Part out

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Hello all! New to the forum with a few questions.

Well i been a proud owner of my phantom for a few months and have been issue free mostly. But other day i was in a incident involving a crash. Had some major damage to gimbal assembly so i had to buy and replace both arms and gimbal plates. No biggie got them in and rebuilt the gimbal.

Upon further inspection i found that the crash broke the connector for the compass complety off the mother board. Huge deal right, right so me being me i soldered the wires back to the board. Holy crap those are some small terminals. But after some cussing and hair pulling i have success.

Now to the real problem. I know the compass is reading because i actually can fly drone. Blind mind you but it flys, hovers and holds rock steady altitude. But when i pull up app it connects and drops every few seconds. I tried deleting app and reinstalling it on a couple devices with no change. It will connect no problem to wifi and shows my drone in the opening screen but when i go into app it shows week signal then disconnects. Then pics signal back up, shows telemetry the drops again. Over and over again. Sorry for a long intro and post but this is killing me.
 
Welcome to the forum!

I think you got more than one problem.

I would do a IMU calibration, here is some info.
IMU CALIBRATION AND WARMING UP
IMU Calibration

Compass stuff, since you worked on the compass.
Compass Calibration, A Complete Primer
Looking for Trouble ??

You say its fine until you pull up the app?

Your Turn. ;)

Rod
Super nice info! Really appreciate the help. I will try all these and report back. Thanks again!

Oh and yeah all is good until app is up. Just to add even when app is down and says disconnected drone is responsive to remote. Fly's beautiful.
With precaution I keep the drone to a low altitude. But it seems to be connected to gps drone level. Just not reporting. IDK
 
"Oh and yeah all is good until app is up"
This is really odd, I have no clue. :eek:

Rod
 
Quick question, can you operate a phantom 3 without gimbal assembly? Like I had the camera/gimbal board connected but no actual gimbal motors or ribbon connected. Im assuming this was some/ all of my issue. Sorry. So I put all of it back together and had some progress. Connectivity got a lot better (actually got camera feed).

Problem was that gimbal was dead. The fault message was gimbal gyro error as well as gimbal pan error.
Upon start up props moved as normal but gimbal was dead. But camera was giving feed to app, also telemetry was feeding as well. After a couple minutes it finally lost connection all together.
Jeez I hate being so dag um dumb with this but I am confused and just don't understand. At this point im guessing the camera/gimbal board is toast???? Any input would be greatly appreciated.
 
Where is the wifi broadcasted from the drone. Is it from the camera/gimbal board or the mother board?

Yesterday when I was flying, like I said I finally had "ready to fly" but gimbal was dead. Everything else was working great. Then after about oh I don't know
three minutes it just disconnected and would not pick signal back up.

We aint talking big distances either. Like twenty feet away and maybe ten feet in the air.
 
Well after a IMU calibration and check I still have a limp gimbal:D

I took it outside today and after a compass and IMU calibration I have to say it helped, I even had HD video feed.
But the dagum gimbal will not respond. I hear it buzzing. It just wont dance. Anyone got a known good gimbal board they don't need
anymore. I'll take it off your hands if price is right...

Anyhow any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Well after a IMU calibration and check I still have a limp gimbal:D

I took it outside today and after a compass and IMU calibration I have to say it helped, I even had HD video feed.
But the dagum gimbal will not respond. I hear it buzzing. It just wont dance. Anyone got a known good gimbal board they don't need
anymore. I'll take it off your hands if price is right...

Anyhow any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I have a good gimbal board from a p3s im willing to sell, what sounds reasonable to you?
 
Upon further inspection i found that the crash broke the connector for the compass complety off the mother board. Huge deal right, right so me being me i soldered the wires back to the board. Holy crap those are some small terminals. But after some cussing and hair pulling i have success.
.
The same thing happened to me but I have no experience soldering and decided to go new and part out old if your interested in the gimbal board you can messege anytime
 
"Where is the wifi broadcasted from the drone. Is it from the camera/gimbal board or the mother board?"
Hope you get it going, let us know...

The WiFi I think starts at the gimbal because people have flown with out camera, and still get telemetry. Also if you change the gimbal, you have to re-link the remote and Phantom, and there is a Mac address on the gimbal.

Rod
 
"Where is the wifi broadcasted from the drone. Is it from the camera/gimbal board or the mother board?"
Hope you get it going, let us know...

The WiFi I think starts at the gimbal because people have flown with out camera, and still get telemetry. Also if you change the gimbal, you have to re-link the remote and Phantom, and there is a Mac address on the gimbal.

Rod
I do believe you are correct sir, I tried to manually start motors when my gimbal/camera board was disconnected and it would not respond at all.

I read another thread here from a fellow needing a gimbal board aswell.
Well long story short he replaced aftermarket ribbon cable with actual
DJI cable and the gyro error went away.

Im thinking I may just try that first, as the cable I replaced my damaged one with
is a el cheapo from ebay. The thing I don't get is why does the camera feed with this
cable but the gimbal is dead? Very frustrating.

Side note if I cant get the ribbon cable to correct problem just how hard do you think it would be (electronically) to adapt one of the
cheaper 2 axis gimbals to my phantom and just not use the factory pieces. Now I know I am stepping backwards technologically
and would still have to keep the factory board. But I would think it wouldn't be to hard to adapt camera to aftermarket gimbal and
let it handle the stabilization.???

Only major down fall would be I wouldn't be able to pan camera up or down?
 
Those questions are way beyond me. ;)

Rod
 
Well here is my current situation
20180521_203311.jpg

Gonna go ahead and replace the mother board as well as the gimbal board.
I got the mother board with motors that are actual dji product for 124.00:cool:

Well at least I think it was a good deal...? Got a real awesome member helping
me with the gimbal board. Thanks PhantomOverAdrian!!
So im gonna kinda rebuild my bird.

Quick questions though. While I have her apart to this depth is it in any way
beneficial to try and upgrade these guys
20180521_203334.jpg

20180521_203326.jpg

Or can you even? I have seen plenty of controller mods but no one ever does these.?
Any who just wanted to get a lil input from you guys, thanks in advance.
Have a good evening!!
 
Its been my experience that with the cheaper eBay ribbon cable you can get video feed but no gimbal dance. Replace it with a genuine dji one it will solve a lot of mystery's.

Yeah, I believe I've read a few posts where it was determined that the "cheapie" replacement cable was actually the cause of some gimbal function issues.
 
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I am definately going to go back with a oem cable. Who is a good verified vender from the forum ya'll would recommend?
 
Well this sucks, looks like the oem cables are back ordered everywhere. Just my luck:mad:

Well has anyone bought a aftermarket cable that works? And where from?
 

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