Remember when you have to get on your knees before take off to look at the lights below the bird to know if you have home lock looking for the fast flashing green lights? and what about the solid yellow lights to know if you managed to enter calibration mode?
Well.. I don't anymore.
I've just added a multicolor LED to the top of the bird that flashes the same colors of the leds below the bird.
works great
check it out:
DIAGRAM of the LED connections:
Ok sorry about the crudeness of the diagram.
This represents one of the LEDs from one of the back strips (back of the ESC board).
Motor side to the left, center of the bird to the right.
IMPORTANT: remember you wanna do this to one of the back LEDS, those are the ones with the important status blinking messages.
Just remove 2 screws holding the ESC, and flip it with your hands to access the bottom leds (flip it CCW looking from the motor to the center of the bird)
The LEDs have 6 pins, we'll use 3.
pin 1 is GREEN light NEGATIVE
pin 2 is COMMON POSITIVE
pin 3 is RED light NEGATIVE.
You need a bicolor RED/GREEN COMMON ANODE LED or in alternative an RGB COMMON ANODE LED (and remove the BLUE leg).
you get the yellow color with both of RED and GREEN are ON.
I've soldered the wires to the small connectors on one of the original LEDs. Used a Servo Wire with connector, and plugged my RGB LED directly on the connector. That way I can unplug it when I need to remove the top shell.
The ESC does not fit so good on its resting place, with the wires soldered to the led, so you must find an alternative way to fix it to the structure. I used one of the original screws to lock it in one end, and just heatglued the other end of the ESC board to the bottom shell.
You can choose the final placement of your LED, mine works great on the back top and with plenty of room inside for the connections. Had to peal a little bit on the aluminum foil protecting tha GPS, but just a tiny bit.
If you don't have RGB or BICOLOR common ANODE LEDS, you can still kind of doing it with normal 2 leds. just join the positive legs of both leds on pin 2. But remember: since YELLOW is the result of both RED and GREEN lighting 2ghether, you have to mentally take note that YELLOW for you is 2 LEDS lit.
Results:
It works great even in bright direct sunlight, and you can always tell standing up and looking donw on the bird, if you have a HOME LOCK (fast blinking green light) or if you successfully engaged calibration mode (solid YELLOW).
hands in the air if you like my mod, and please post pics of your work if you do the same.
(pics of you with your HANDS IN THE AIR too)
Well.. I don't anymore.
I've just added a multicolor LED to the top of the bird that flashes the same colors of the leds below the bird.
works great
check it out:
DIAGRAM of the LED connections:
Ok sorry about the crudeness of the diagram.
This represents one of the LEDs from one of the back strips (back of the ESC board).
Motor side to the left, center of the bird to the right.
IMPORTANT: remember you wanna do this to one of the back LEDS, those are the ones with the important status blinking messages.
Just remove 2 screws holding the ESC, and flip it with your hands to access the bottom leds (flip it CCW looking from the motor to the center of the bird)
The LEDs have 6 pins, we'll use 3.
pin 1 is GREEN light NEGATIVE
pin 2 is COMMON POSITIVE
pin 3 is RED light NEGATIVE.
You need a bicolor RED/GREEN COMMON ANODE LED or in alternative an RGB COMMON ANODE LED (and remove the BLUE leg).
you get the yellow color with both of RED and GREEN are ON.
I've soldered the wires to the small connectors on one of the original LEDs. Used a Servo Wire with connector, and plugged my RGB LED directly on the connector. That way I can unplug it when I need to remove the top shell.
The ESC does not fit so good on its resting place, with the wires soldered to the led, so you must find an alternative way to fix it to the structure. I used one of the original screws to lock it in one end, and just heatglued the other end of the ESC board to the bottom shell.
You can choose the final placement of your LED, mine works great on the back top and with plenty of room inside for the connections. Had to peal a little bit on the aluminum foil protecting tha GPS, but just a tiny bit.
If you don't have RGB or BICOLOR common ANODE LEDS, you can still kind of doing it with normal 2 leds. just join the positive legs of both leds on pin 2. But remember: since YELLOW is the result of both RED and GREEN lighting 2ghether, you have to mentally take note that YELLOW for you is 2 LEDS lit.
Results:
It works great even in bright direct sunlight, and you can always tell standing up and looking donw on the bird, if you have a HOME LOCK (fast blinking green light) or if you successfully engaged calibration mode (solid YELLOW).
hands in the air if you like my mod, and please post pics of your work if you do the same.
(pics of you with your HANDS IN THE AIR too)
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