Faulty Zerotech Dobby

Posted on 30th January 2019 by graz27

Just got hold of a broken Zerotech Dobby.

Quick test, it powers on okay but has a Barometer error which wont clear.

The error in the app is:-

Could be a firmware issue or just faulty Barometer, have to get it apart to have a look first.

So  Bit of a teardown needed 😉

Guess the baro must be under main board maybe near when the rear optical flow and sonar are , so main board needs to be unsoldered to raise the board.

Will update post, once I got it fully apart…….

Have to take the black sticky ccover off bottom to release the main board

But got to the bottom of the board then and its using a MS561101BA03

for the barometer, soldered to the front bottom of main board under a bit of foam.

Hard to see , but number on it is a MEAS 561101BA03

Might try reflowing it first , before replacing it.

Update 31/01/2019

After reflowing the barometer chip and putting the whole thing back together no change.

So either it is faulty or a resistor etc around it faulty or software issue.

But… It will work if…… If I start it up and leave it for 3-5 mins and the restart the drone and the altitude reads stable and I dont get the error.

So when cold it brings up the barometer abnormal error, and altitude jumping around all over the place. When warm it is settled.

Maybe in the summer it wont be such a issue, but if I decide to go further with this quad, I will probably replace the baro with a new one first.

 

 

 

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Wingsland S6 Video indoor flight Tattu cells and stock props

Posted on 27th January 2019 by graz27

Flight test below was done by forcing the Wingsland S6 into “indoor mode”

Please see other video on how to do this and cautions using it.

So again this was done using Tattu 1550mah LiHV 100C cells.

Was testing in same coniditions as last indoor test and this flight time was done on stock Wingsland S6 props was about 1 min shorter flight time.

Notice how on take off height jump not as high as when using Fairy props.

Also note the warning on using these props!
Flight Video

 

 

 

 

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Wingsland S6 Video indoor flight Tattu cells and Simtoo props

Posted on 27th January 2019 by graz27

Flight test below was done by forcing the Wingsland S6 into “indoor mode”

A fellow S6 use enlightned me to how to do this.

This is done by making sure the S6 has no gps satellites! In my house the S6 gets 1 -3 gps locks even indoors and if you take off a s6 with any gps sateliites it will not be in “Indoor mode”

This is a real problem, as before I knew this info taking my s6 off it would shoot up way to high , hit ceiling and then end up veering into a wall because it was trying to do a gps hold!!

So make sure you in indoor mode, by covering s6 so it does not get any access to gps satellites.

Hitting take off you will get a warning and that confirms you are in indoor mode.

Beware! In indoor mode this thing crawls , and movements are very very slow so ideally need a big room , I was controlling it with a Wingsland R6 remote

On this test it still shoots up and almost hits the ceiling, this is because I was using Simtoo XT175 Fairy drone props on it, so more lift than the s6 was expecting at take off.

(Check this about using these props though)

Anyway, test was done with 2 Tattu 1550mah 100C LiHv cells squeezed into battery bay and external wires to inside the s6. Not pretty, but just for testing.

 

Flight Video

Sorry about the poor lighting due to position of camera

Almost 10 mins real flight time just hovering..

 

 

 

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New or Old Wingsland S6 ?

Posted on 23rd January 2019 by graz27

Intresting….

Just before Christmas 2018 and because I blew up the esc board on one of my S6’s, I see that Banggood had the S6 back in stock.

They sold all there stock and once I see they had some more back in , I got another one.

It has sat in box as I wanted this to be a spare so I could carry on modding and experimenting with another one of mine promoted to test unit.

A fellow S6 user I have showed me photos of his S6 and it was different inside!

There was a module missing on top of the board. why???

I have just taken the bottom plastic sensor cover off mine and hey presto, I also have this model with out the module and gray antenna cable.

First photo is of my first 2 Wingsland Advanced S6 units and I have drawn a red arrow to show the antenna and module.

In photo below, this is the recent Wingsland Advanced S6 I got from Banggood.

As you can see it does not have the module or antenna cable!

Also more differences.

The motors are not plugged in on top of esc pcb, looks like now underneath and also power for wifi board looks to be coming directly from esc pcb.

Going to have to do a full teardown of this unit me thinks, as this model looks very much like the prototype photos that were submitted for the FCC regulations.

 

This also suggests that these quadcopters are still being manufactured  or just using old tooling to remake them or even just old stock/parts ?

Based on my recent comparison teardown of a R6 with metal thumbscrews

I am thinking this original module was a 5.8ghz video tx/rx that was never used or enabled? And may have been for sending video via 5.8ghz to googles/monitor etc???

And as never implemented, its now been removed to save weight and maybe a tad better battery life?

Begs the question , if these are in fact still being manufactured then why not update the firmware and app?  (Unless they are just being remade or using old stock parts etc)

I heard on the web that people had suggested Wingsland had abandoned the S6 , maybe not ???

Could the S6 raise from the ashes like a Phoenix at this new price point?

If Wingsland could tweak the firmware and get the sensors to work and release a extended battery option to purchase, I would say yes.

At the moment at the price the S6 is now selling for, if they done the above features there is not at present anything that looks as good or built as well in the current price point.

Also please fix the ios app, it does not show the wifi strength signal like the Android versions do.

What about it Wingsland???

Or…. Is this just a third party in Shenzhen China carrying on production of these? (Which now I have taken mine part a bit more, I am more likely to think this, especially as this last one I got from Banggood is all in Chinese Docs and no plastic case supplied)

 

 

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Wingsland R6 Different versions

Posted on 22nd January 2019 by graz27

Recently I got hold of another Wingsland R6 controller.

First off as I wanted to grab a dump of the firmware inside, as my other R6 controller had firmware that I had cobbled together and therefore getting a working one at some stage was ideal.

This one has the metal thumbsticks

Now I was going to take this apart as firstly I wanted a complete firmware dump from the flash chip on the wifi board and also the left hand gimbal was sticking a bit.

Now once I had this apart this was a intresting item

Inside the R6 with metal thumbscrews , under the wifi board was another small board with what I assume if a booster/amp for the video feed.

There is a extra antenna cable in here to next to the left stick on left of photo.

If you look at the photo below of the board from the R6 with plastic thumbscrews you will see there is no board or grey antenna wires top left. Just a empty space.

* This is intresting , and as the R6 was first out and sold with the Wingsland M5, I am going to presume the extra board and antenna was to enable further video range on the M5.

*And I assume that when they made these for the R6, because of short flight time and distance the extra booster/amp was not needed for the R6 and they removed it and changed thumbsticks to plastic to save costs.

*Intresting question I hear people ask now…. Does this mean the R6 with metal thumbsticks has better video range with the S6? Can’t answer that yet as need to test both once weather gets better. And also maybe the S6 phone app does not take any advantage of it a anyway and still gets its video feed direct from quad.

*Normally with R6, the 2.4ghz controls the S6 and the 5ghz S6 video feed is sent to the phone.

*Update to info above:

I jumped totally to wrong conclusion!

The R6 does in fact NOT use 5ghz for video feed. It just uses the 2.4GHZ for control and video.

There is what I think a 5.8ghz video tx/rx module on the R6 that is there on some models, which was I guess a planned feature that was in fact never used and maybe the module was there for some other non released Wingsland quadcopter or a planned addon.

So this means there is in fact no difference to which R6 you get, both should work the same range wise for control and video reception, I guess maybe the plastic version might get slighty longer battery time?? because it is not powering a un-used 5.8ghz module in it.

There might be more to all this, I need to carry about some testing and will update if needed.

Also note: Both models using different versions of firmware.

The one with metal thumbsticks uses OpenWRT with root access, you can browse to 192.168.1.1 on this model and login OpenWRT with root and password = 123

The Plastic thumbsticks R6 uses a later version of OpenWRT and root password is NOT 123. and also the web interface been removed. But also cant access telenet etc on the newer firmware, as have no idea what wingsland set password to.

Update: Binding to S6

Now this explains why some have had issues connecting the R6 to a S6.

As it seems there are 2 ways of binding the R6 depending on what version of R6 firmware you have! Might have to do a write up on this……

 

Right onwards to removing wifi flash chip and reading out firmware and fixing the sticky gimbal……

 

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