DJI Mavic Mini

Well its out and I have to say, think I found my replacement for the Wingsland S6.

The dji is indeed 249 grams and 2.7k 3 axis gimbal and upto 30 mins flight time.

To think the Wingsland S6 weighed 260 grams and fixed 4k camera and flight time of 5/6 mins. So no contest, even though the camera not 4k, but 2.7k is fine with a 3 axis gimbal.

And base price is with remote! Uk price £369

and £459 the fly more combo pack

Totally amazing job DJI have done with this and get the weight below 250 grams and long flight time, almost certainly by using 18650 cells and having designed there electronics and esc and motors to run at the lower voltages the 18650 cells go down too.

Would love to order one now, but going have to save the pennies and get one when I can.

These are sure going to sell like hot cakes me thinks!

 

 

 

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Wingsland S6 replacement?

Maybe for those that like the Wingsland S6 size, there will finally be another folding quad of similar size very soon!

The Mavic Mini

Okay so will be a fair bit thicker then the S6.

But leaks say anything from 18 mins to 30 mins???? stated flight time.

When I First see leaks a while back I thought the battery bay looks a lot like dual 18650 cells.

If this is true then maybe with there electronics aimed to use the lower voltage of 18650 cells on there esc motors and electronics they could get a decent flight time.

But all up weight of 245 grams??? I have a feeling thats the weight without battery?

Bear in mind the Wingsland S6 was approx 265 grams with no gimbal , thats why I sceptical about the mavic mini being 245 grams all up weight. I was guessing more like 330-350 grams for the new mavic mini myself with battery in.

But if it is that weight is with battery, that will be ideal for us flyers in the UK who will soon have that waste of time registration for craft over 250 grams.

For sure at under 250 grams, this would sell like hot cakes.

If anyone could pull this off, for sure woudl be DJI

Rumours of specs are 2.7k , 3 axis gimbal and front and downward sensors and using the enhanced wifi which is rumoured to be using same mavic air controller, if so wont be able to use Spark controller with it for sure.

Price $399 . Is that just for the quad????

Anyway, all guesswork until the 30th October 2019

DJI Event October the 30th 2019 – Fly as you are

 

 

 

 

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SkyViper V2450 GPS

Got hold of one of these SkyViper V2450 GPS a while back as a good friend of mine in the USA put me onto this quad because it uses arducopter firmware, and might be a way to cram this into a broken S6 I have lying about.

Really nice little quad considering the price and features, with only drawbacks are it uses brushed motors which will always wear out real quick and it use a very low quality 720 camera which from flight I done suffers really bad jello.

But apart from that works pretty well along with the remote it comes with.

Some teardown photos:-

The flight controller is based off the pixhawk racer hardware and is very compact with the rx for the control built on the pcb, so really nice size.

After a few flights of this until the brushed motors wore out and then onto getting this to work in a s6 shell with the original s6 motors.

 

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Another Winsgland S6 battery test

After rebuilding a S6 battery with the Hyperion G6 1400mah LiHV cells this is a test from 100% to auto landing at 0% using stock props.

To cut to the chase I got 7 mins 48 seconds of actual flying time.

Temps on the day were around 26C / 79F with little wind.

The S6 and the battery pack were taken outside and no warming of pack or craft prior to hover test.

I would expect maybe a tad longer flight times if flying around in forward flight.

But still a pretty good upgrade of getting more flight time and this G6 version of the hyperion cells seems to last better than the Hyperion G7 graphene pack I tried before.

I did also do a test with some Simtoo XT175 props, but although you can get even longer with those props, twice including my last test with these the props broke apart mid air.

Below photo of the one broken prop I did find after it hit the deck and you can see where it broke apart.

Otherwide those props definately provide longer flight times, but maybe not strong enough for the S6 sadly.

I do have other props on the way which might work, shall update when they arrived and I tested them.

In the meantime, below is the video of my test flight. Rather boring as just a hover and video recorded off screen on a iphone 6 and hence not very good quality, but for those that want to see the % drop of battery over those almost 8 mins.

Video of test flight:-

 

 

 

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Replacing worn out Wingsland S6 cells

Well I now have 2 S6 packs which are showing there age and much shorter flight times.

So time to replace the cells.

This time the cells I am using are Hyperion G6 1400Mah ones as I ordered the G7 pack I had before, but was sent a G6 one from Robotbirds in the UK

So this was the pack I received :-

A 4S pack, which means I have to carefully split the pack!

Balance of cells was around 3.8 per cell, but normally HV cells are around 3.87 per cell.

First off I charged the pack to storage which took 164mah to get the cells to 3.9 per cell which is what I would expect from HV cells at storage voltage.

 

Right now onto the tricky part!

First remove the blue shrink wrap.

and then the bit of plastic that goes around cells.

Then (CAREFULLY) cut the balance cables and remove from the pack.

Then what I did was to use a small grinder and cut the pcb like photo below

Also note cells are stuck together with very sticky tape and best way to seperate them is by using lighter fuel ,

squirt some down sides of cells and then after a min they will come apart much easier (AGAIN be careful, lighter fuel and lipos that can catch fire!!)

Then to make it easier after this I cut down the middle of solder where cells are to seperate the cells (Sorry I forgot to take photo of this)

But in photo below is where I cut which is marked in red.

Reason why I did it this way, was trying to unsolder the cells you need to apply too much heat. This is what I done before and I am concerned its damaging the cells, so if you are really carefull ginding and cutting is far less stressful on the cells, but you still have to be really careful not to slice through pack or short the cells with cutter.

Once all cells are loose you can unsolder what is left of the tabs and you should end up with something like this:-

2 of the 4 cells now almost ready to go into the S6 battery case.

Next solder 2 of the cells together making sure you connect postive to minus correctly!!!!

And attach the balance wire to the battery pcb.

A really big issuse is the case is quite easy to get apart as its not plastic welded, but held together with really small and flimsy clips that will almost certainly break when you get case apart.

On the case below the clips broke a long time back as I was testing different cells and the case looks far worse for wear by now 😉

Cells and battery pcb back in case.

Yes I marked the cells after reading with meter so I got it right.

The postive and neagtive is marked on the S6 battery pcb as B+ and B- (Triple check you got this right or you will blow the ESC and dc convertor on the main Wingsland S6 board!!!!) I know this as I done it once! And as you cant buy the esc board its a write off, unless you want to replace every esc fet and dc convertor chip which I had to do once.

So you must check and check again that the voltage you have on the pcb is correct at around 7.6v at storage and the small balance wire should be reading 1 around 3.8v if at storage from new.

After that put it in charger to make sure it charges and if you got it wrong, blow the charger and not the s6 😉

 

Then charged it up and then on next post will give results.

WARNING!!!!

Only try this is you are experienced in soldering and lipo batteries, you will 100% void any wingsland warranty and also void any warranty on the lipo pack, and so for most people I would strongly advise against doing this , and to get legal stuff out of the way if you do this mod and anything catches fire or burns down, or you destroy your S6 or charger its down to you as you have been warned!!

 

Best solution is some third party lipo maker like GiFi power would make better batteries , they make them for the Dobby and so why not the Wingsland S6??? I am sure they would sell a lot if they made some!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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