Gimbal Gone Wild!

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I am a retired mechanical / electrical engineer and work for a charitable organization that does pack-ups of the left-overs from estate sales for sale in our Thrift Store. I recently acquired several "partial" DJI Phantom 3 Standards from a sale, thinking that I could reassemble the carcasses into a working unit since I own and operate six other drones. After cobbling together two of the units and replacing all of the critical parts (along with a new battery and charger), I powered up the unit and everything seemed to link up and work fine except for the fact that the gimbal was continuing to stroke back and forth on all three axes and wouldn't settle into a final position. The interesting thing was that the camera was following all these motions and the drone indicated that it was safe to fly. Even sitting stationary the gimbal action drained the battery fairly quickly.

Anyone have any idea what is going on with this device and how to possibly remedy it?

Thanks... Ken in Texas
 
Youtube has many videos of the same common problem, start there. "P3 gimble gone wild" or similar should work..some solutions are simple. Good luck
 
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Endless noisy camera movement usually means the MPU-6600's accelerometer has failed. It is easier to change the whole IMU board of the camera, it is more difficult (but much cheaper) to replace the sensor.
 
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I am a retired mechanical / electrical engineer and work for a charitable organization that does pack-ups of the left-overs from estate sales for sale in our Thrift Store. I recently acquired several "partial" DJI Phantom 3 Standards from a sale, thinking that I could reassemble the carcasses into a working unit since I own and operate six other drones. After cobbling together two of the units and replacing all of the critical parts (along with a new battery and charger), I powered up the unit and everything seemed to link up and work fine except for the fact that the gimbal was continuing to stroke back and forth on all three axes and wouldn't settle into a final position. The interesting thing was that the camera was following all these motions and the drone indicated that it was safe to fly. Even sitting stationary the gimbal action drained the battery fairly quickly.

Anyone have any idea what is going on with this device and how to possibly remedy it?

Thanks... Ken in Texas
I actually just posted about our Phantom 4 Pro V2+ acting similar... It ended up smoking from the bottom and the gimbal went limp.... It has been sent in for repair...
 
On the Phantom 3 gimbal, if it was taken apart and reassemble incorrectly it will do that. It means the camera head may have been put back on but off 180 degrees. If you don't pay attention you have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. That is only one of the things that could have gone wrong. If I saw a video of it in action I could verify it.
 

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