antenna was surprisingly difficult to pry off its double sided tape mounting.
After partially reassembling i fired up DJIgo, the RC and the bird and was rewarded with a gimbal dance and video feed. I was about to call myself lucky when I noticed no battery voltage display....i then tried turning on the motors...no response.
On my phone I opened up a wifi analyser and saw a signal on channel 6 louder than my router. Cool...or is it?
Turning the page to 5g I was annoyed to see only my router.
I thought the video feed was 5g..? Turning back to 2.4g I now saw another new signal, unlabelled and not identifiable as a wifi protocol.
Could this be my video feed? And the aircraft wifi channel.... Why was this not carrying telemetry? I am a bit lost what do do now.
Does anyone have suggestions?
 
Last edited:
Phantom 3s uses 5.8 for live view and signal,,,no 2.4 on this phantom,,bit unsure what going on ,what are your drone light colours and gimble light green,,can you move cam up and down with gimble wheel
 
I found the grey coax line had pulled out of its U.FL connector…..I then bought an SMA to U.FL cable on ebay and chopped the SMA off, replacing the grey cable and soldering.
Those cable are difficult to solder. Are you confident with your work with the grey coax?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mark The Droner
The black and grey coaxial cables are your telemetry. It’s hard to solder coaxial cables right. The ribbon cable is your power supply. Use small nylon cable ties on opposite corners of the vibration plate to keep it from separating the next time. They help a lot. Good luck.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Oso
Thanks for those responses.
The bird fires up with front lights red and the rear flashing red yellow green with double beeps. it then settles down to red only. The gimbal light is green when the TF card is inserted. The gimbal does respond to the rc wheel.
I am fairly confident about my soldering, both joints are firm and there is no short when I put a multimeter across it.
I did have a cable tie through one vibration damper which is why the black coax line didn't break too.
I was operating under the theory the black and grey coax lines were separate Rx and Tx 5.8 gHz antennae and the grey coaxial dipoles in the legs were for 2.4 GHz.
 
I stand corrected. A search showed 2.4 GHz is used for the video signal and the RC runs at 5.8. It doesn't make much sense to me that to get the required bandwidth they have departed from ISM channel allocations at 2.4 and they use 5 gig for the controls where they don't need the bandwidth...not to mention 2.4 will go through trees but 5 doesn't.
 
Joy of joys... I found the battery spi cable wasn't seated properly. When I pushed it in DJIgo talked to the battery and now the motors will spin up. Now my only problem is the gimbal roll arm has about 10 degrees of bend and a screw is missing.
 
Phantom 3s uses 5.8 for live view and signal,,,no 2.4 on this phantom,,bit unsure what going on ,what are your drone light colours and gimble light green,,can you move cam up and down with gimble wheel
Turns out the Phantom 3 S does use both 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz, Ian. This screenshot of the spect sheet shows both frequencies listed.
 

Attachments

  • Phantom 3 Standard Specs.png
    Phantom 3 Standard Specs.png
    177.8 KB · Views: 253
Turns out the Phantom 3 S does use both 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz, Ian. This screenshot of the spect sheet shows both frequencies listed.
Oh crap your so right,,,must be time for me to give this up
Why I said that I ho no idea,,my brain is screwed and I'm sober,,time to fix that part

I'm gone for little while,sit in the corner
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Controller antenna in bird is in the landing gear and the WIFI patch is in the right of the battery slot. WIFI is operarional in 2.4 GHz and the the control signal in 5.8 GHz
 
May be the same as right of the slot,so the signal does not been interrupted.
 
You might have been thinking of the Phantom 3 Pro, which I think uses 5.8 GHz as the sole frequency.
Na I had p4s stuck in me head,,this is default 2.4 on both
Peed myself off so had a break over this,I know I said not coming back but I just couldn't stay away.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,354
Members
104,933
Latest member
mactechnic