Wingsland S6 ESC repair

Well I replaced all 12 mosfets that I blew up and sadly its still dead.

On further examination , I found another chip had blown. But this time it was on the main board.

I guess the reverse voltage I sent through it that blow mosfets also killed the chip for the main pcb supplies.

IC was a RT7239, a step down convertor.

I could not source that one easy, so got a RT7240.

The specs pretty much the same except slightly higher power version.

Anyway, with that chip replaced the drone now powers up and it all works except still no motors.

On closer examination of the esc board , I found 4 x 10 ohm smd resistors that under the microscope I could see had slight burn marks on them.

So replaced these aswell and now the esc powers up and the rear motors bleep, but the front ones are still dead!

Gosh my foolish mistake sure did blow a lot of parts.

I think I know what I hope is the last part I need to make this work, but sourcing it as it has a strange code marking and I have not found it yet.

But for now , as Banggood have the S6 back in stock again and using the code “quad30” one can get 30% off. (Dont know how long that code will last for? Think its discount off all rc quads)

Prices of the S6 have gone up a fair bit, but with discount its pretty much what I paid last time.

That way if I cant get my first S6 working again, I will still have one for testing and a standard untouched one as backup again.

 

Yeah I know, most think this quad is a waste of time, but for me at least it has some uses and which is why I dont mind messing about with it.

 

 

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Blew up my Wingsland S6

So annoyed with myself over this one!

I was testing out some external lipos in my S6 and failed to noticed I had put the connector on back to front on 1 of the lipos.

As I plugged it in was a spark and then realized what I had done.

Now my S6 totally dead.

Taking it apart I could smell the burnt parts.

Seems to have blow all 12!! of the mosfets on the esc pcb.

You can see on the pic above on the left the holes in the chips. The photo does not show the other side too well, but they all blown too.

I already used a hot air station to remove one to check connections underneath, to make it easier to match up some replacements.

 

Took a lot of searching about until I found the chips, only number on them was N16 1231

Anyway, they seem to turn out to be DMN3016LDN-7 which are available from Digikey.

I did not plan to ever take this S6 apart again, but sadly due to my own stupid mistake I had to.

Whether there is any other damage to the other chips, wont know until I remove and replace all 12 of these chips.

So in future , I must write out 500 times , check the connections before I plug in!

I know what some are thinking why bother?

But its still cheaper than getting another and I already have a spare S6 , but that is stock and I still want one for other mods I have in mind.

Shame though as prior to this I made a few flights with my now working R6 controller and it was flying so nice……

 

 

 

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Working Wingsland R6 Controller

Well at last with a lot of mucking about , I got my R6 to work!!

This was in big part to a member of the Wingsland Facebook who sent me a working dump from a Outdoor version of the S6 which has root access.

I had to change a few config files and lucky enough the wingsland remote file was still intact on what I salavaged from a dump I took from the R6 that I done by removing the flash chip and reading it into a programmer.

Then after altering a dump that I was sent , got it to work in the R6 and it now connects to my S6 like it was supposed to.

Done a few test flights and it seems very responsive with the remote, but the cold weather I am having where I live is making flight time shorter than normal, even with the upgraded lipos I have for this.

Have to wait til weather warms up a bit for a full test out at the beach 😉

I also replaced the wifi firmware inside the S6 with the earlier version that the winsgland facebook member sent me, and after changing the serial etc to match my craft that also works fine and now I have root and openwrt access via the web gui.

This also did involve removing the flash chip from the wifi board inside the craft.

My poor S6 above been apart so many times now, god knows how it still works.!!

But wont be taking it apart anymore, its been through enough now.

Only other mods I will be doing will be upgrading the motors and another set of different props on the way to test.

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Wingsland R6 faulty flash firmware

Well after a bit of adding wires here and there and reading out the data using serial to wifi module, I can confirm the fault with the R6 that I got is indeed the firmware in the flash chip that is faulty.

Its not been fully programmed as most of the firmware is incomplete or corrupt.

Hence why it sticks just after the u-boot part has loaded.

This is a problem as the firmware is not available as a download anywhere for the R6.

If I had the firmware bin , I could just re flash the chip and my R6 would work!

I dont fancy having to purchase yet another R6 , just to get a dump of the flash chip!

Anyway I was curious what would happen if I took a copy of the flash from the Actual S6 craft and then flashed that into the R6??

Well I did just that and with the serial lead attached I watched it boot and load and checking on my phone a wifi connection came up to controller named of course wingslandS6_air_xxxx

And I could connect to it no probs. So this proves the hardware is working fine, this was let down by badly programed firmware to the wifi module.

Inside the box when I purchased it , it has a quality control stamp. I guess the manufactures dont actually check these work before they stamp them passed!!

Funny checking in wingsland app it shows this under firmware 😉

It thinks the flight control is R6M70422 !

Of course this really refers to what inside the R6.

From digging around, it seems the firmware is pretty similar between the S6 and R6.

They both use OpenWRT and same version.

I was able to see that by using binwalk and extracting the working S6 firmware and the bits which were in the corrupt R6 chip.

But the remote uses a different program on boot, the S6 uses wingsland_server and the remote uses wingsland_remotelet

There are prob also some other config files differences.

Maybe a way to cobble together if we had ssh access to the running system, but its locked out.

Easiest way would be if someone else had a working dump of the flash chip from the R6 wifi module that I could use.

Cant see too many willing to rip apart there R6 and unsolder the chip to read it and so I will next try and get root access to the wifi module.

 

 

 

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Wingsland R6 controller Tear Down

Heres some photos of my wingsland r6 controller , that taken apart as it was faulty from new anyway.

Pic above is with back off – only 4 Phillips screws

This pic above if of the bottom of the WiFi module which I believe is faulty

 

Top view of the WiFi module

 

Pic of both boards out side by side.

Pic of the internal 3.7 volt 1500mah lipo.

 

Pic of the main board and one of the joystick gimbals

 

WiFi module with heatsink cover off.

 

Also a quick test with a lead connected via serial connection to the WiFi module shows its stuck on the u-boot and makes no attempt to go any further, so that seems to confirm the fault.

 

Waiting for spi programmer to carry out tests on the flash chip next.

Although that 4mb memory dont look right in the terminal, wonder if memory faulty

and thats why u-boot gets stuck?

 

 

 

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