CGO3+ Issue

[JMolter]

Hey everyone, it's been a while. I took my H out to fly today but the CGO3 gimbal would not stabilize when I turned the drone on. The camera would just dangle down facing the ground and wouldn't stay up when I tried to manually put it in the correct position.

I restarted everything 3 times and the same thing happened every time. When I would start up my H, the CGO3 would try to move into position, but I would hear a grinding sound and it would move a little bit but then stop and just stay limp and dangle like it was. It was beeping constantly, in a pattern like long long short short, which obviously means something is wrong.

The camera would connect on my ST16 like normal, I could see what the camera was seeing on my ST16 screen like normal, it would just stay dangled facing the ground. I checked the pan switch channels and they all are working normal. I have not crashed my H at all so I don't know why this issue happened all of the sudden when it worked just fine last time I flew.

Anyone have any insight?

 

[WTFDproject]

You kinda mentioned Typhoon H and CGo3 in the same breath, so I'm not certain which camera you have. But the error code part is the same for both.
For this post, I will assume you have a CGo3+.

But Yeah. "long-long, short-short" is the error code for the Roll Encoder. It's the position sensor under the Yuneec label at the back of the camera. It's not always the result of an actual failed encoder. Many times, it is a broken/scraped/shorted wire, or a corroded solder joint at the encoder end, or a problem with the pin connector at the gimbal board end. Attachment 13 (CGo3+ Roll Encoder Replacement) of "Way To Fix Drones project shows how to replace the encoder if needed, or can be used as a reference to help look for a damaged wire.

The camera and the gimbal are built together as one unit, but they are actually two completely different things that share a power source and work together to make remote photography possible. The camera only gets power from the gimbal, so it keeps doing photo/video stuff just fine. You just can't point it at anything. That's what the gimbal does.

 

[JMolter]

You kinda mentioned Typhoon H and CGo3 in the same breath, so I'm not certain which camera you have. But the error code part is the same for both.
For this post, I will assume you have a CGo3+.

But Yeah. "long-long, short-short" is the error code for the Roll Encoder. It's the position sensor under the Yuneec label at the back of the camera. It's not always the result of an actual failed encoder. Many times, it is a broken/scraped/shorted wire, or a corroded solder joint at the encoder end, or a problem with the pin connector at the gimbal board end. Attachment 13 (CGo3+ Roll Encoder Replacement) of "Way To Fix Drones project shows how to replace the encoder if needed, or can be used as a reference to help look for a damaged wire.

The camera and the gimbal are built together as one unit, but they are actually two completely different things that share a power source and a common purpose. The camera only gets power from the gimbal, so it keeps doing photo/video stuff just fine. You just can't point it at anything. That's what the gimbal does.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah sorry my camera is a CGO3+

 

[Murray Martz]

You kinda mentioned Typhoon H and CGo3 in the same breath, so I'm not certain which camera you have. But the error code part is the same for both.
For this post, I will assume you have a CGo3+.

But Yeah. "long-long, short-short" is the error code for the Roll Encoder. It's the position sensor under the Yuneec label at the back of the camera. It's not always the result of an actual failed encoder. Many times, it is a broken/scraped/shorted wire, or a corroded solder joint at the encoder end, or a problem with the pin connector at the gimbal board end. Attachment 13 (CGo3+ Roll Encoder Replacement) of "Way To Fix Drones project shows how to replace the encoder if needed, or can be used as a reference to help look for a damaged wire.

The camera and the gimbal are built together as one unit, but they are actually two completely different things that share a power source and a common purpose. The camera only gets power from the gimbal, so it keeps doing photo/video stuff just fine. You just can't point it at anything. That's what the gimbal does.

I agree. I had repaired a CGO3+ and got the tone. At that time we had no info about the tones it was making on here, but after many days and hours of YouTube searching, I found someone that had the exact problem with the tones. So my issue was I had put a wire back wrong giving me the warning tone.

 

[JMolter]

You kinda mentioned Typhoon H and CGo3 in the same breath, so I'm not certain which camera you have. But the error code part is the same for both.
For this post, I will assume you have a CGo3+.

But Yeah. "long-long, short-short" is the error code for the Roll Encoder. It's the position sensor under the Yuneec label at the back of the camera. It's not always the result of an actual failed encoder. Many times, it is a broken/scraped/shorted wire, or a corroded solder joint at the encoder end, or a problem with the pin connector at the gimbal board end. Attachment 13 (CGo3+ Roll Encoder Replacement) of "Way To Fix Drones project shows how to replace the encoder if needed, or can be used as a reference to help look for a damaged wire.

The camera and the gimbal are built together as one unit, but they are actually two completely different things that share a power source and work together to make remote photography possible. The camera only gets power from the gimbal, so it keeps doing photo/video stuff just fine. You just can't point it at anything. That's what the gimbal does.

I followed the instructions from the document and looked for any issues with the roll encoder wire. I don't see any. I took my multimeter and tested the continuity of the three wires from the soldered end to the connection point on the circular gimbal board and the multimeter beeped. So i don't think any wires are broken if I'm able to get continuity from one end to the other.

Any other tips? I reattached the camera to the H and turned it on and I'm still getting the roll encoder error beeps. I just don't know what else to try if I don't see any issues with it when I look at the wires.

 

[WTFDproject]

At this point, it becomes a guessing game. But the best guess is that the roll encoder has gone bad, and needs to be replaced. Since the Pitch encoder and Roll encoder are the same (except the wire length), you could swap the encoder locations and the wire connection points to see if the error code stays the same (two long, two short), or changes to the pitch error (two long, one short). If the code changes, the encoder is bad. If the code stays the same, the gimbal board is bad.

You will have to thread the wires out of the frames for this. That is a real pain at a couple points in the process. Just get some tweezers, hum a couple calming mantras, and try not to throw anything at the wall. You won't have enough wire to swap routings inside the frame, so just temporarily connect them straight from the new encoder location to the gimbal board socket for that location.

You probably already found it, but Attachment 10 (CGo3+ Gimbal Board Connections) of the document in "Way To Fix Drones project" has the gimbal board connection locations and the associated codes.

 

[JMolter]

At this point, it becomes a guessing game. But the best guess is that the roll encoder has gone bad, and needs to be replaced. Since the Pitch encoder and Roll encoder are the same (except the wire length), you could swap the encoder locations and the wire connection points to see if the error code stays the same (two long, two short), or changes to the pitch error (two long, one short). If the code changes, the encoder is bad. If the code stays the same, the gimbal board is bad.

You will have to thread the wires out of the frames for this. That is a real pain at a couple points in the process. Just get some tweezers, hum a couple calming mantras, and try not to throw anything at the wall. You won't have enough wire to swap routings inside the frame, so just temporarily connect them straight from the new encoder location to the gimbal board socket for that location.

You probably already found it, but Attachment 10 (CGo3+ Gimbal Board Connections) of the document in "Way To Fix Drones project" has the gimbal board connection locations and the associated codes.

Sorry for taking a few days to get back to you on this. Been gone all weekend.

So what I just did was I simply switched the connection point of the roll encoder and the pitch encoder around (I put the connector for the roll encoder in "H" and put the pitch encoder connector in "G" from this pic CGO3+ issue).

When I turned the drone on, it gave me a long long short beep sequence, which according to the picture is a pitch encoder error. So because I connected the roll encoder wire to the pitch encoder connector, this means that the wire itself is the cause for the error, right?

So does this mean that I need to buy a new roll encoder to replace my faulty one? Like this one?: Yuneec CGO3+ Roll Encoder

Thanks again for the help!

 

[WTFDproject]

Yes. Since the continuity checked good, the encoder itself becomes the most likely culprit. You will need to order the encoder.

 

[JMolter]

Yes. Since the continuity checked good, the encoder itself becomes the most likely culprit. You will need to order the encoder.

So the new roll encoder I ordered just came in the mail today, so I plugged it in in place of the old encoder, turned my drone on, and got the same error sound that I was previously getting. Am I missing something with the setup or something?

I tried calibrating the gimbal from the ST16 but that didn't work, just kept getting the long long short short error beeps.

 

[WTFDproject]

I doubt it. If the encoder is in the right spot, and plugged into the right port, that's about all there is to it. Send me a PM if you want me to take a hands-on look at it.

 

[georgero]

If you checked the continuity of the wires between the gimbal board and encoder and everything is OK , next you have to check the connector on the gimbal board that could be really easy to detach from the board, especially when you remove the cover or something hit that area. The encoder is also really rare to be damaged. Take a closer look to that connector if everything else is OK.