Video Signal Loss - Nightmares!

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Sep 16, 2016
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so i recently purchased a damaged dji phantom 3 standard on ebay about 2 weeks ago.

When getting the drone it had its classic gimbal snap crash (from what ive been reading) and had ripped the cable from the pins on the main camera along with the antenna cables for the video downlink.

anyway, i purchased the necessary replacement parts from RC geeks via ebay but in the mean time wanted to see if i can bodge the drone up to get it to work.

So i took my time and looked around online, i had seen someone who had attempted to repin the plug that goes into the gimbal and had a go myself

I also took the antenna cables and managed to find the ends still attached to the gimbal :eek: so done my best at re attaching them too

I did manage to get the drone working :):):):):)

but when flying around i felt that having dodgey cables wouldn't be such a good idea to have permanently so it was time to get the new parts in the drone, now before doing this

i managed to go a average height of a 150m with the dodgey cables.


I then took delivery of these...

and of course a fresh cable set and gimbal mounting plate.

now the fun began.... i took the drone apart and replaced the 2.4ghz wifi antennas that had dodgy ends and also replaced the the main gimbal cable and usb cable as this was in the way at the time.

since replacing these i cannot get any video signal over 30m :mad::(:(:(:( however RC signal is NOT the issue

ive have spent the past 3 days tying all sorts to get this drone at least back to the height i had with the dodgy antennas. ive completely dissasembled and re assembled the drone 3 times to check for loose wires or to see if ive missed something but no.

ive taken it on 10 test flights just to see if i can get it back to what it was before atleast.

So i put the old antenna back on (on the outside) and surely enough it went back to what i had originally had in the first place. (poor but still working)


When i say ive tried many things i have tried ....

resetting software
re-linking rc and drone
downgrading + upgrading software
Resetting wifi on rc
Re calibrating IMU (suggested by dji support)
replacing the old antennas


the new antennas are now also struggling to give a good video signal on the bench at home without flying anywhere

in my opinion the new antennas i had purchased were faulty however i do not know how to test these

so after trying all of the above i purchased some u.fl mini to RP-SMA adapters with some 6dbi omnidirectional antennas of amazon

after connecting the u.fl adapters i started to get 2-3 bar wifi range and a smoothish video signal as soon as i stick the 6 dbi antenna on it drops signal entirely. could i be right in thinking that the pcb on the gimbal just does not have the power for 2x 6dbi antennas?

anyway im not too bothered about seeing if i can get the gimbal to push out a better signal, im more interested in getting the camera back to manufacturing specifications which i believe is more than 150m (do correct me if im wrong but that doesn't seem very far for a standard phantom 3)

so the main questions are..

Honestly would you agree that the replacement part (antennas) i ordered could be faulty? if so should i try to order another set or do i just try modifying instead anyway,

if modifying why hasn't the 6dbi antennas worked? (wrong frequency? too much power? wrong type of Ariel i.e not omnidirectional)

what power does the standard gimbal pcb put out on its stock 2.4ghz antennas?

would the 6dbi antennas work on the controller side instead of me binning them to extend the range once it is working back to normal?

i understand these are a lot of questions but im seriously confused at to why replacing genuine stock parts had not worked - i also find it funny that the website i purchased these off have now run out of stock

any input i would highly appreciate and would like to thank you in advance!

George
 

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