AR Drone 2.0 Motor fixed

Replaced the burnt out chip on the AR Drone motor pcb today and put it all back together and connected battery and hit take off and motor spun up and then motors cut out.

drone-new-ic

Tried again and same thing.

 

Lucky enough I did buy 4 of them anyways.

So pulled it all apart and this time replaced the other 2 MOSFETS and tried again and his time all works fine 🙂

So looks although only 1 chip blew apart it does indeed kill all 3 and for future if/when this happens again, will have to replace all 3 at a time and not just the one thats blown apart.

 

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Innokin AIO (All In One) Pack IK-1200 E-Cigarette

Just bought one of these to try out.

Nice looking starter kit, the one I got was the above silver but with yellow cartomizers and white battery and hence looks like a real cig.

With hindsight, I should have got the silver one with black battery and black cartomizers as I think that looks better.

But you can buy the battery and cartomizers separately , and so I will probably update them to the black ones.

Nice build quality of the device and the lid snaps on nicely and comes with 1 battery and 3 empty cartomizers and charging cable and adapter that you can top up a phone battery from the Innokin case battery as it has a micro usb out socket and the included adapter has connections for most other common phones etc, and also a soft carry case.

The battery really plugs in case really nice and not loose or flapping about, and impressed with the thought that must have gone into fitting just right when inserted in case and it is charging.

So charge up the case and then you good to go through day without having to worry about the e-cig battery going flat.

Excellent value for the money too this kit.

Downsides? The usb charging socket is very poor indeed. The lead fits in bottom and sticks out a bit and I have to wiggle mine to make sure its charging the case battery, looks kind of similar to the old Nokia phone socket. On this the plug does not fully go into the socket and its very loose fitting and to me looks like it will break all too easy.

The rest of it is really well made and this is a real let down they used such a poor charging socket for it.

I hope that in the next version they use a micro usb socket instead and then this would perfect.

They already use a micro usb socket on device for output and so cant really understand why they used the other pin type socket for charging to be honest.

Even with my niggle about the crappy charging socket ,I would still recommend this for those starting out, just be careful with the charging lead when plugging it in.

Also a good idea to buy extra cartomizers as for me one of them lasts a week before its no good anymore or coil dies and only 3 with starter pack, so will use them up quickly.

For starting out, I think this is hard to beat.

Bought mine in UK from Vapour-Room.com and offer a really good next day delivery service from them.

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AR Drone 2.0 motor failed

After about 2 weeks of waiting to test the AR Drone flight recorder, as long last the wind dropped under 5 mph!

Plugged the battery in and a loud crack.

Sadly the electronics in the AR Drone has let me down again, this time it was one of the chips on the motor pcb that decided to nuke itself.

As you can see in picture the bottom left has a part blown off above pin.

motor

The ic is a MOSFET and type is – DMC3028LSD

A new motor from Parrot is around £40! The cost of the part? £2.50 each which i managed to locate locally.

Could have got it a lot cheaper from Digikey, but with postage from USA would have cost more anyways.

Bit disappointed that again the electronics has failed on this drone though.

Hopefully shall get the new part in soon and then be able to test the Flight recorder more.

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AR Drone Flight recorder weight

Just weighed this and it does weigh more than I expected and can see why Parrot are making available a 1500 mah battery and you are probably going to need it as I would expect with the normal 1000 mah battery one is going to lose a fair bit of flying time?

Weight is 34 grams

gps

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Parrot AR Drone 2.0 Flight Recorder

See all about this at CES back in Jan 2013 and seemed to take ages to actually come out, but after ordering mine at soon as they announced it was available, I received mine today 🙂

ARDroneGPS

Now just a calm day to test it compared to standard.

Videos and info to follow.

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