Spinning spiral of death black screen

terabyte2007 · Feb 16, 2018

I think I may know the answer to this question but here goes:

I have a Phantom 2 Vision+ V3.0 which I diagnosed with a bad gimbal board. After replacing the entire gimbal it fixed my camera and now I get telemetry and all my data to the app on my iPhone except a spinning spiral of death and no video. I can take pictures, video and they look good right from the SD card. I re-binded the camera to the WiFi and it worked just fine. All cable have been check and they are fine. It will fly, gimbal control, all data except video and the spinning spiral like it's trying to get video but never does.

I want to try and exhaust all other possibilities before buying a WiFi module since they are a bit pricey.

Any thoughts?

Eric

alokbhargava · Feb 16, 2018

Whats the price of wifi module? Time is money. Also their is a fun in repairing by yourself.

Black Arrow · Feb 17, 2018

Try this to test your wifi module.
Using a PC or tablet log into your Phantom and “ping” 192.168.1.10
If you get a reply to the ping on that address then wifi module is fine. No reply to ping then bottom board needs re-flashing as the nand memory is corrupt.

There are many free apps such as Ping Lite for phone or tablet or use the command prompt from windows.

David Bruce Kerr · Feb 17, 2018

If your ping test comes back that your bottom board is bad, there's a guy on eBay that can reflash it for less than half the price of a new one. DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus Video Transmission Module Repair Svc - FPV WiFi Wi-Fi | eBay. I highly recommend him. His name is Turner. He did a great job for me, and fast shipping.

crash1sttime · Feb 19, 2018

terabyte2007 said:
I think I may know the answer to this question but here goes:

I have a Phantom 2 Vision+ V3.0 which I diagnosed with a bad gimbal board. After replacing the entire gimbal it fixed my camera and now I get telemetry and all my data to the app on my iPhone except a spinning spiral of death and no video. I can take pictures, video and they look good right from the SD card. I re-binded the camera to the WiFi and it worked just fine. All cable have been check and they are fine. It will fly, gimbal control, all data except video and the spinning spiral like it's trying to get video but never does.

I want to try and exhaust all other possibilities before buying a WiFi module since they are a bit pricey.

Any thoughts?

Eric

If your in the UK i fix these units

Black Arrow · Feb 19, 2018

Did you do the “ping” test ?
I also can fix these units or offer an exchange V3 module at present.

terabyte2007 · Feb 24, 2018

Update:

The unit is alive again! After replacing the gimbal which was definitely bad, I proceeded to remove the WiFi module, bought a 10$ USB/UART and reflashed the NAND which was also corrupted. It appears that these units have a problem with the NAND getting corrupted if they sit for months such as over the winter. A Re-flash brings the unit back to life meaning the black screen issue is fixed. I really believe that last year the day I was flying was 94 degrees and I remember the unit getting very hot. I'm not sure if that was the failure point of the NAND or just the catalyst that put this in motion. I have researched the issue extensively and there appears to be several possible causes, heat, non-activity and even firmware updates.

Regardless, 10$ and about 1.5 hours of time to fix.

Black Arrow · Feb 24, 2018

Well done. It is very pleasing to do your own fix. I too am monitoring the causes of this problem and making notes. There is no comprehensive answer yet and we must keep comparing causes and solutions. Keep the old 2s flying.

terabyte2007 · Feb 24, 2018

Black Arrow said:
Well done. It is very pleasing to do your own fix. I too am monitoring the causes of this problem and making notes. There is no comprehensive answer yet and we must keep comparing causes and solutions. Keep the old 2s flying.

Thanks,

I was not ready to retire this one just yet. Too many memories. I have a Spark, Mavic Pro & a Phantom 4 Pro+ so I could have just as easy retired this one but what would be the fun of that? I'm going to keep this old girl flying as long as possible! Thanks again for the shout out!

Eric

bathmatt · Feb 27, 2018

crash1sttime said:
If your in the UK i fix these units

Hi, can you let me know how much you charge and where you are based? I have the spinning wheel, no FPV but good telemetry. Thanks

crash1sttime · Feb 28, 2018

bathmatt said:
Hi, can you let me know how much you charge and where you are based? I have the spinning wheel, no FPV but good telemetry. Thanks

If I’ve not already replied then PM me for info

Thanks

daz lil · Mar 5, 2018

Hi Crash,

Have sent you a PM on a different note.

Thanks

Daz

Riseandrun · Mar 7, 2018

Since my problem is similar ( I think) to Eric's what do you think the problem is when it's an intermittent " black spiral of death"? Sometimes I have FPV and other times no. I've tried to pinpoint it to a certain battery. The only almost constant is if I have everything charged, the first flight I get FPV and then the spiral of death....
TIA
R&R

David Bruce Kerr · Mar 7, 2018

Ok, I got this from a person that repairs corrupt WiFi’s
dji used some rather flaky nand memory on these, so it corrupts over time. Fortunately they also employed some clever error correction in the module. It has backups of most firmware and can mark bad blocks of memory at bootup and pull the backup into the nand to correct what it lost to corruption. Through this approach it can survive quite a bit of memory corruption, but if there is too much it still blocks the bootup. When I boot a module that's been sitting for a while and watch it on my computer, I see it correcting a bunch of memory errors. Sometimes I have to boot it a few times to get past all the errors even, but then it boots clean and is ready to fly.

Long story short, start the drone regularly and multiple power cycles are good for it as they let it clean up even more memory glitches.

And if you ever get blank fpv in the future, do some power cycles of the drone only (leave phone, app, controller, range extender all on) until it comes back.
From what I understand if you power cycle, it can repair itself. (Sometimes)!!

Black Arrow · Mar 9, 2018

Thanks for that info. The regular use does seem to work but the power cycle theory is interesting. It could save all that dismantling, re-flashing,replacing etc. It does also explain why sometimes they will not boot up when re-flashing.

David Bruce Kerr · Mar 9, 2018

Your welcome, just passing info to help others with the same problems. I've learned a lot from this forum. I try to give back when I can.

Riseandrun · Mar 11, 2018

Thanks for the info David. I haven't had what I would consider success yet, but I'm a fairly impatient waiter..

My last flight I had the spinning spiral. I shut the drone off probably 4 or 5 times. I also turned everything off a few times. This is the same battery that the last time I flew it I had FPV. FWIW I believe this battery is an authentic DJI battery because the bottom of it has a DJ and then 14 numbers. My other batteries only have 13 numbers on the bottom. The DJ batteries i check the life of the by holding down the power button and count 10 blinks. The other batteries only blink 3/4 times. For ease of understanding I'll call them my aftermarket batteries.
I bought an aftermarket on ebay that i get 19 minutes of flight time, and I actually had FPV my first flight. After 10 minutes I got a message on the flight app that told me the battery wasn't authentic and I lost the video.
I'm going out for a flight shortly with my 19 min aftermarket and DJI authentic. Will report back. I also charge up my wifi unit every time I fly the drone.

David Bruce Kerr · Mar 11, 2018

Sounds like your Module is getting hot, then shutting off. Might want to open it up and try the arctic silver paste mod to keep it cool. Let us know how it turns out. Good luck!

Riseandrun · Mar 11, 2018

Thanks for the replay David. I'll take a look at the arctic silver paste mod...but first, I'm going to try the ping thing. I just got back from a flight with my 19 min aftermarket and never had FPV. I let the drone hover about a foot off the ground 10 feet away and my app was telling me 165ft away so I have that going for me too. Is that a part of the paste mod?
Really appreciate the help. Do you have any opinion on aftermarket/ authentic batteries being the issue?

David Bruce Kerr · Mar 11, 2018

I bought a few aftermarket batteries and never had a problem with them. Sometimes on an original DJI battery I even get a message saying it’s not an authentic battery, and it is. But it goes away quickly. The ping test should tell you the status of your module. Top board is telemetry and bottom board is your FPV.