Graham's Blog

Well after blowing up the esc board on my S6 I got another from Banggood as they were on offer.

They must be getting to the end of whats left I think, as packing on this one different to ones before.

No Plastic carry case now, just foam padding and also the image on the box is silver and inside is the orange version.

The orange one is the one I ordered, so no problem there, and I have cases from my other 2 so thats fine. But if this had of been the first S6 you bought, then I guess if thats how they come now, you will have to buy a case for it.

I assume the missing case and different image are probably due to them coming to the end of what they have left now?? as I doubt these are actually made anymore.

Inside all manuals etc are in chinese.

A check on the battery showed it was perfectly balanced at 3.85 per cell storage voltage, using my modified wingsland charger to show me cell voltages.

Only other difference I noted was it has no led light in front, seems some have them and some not. But thats no a issue as it was never a enabled feature anyway. (Prob a good idea due to the short flight time you get)

So will do 1 flight test with this and the battery , just to make sure all works ok and curious what firmware in it in as there are 2 different versions of the wifi in these.

Some with root access and some without.

……..Just a update, I fired this up to check firmware and its the non root version

using wifi S6W70508

As I have posted before you can downgrade these to a root access version of the firmware, but you have to take the firmware chip off the wifi board and re flash it.

(Sorry I have not posted how to downgrade the wifi firmware yet, must get around to doing that for anyone who wants to do it.)

The outdoor S6 versions, seem to come with the root access version by the way.

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.

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……

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.