excess weight! go pro power from phantom?

Joined
Jan 17, 2014
Messages
10
Reaction score
0
Hey all,

I've been trying to get my phantom down to the 1300 grams called for in the manual. I have an iosd mini, the dii 5.8 transmitter with clover leaf, zenmuse gimbal, and the go pro, and a tracking gps in case of emergency. I was weighing in at 1400 grams.

I tried to reduce weight over the weekend eliminating the plate I was using to hold the gps. I also reduced all the excess wiring down to just the lengths needed. The ship in flight configuration (less gps) is now 1311.

Unfortunately the gps (with battery - held on by only velcro) weighs an additional 52 grams.

I don't have any where else to lose weight I don't think. I was wondering if anyone has figured out some kind of way to run their go pro off the phantom battery (powered through the zenmuse). This provides power for charging but doesn't seem to allow me to turn on the camera without a battery in place. Losing the go pro battery would save me another 26 grams if this is feasible.

Not eager to fly without the safety gps as I lost a v1 phantom. It's nice peace of mind, but perhaps not at the expense of being wildly over weight.

Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • photo 1.JPG
    photo 1.JPG
    113.8 KB · Views: 584
  • photo 3.JPG
    photo 3.JPG
    154.3 KB · Views: 666
Possibly you can change the stock landing gears with something lighter, but it's just an idea. So your setup is giving full fpv, gps tracking and so on? How many minutes of flight time you get?
 
take the tk102 gps out of the case and wrap it in shrink or drill many holes in the case to lighten it.
Using a lighter battery for the gps will conserve some weight. The included battery is heavy and is for 80 hours standby I believe.

You should be able to half the gps weight.
I posted many pictures of the tk102 taken apart.
 
Skipholiday, Thanks for the advice on the gps. I hadn't thought of that and will look into it. Sounds like that could help.

And OI photography, thanks for the info on the go pro wiring (I was afraid of that).

TKN Quad, I don't have any solid numbers for flight time. Yes it is the full fpv setup. At one point when I had the gps mounting plate etc, I was at the ridiculous weight of 1400 grams. At about 12 min, I was having difficulty getting a positive rate of climb toward the end of that time. Since then I was conservative landing at about 10 min to be safe. I don't have enough experience with the new lighter setup to give you any accurate numbers.

Thanks for the tips!
 
If you use the Antigravity 9*3 CF Prop you should save about 10 grams.

The prop is about 5 grams less per prop so that is 20 grams total but then you have to add in the prop nut when using those. I think that weighs around 2 or 3 grams.

My weights are forma ounce scale that is only good to 1/10th oz so they could be off.
Does anyone out there have more accurate numbers on that weight?
 
The DJI fpv tx unit is the main problem. These units are heavy for the job so you could swap it for an Immersion tx - much smaller and lighter.
 
Removing the battery will affect the balance of the gimbal. Not as bad as flying without the whole camera but still a potential for gimbal damage.
 

Recent Posts

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,352
Members
104,933
Latest member
mactechnic