My hacky P3 strobes

nil · Mar 21, 2016

I sometimes fly my P3 at night and wanted a way to see my bird at night and make sure other bigger aircraft could see it too so I decided to add some strobes to it. I tried a couple of different options and finally settled on this setup.

I had 2 of these laying around from my cycling days and hacked together a way to attach them to my P3. You can see from the videos that they're pretty bright. They're detachable and are powered by their own batteries USB rechargable that last about 4 hours and the entire setup weighs about 90 grams. The strobes can also be in 2 x white or 1 x red configuration. I opted to have the red facing in front and the write facing up.

Strobes: Amazon.com : Lezyne Zecto Drive Pro, Black : Bike Headlights : Sports & Outdoors
Pictures of how they're attached: Phantom 3 strobe setup

In all but the 10 foot video, the bird is at ~395 feet altitude. They're clearly visible out to ~3000 feet, I haven't tested them out any further than that but based on what I've seen at 3000 feet, they should be visible even further out. My battery was also pretty low when I was filming so I couldn't get out that far.

10 feet:

574 feet:

1015 feet:

2020 feet:

James Stout · Mar 21, 2016

Nice setup, I like it.

mikecorn1 · Mar 21, 2016

Nice

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nil · Mar 21, 2016

Is there still no way to get a more OEM looking strobe setup? I'm not sure how bad it is to have added 100 grams weight to the Phantom.

exit 4 · Mar 21, 2016

I wondered about the weight also. I have the Polar Pro set up and can see it from 1200 meters easily. Would be nice if there was more of a OEM look to it. Not that your set up looks bad. Yours is bright, that's for sure.

nil · Mar 22, 2016

exit 4 said:
I wondered about the weight also. I have the Polar Pro set up and can see it from 1200 meters easily. Would be nice if there was more of a OEM look to it. Not that your set up looks bad. Yours is bright, that's for sure.

I tested it out to 5500 feet tonight (just over a mile) and I could see the red strobe very clearly. I'm curious to see how the white top strobe looks, but without another bird in the air above it I'm not sure how to test it.

Suntana · Mar 22, 2016

I'm not sure how much extra weight the gps tracker has in comparison to your strobes, but a lot of people fly with those without problems, that I am aware of. That's a pretty nice set up, looks good up there.

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