DJI Spark repairs

Posted on 9th July 2018 by graz27

Well picked up a cheap broken Spark to see if it was worth fixing.

This one had a broken arm, badly broken gimbal and some other faults.

After stripping it down and checking it all over, I found the front sensor camera case had broken away and that was a simple fix with some glue as the camera sensor was still okay and just the plastic lens housing broken away from the board.

Glued the broken arm back into place and then reinforced it with some fiberglass resin.

No point in getting a new body until I know whether it worth it or not.

one of the wires had snapped away from the motor esc, so that was fixed and needed a new led cover.

after gluing back the arm and what was left of the gimbal, I tried a test flight.

This had to be done with a third party wired lipo as again not worth buying a battery yet.

Be careful you check where you are soldering, if you going do this battery mod.

Had to cut a small hole in top casing, but as I know I will end up getting a new case at some stage, this was not a big deal to me.

Had to use the DJI assistant version 1.2 to get access to debug mode and enable third party battery option.

With this set you can use a different battery. But…. no feedback on what voltage is etc.

As you can see from pic below the camera gimbal is totally out of focus.

And after taking the gimbal apart again, and examining the actual lens and sensor it was obvious the sensor took damage and is non repairable.

Problem there is a new gimbal assembly is almost half the price of a new Spark.

The motors in the gimbal worked fine, but was smashed so sadly not really usable that bit either as too much of casing was missing.

So had a look around and got a cheap second hand one that had a fault, but camera was fine and motors were not.

Lucky that you can get the motors and housing bit very cheap from china from Aliexpress,

I tested the camera on the second hand one and that worked fine, but with gimbal overload. New housing with motors should cure that.

Also using the ios app, I was getting downward vision sensor errors.

This seems to be the ribbon has slightly broken at plug where it plugs in on top of main board.

So yet again Aliexpress to the rescue with a replacement ribbon and bottom sensor assembly.

So hopefully once these parts turn up, it should work ok?.

 

But real question is….. Is it worth it??????

I guess if one can pick up a damaged Spark, and the main board and motors still work and not too much other damage. (Especially the gimbal camera part)

Some parts are cheap, but others like main board and the camera gimbal assy are expensive!

Steer clear from water damaged ones, especially ones that have landed in the sea.

Crash on land ones if not too badly smashed might be worth a go, but as you can see it can end up with a lot of parts need to be changed out and you need to get parts from china or it definitely wont be worth it!

 

So thank god for places like Aliexpress!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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WingSland S6 Charger mod

Posted on 9th July 2018 by graz27

To make it easier to keep a better eye on the battery condition in the S6 , i split apart the usb charger and added a balance cable.

It is not plastic welded together luckly enough, so one can gently prise it apart with something like a plastic splatter.

There is however one screw that needs to be undone which is under the label.

I also drilled out a small hole so the balance and power cable could pass out of the case.

Of course doing all this voids the warranty, but that prob does not matter these days as it seems the S6 is not supported anymore anyways.

That way I can plug it into my imax B6 and check it far more easier that the temp balance cable I made up.

Also still be able to charge by normal usb if needed.

 

 

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Wingsland S6 battery tests

Posted on 9th May 2018 by graz27

Being that this quad has very short flight times, I used my first one to test out some different batteries.

I made up a lead to go from inside the quad to some outside connectors.

Using a Turnigy 2s 1600Mah normal 4.2 per cell pack I got about 7 mins.

Could just about fit this in the battery compartment , although was a very tight fit.

 

Next test was getting hold of some LiHV cells.

The way I done this was to get a 4s 1400 LiHV pack and split the cells.

One has to be REALLY CAREFULL doing this!!

So if you try this and it goes wrong you have been warned ! Dont do it unless you know what you are doing.

 

New cells slightly heavier above

Original cells above

 

New cells soldered into original case….

 

Flight times were on my first flight I got 6 mins 50 secs and second flight was 7 mins 7 secs before auto low voltage landing.

So one can get a tad more flight time with upgraded cells.

Not tried normal flight yet, and would expect this to be better.

 

Voltages at end were 3.67 per cell.

Charge put back in was 1270mah @ 1amp 1:24:29 secs

So using almost 90% of battery in those 7+ mins.

After second run of these cells I put charge put back in of 1105 mah @1 amp 1:12:22 secs

 

I am beginning to think the only way to get this up anywhere near 10 mins is probably finding better props and or better efficiency motors.

As fitting a bigger battery going to be problematical.

Unless something changes on cell density in the future and allows about the same size cells…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2nd Banggood Wingsland S6

Posted on 9th May 2018 by graz27

Well, being that my first Wingsland S6 had issues with camera where it would only show a blank screen on app, I ordered another S6 from Banggood.

Although ironically after downgrading the camera firmware on my first S6 after putting it back together after the tear down I done , it now works about 8 times out of ten.

So maybe was a connection or the older firmware that has improved it.

So the one on the right is the new one and the camera works on that every time!

The battery with the new one also came with higher resistance on the cells that I would normally expect, but a tad lower than the first battery.

Anyways, with a hover test. Was about the same almost 6 mins with new battery and with first battery I also got about almost 6 mins.

So it definitely seems normal hover flight time on a battery will be between 5-6 mins and would expect a bit more when flying around normally.

Will test this when I get a chance.

Would still like to try this out with the proper R6 controller, but still cant find these for sale anywhere.

So yup, I was just unlucky with the first one Banggood sent me and the second one works fine.

Although a interesting thing was on the first one there was NO led light hardware inside the quad.

But on the second one I can clearly see this one has the led hardware inside.

Bit irrelevant as thats another feature now removed from the app. I dare say flight time was bad enough without trying to run a led light too 😉

Next post will be some battery tests 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wingsland S6 Tear Down and thoughts

Posted on 9th May 2018 by graz27

Seeing as my Wingsland S6 had a camera which did not work most of the time, I decided to strip it down to see if anything loose.

Maybe these photos will also help others and show whats inside.

There is a lot of technology in these, the quad is packed with hardware.

Also interestingly, the board that drives the motors is DJI hardware!

So that kind of tells me that it should be able to react quick enough to say change of wind etc.

And also coupled with the Barometer covered and enclosed well, it really should be able to hold its height much better than it does!

This is also a photo I posted on the Facebook Wingsland Owners group of the barometer pointed out and its in a plastic shell with holes in the top and a small piece of foam under it.

So this really should hold its height much better than it does.

But I do wonder if it actually holds it height much better higher up and I assume it was originally designed to use the sonar and downward facing position camera for indoors and also under about 10-15 feet outside.

But as the sonar and the position camera are disabled in either the firmware or app now, maybe that is also why its poor (especially in the wind) at low attitude hold.

Again I feel this really well built little quad been really let down by the lack of app and firmware development.

If they could have updated the firmware, I feel reviews would have been much more positive for Wingsland.

 

Anyway, a few more photos of the teardown for anyone curious.

For the above which is the Arm CPU and video processing chip etc, I added some thermal compound to maybe help.

Other assorted pics

I added a small bit of  foam over the barometer, even though it already looked done well enough. and surely made no difference at all to the altitude hold.

There is also another pcb under the battery which I forgot to get pics of.

Its the wifi pcb.

But I think its clear to see this was a lot of hardware inside, but sadly due to the lack of development in the firmware/app has caused most of the issues in my view.

Also with the low flight time of about 5-6 mins and no where near the claimed upto 10 mins.

However I did see someone post a photo of flight time they got on the Facebook Wingsland owners group that got about 9mins before it landed , which is very impressive and maybe with the right conditions one could also get near that on a good day.

But most reviews seem to say its around 5-6 mins normally.

So to recap, for the price these now are is it worth it?

Depends on what you want from it.

The stabilization of the video is poor and probably better not to use it and use one of the other app video settings and then run it through some pc/mac software to stabilize the video.

The camera itself on this is good and in a calm day one can get some nice shots and maybe especially if you after some good quality still shorts, but you need very calm conditions for this to be of use when taking just stills.

With no wind, it holds position and height really well

What really helps with this is the Wingsland R6 Controller, but sadly there does not seem to be anywhere with any left!

I wonder if any more are even being made as it seems out of stock at all the usual places and no eta of when coming back.

Coupled with the low price you can now buy these on places like Banggood, I do wonder if they are just selling off all stock of the Quad and controllers and once its all gone that its.

Worth checking back at bangood if you still decide to get one as they do deals now and then and drop the price even more 🙂

Even though I got a unit that had a pretty much non working camera , I do like this enough for what I wanted it for that I do have another on the way from Banggood.

Fingers crossed this next one works okay and will use this original one for battery mods and testing out different props etc.

So for me personally I think its still a great looking quad , awesome packing and presentation and fine if you have specific needs where this will fit in.

For a quick fly up take some snaps and video on a dead calm day, this might be worth it to you.

But bear in mind it’s low flight time and there’s a good chance there will be no more updates in firmware or app software, unless anyone at Wingsland is still working on something.

I also paired this up with a bluetooth controller , which although not as good as the proper R6 controller, kind of does ok for now.

You cant seem to use a wifi repeater on this like other quads out there though.

Seems the app will only connect direct to the S6 and wont go through a repeater, but I guess with such a short flight time this is not too much of a issue not being able to increase the range.

If Wingsland are not updating this quad anymore,  I wish they would release the FTP / SSH passwords, so some of us could connect to it and maybe adjust some of the internal settings to address some of the issues.

I have checked out the flight firmware and its encrypted so no way in via that route either 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Radio Control Models, Wingsland S6 | Tagged , | Leave a comment