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New Typhoon owner from Indiana

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Hello all,

I am from Indiana, Im 51 years old. I have flown rc since the late 80's. I flew aerobatic helis for many years and was one of the early pioneers in aerial photography flying back then with a Miniature Aircraft xcell gasser helicopter with custom built skids and camera mount. Back then there were no off the shelf ready to fly "good" camera rigs. we all had to custom build our own stuff.
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skytech8.jpg
skytech9.jpg


I watched the birth of the drone market through its progress to what it is today but have never owned one. That is until yesterday. While at the dayton ohio modelrama swap meet, i bought a Typhoon H. The guy said he had around 1700 in it.. Quickly googling i found them for 1200 but with no case and no extra batteries, no fpv goggles, so i figured he was being accurate. We haggled a bit and i said id think about it. I came back and said if you can show me it flies and will take 600 for all that i would take it. Took it outside and he put it right in the air, so i bought it. It came with a hard case as seen below. 3 batteries (more on that in minute), the remote (more on that), charger, and a fpv goggle set, extra blades... but seems to be missing some items and i also have some questions.
IMG_4255.jpg


While he test flew it i noticed the battery was low and thought nothing of it, at least till i got home and tried to charge the batteries. None of the 3 batteries would take a charge. The charger just kept flashing blue and beeping over and over again. I thought, well this is why he sold it so cheap. As when i looked online the batteries were like 120 bucks.. So I started digging further into what i got myself into. Seems the camera mount was also missing two of the retaining pins with the clips that go through the rubber dampers so it was hanging by only two. Found these online at some drone site but they were $5 each! Plus $6 shipping for a tiny piece of plastic. It also seems its missing the wizard remote, missing the 12volt cigarette adapter to power the charger from your vehicle. It appears i have the typhoon H pro remote with the dual antenna's but not the pro drone with the intel upgraded collision avoidance thingy on the front... just the standard sonar.

I wasn't about to buy all new batteries just yet and looked at the battery adapters some people were selling to use other batteries but decided to hold off on that. I took the batteries and kept throwing them off and on the charger. each time i would cycle the power to the charger it would come on and glow red momentarily before it would go blue and giving an error. I noticed after doing that enough times it was slowly adding voltage and after cycling the power off and on several times it finally took enough voltage and actually started charging.... Doing this on all three batteries i was able to nurse them back to taking a charge... Im uncertain of how well of a charge it is or their capacity to hold a charge is until i test fly today. SO one problem down (for the time being).

As for the missing wizard remote. Do i really even need that since i don't plan on doing teams or follow me stuff? As for the pro remote but not the pro drone, is there a way to tell by the part number or something on the drone if i can tell if this drone is the pro or not? Or are the new collision avoidance camera pod permanently attached or can they be removed (and added back if i bought them)????

Also, i see the remote has a slot for an sd card and it does have one in it. The camera also has a sd card slot as well but currently has no card installed... if i put a card in the camera and hit record on the remote, does it record to just one of the two cards , or both?

Should i attempt to do a firmware update to anything?

If you use the return to home function, will it auto deploy the landing gear if they were in the retracted position prior to hitting RTH?


Sorry for the dumb questions... as i said this is my first drone even though ive flown helis a lonnnnnnng time. Just want to make sure i cover all my bases before throwing it into the air.
 
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Sorry for the dumb questions... as i said this is my first drone even though ive flown helis a lonnnnnnng time. Just want to make sure i cover all my bases before throwing it into the air.
Asking questions is a real good start.

Seems the camera mount was also missing two of the retaining pins with the clips that go through the rubber dampers so it was hanging by only two.
It only uses two. Normally right rear and left front.

It appears i have the typhoon H pro remote with the dual antenna's but not the pro drone with the intel upgraded collision avoidance thingy on the front... just the standard sonar.
Almost no one uses the real sense after the first couple of times. Most don't even use the built in sonar (OBS). Opinions vary.

Im uncertain of how well of a charge it is or their capacity to hold a charge is until i test fly today.
As you stated, you won't know until you fly them. But it sounds like you will need some batteries. Did you check the internal cell resistance?

As for the missing wizard remote. Do i really even need that since i don't plan on doing teams or follow me stuff?
Another thing a lot of folks don't need. It comes in handy for the tasks you mentioned, otherwise not much use.

As for the pro remote but not the pro drone, is there a way to tell by the part number or something on the drone if i can tell if this drone is the pro or not?
"Pro" versus "Standard TH" was largely a matter of sales hype. They are the same drone. Different sellers used the "Pro" tag based on different options added to the base package. The RealSense module was commonly used to distinguish between the two, but some sellers used the designation WITHOUT adding the Realsense Module.

Or are the new collision avoidance camera pod permanently attached or can they be removed (and added back if i bought them)????
They are add-ons. Ask around. You might find someone willing to part with one at a real good price. Like paying you to take the thing off their drone.

Also, i see the remote has a slot for an sd card and it does have one in it. The camera also has a sd card slot as well but currently has no card installed... if i put a card in the camera and hit record on the remote, does it record to just one of the two cards , or both?
The card slot in the controller is only for manual file transfer. The controller version of the video is stored on the controllers internal storage. The SD card in the camera is the important one. It records in the actual resolution you have selected. The controller version is just a low resolution backup for whatever purpose it might serve.

Should i attempt to do a firmware update to anything?
Probably not. And certainly not until you know if the currently installed version meets your needs. Lots of things cause drone problems, but none are more common that failed updates. The general rule (for me) is that you don't update unless you need to fix something, or if a new update contains features you would like to have. This is another one where "Opinions Vary".

If you use the return to home function, will it auto deploy the landing gear if they were in the retracted position prior to hitting RTH?
Yeah. It SHOULD lower the gear by itself. I'm not certain, because I put them down while still at altitude.


And Welcome to the Forum. You're gonna love it here. Also check out the Enhanced User's manual below. It was developed by Forum member @ogrench. I'm not sure if this copy is the latest, but it's a real good start. .
 

Attachments

  • TYPHOON H USER MANUAL Vcho3-2.pdf
    4.7 MB · Views: 11
As you stated, you won't know until you fly them. But it sounds like you will need some batteries. Did you check the internal cell resistance?
Ummm no..... as johnny 5 says, need input, more input

As for the gimbal only using two pins , then i guess i just wasted 17 bucks... at least till i give it a dirt nap.
 
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Use the illustration in the attachment to measure the cell voltages on each battery pack. Each cell has to be 3.2V or greater for the OEM charger to start charging the pack. If you keep the system and get new batteries be sure to get adapter cables and a third party charger so you can keep them at storage charge when not in use.
 

Attachments

  • Power4 battery terminals.pdf
    435.4 KB · Views: 12
Use the illustration in the attachment to measure the cell voltages on each battery pack. Each cell has to be 3.2V or greater for the OEM charger to start charging the pack. If you keep the system and get new batteries be sure to get adapter cables and a third party charger so you can keep them at storage charge when not in use.
I didnt see your post till after i did a shakedown flight today. I think at least the one battery i flew is ok. I flew it 10-15 min and it was still above 15.7 volts and it was pretty windy... shakedown flight went ok... but the sun glare on the screen was rough. Tried to use the included sun shade but it wouldnt stay in place... didnt want to try the goggles till i got more familiar with all the functions first.
Got home to inspect the footage and the quality wasnt bad at all but there was no audio. Does the typhoon have no mic?
 
I didnt see your post till after i did a shakedown flight today. I think at least the one battery i flew is ok. I flew it 10-15 min and it was still above 15.7 volts and it was pretty windy... shakedown flight went ok... but the sun glare on the screen was rough. Tried to use the included sun shade but it wouldnt stay in place... didnt want to try the goggles till i got more familiar with all the functions first.
Got home to inspect the footage and the quality wasnt bad at all but there was no audio. Does the typhoon have no mic?
Yes, the microphones are in the camera. They are set to "OFF" by default by popular demand. All you can hear when mounted on the drone is motor and wind noise. Folks complained about having to constantly delete the audio from the recording. The Microphones are more useful when the camera is on a steady grip. But if you want to hear what's going on, you can go into settings and turn them on anytime you want. They will default back to "OFF" at each startup.
 
Another dumb question. If i have it recording video, can i take snapshots while in recording mode? or do they have to be done one or the other?
 
Another dumb question. If i have it recording video, can i take snapshots while in recording mode? or do they have to be done one or the other?
Your best bet is to record in 4K and use frame grabs from the video. If you want stills it is best to go to that mode so you can capture the full 4:3 12MP photos.
 
Your best bet is to record in 4K and use frame grabs from the video. If you want stills it is best to go to that mode so you can capture the full 4:3 12MP photos.
im playing around with the settings on the remote but cant get it to enter the camera settings. does the typhoon have to be on for it to access camera settings? seems i can enter any other menu or setting i want but it just wont open the camera menu on the bottom right.
 
There are two possible camera settings for the CGO3+ (Sytem Settings > Camera Select
- C-GO3: Basic settings for everybody, a lot possible menus are simply hidden
- C-GO3-Pro: For photographers - (nearly) all possible menu items for settings enabled. This camera selection is recommended.

Same with System Settings > Other Settings > Advanced mode: It enables Channel Settings.

If you set Advanced settings to True then please be careful with Channel Settings. Only change things if you know what it means. And always use a new model in Model Select for it.

And I would recomment to create a new model from scrat, bind the camera&drone to it to fly. Because we never know what the previous owner did.

Regarding your batteries: Check Flight Logs after flight to see behavior of the battery at real load. It gives good hint how old and how good the batteries are.

Example for good, used and bad batteries:
Example.png

br HE
 
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Thank you .... thank you... good info. I found the flight log parser app thingy. It has a lot of logged flights on it and i did find my first flight on it.. pretty cool but not sure i see the need for this except maybe if it sunk out over the middle of a lake but then again i didnt see that app giving coordinates so... lol.. Oh by the way here is a pic of the firmware version of the remote. I didnt have the drone on at the time to see its version.
IMG_4260.jpg
 
There are two possible camera settings for the CGO3+ (Sytem Settings > Camera Select
- C-GO3: Basic settings for everybody, a lot possible menus are simply hidden
- C-GO3-Pro: For photographers - (nearly) all possible menu items for settings enabled. This camera selection is recommended.

Same with System Settings > Other Settings > Advanced mode: It enables Channel Settings.

If you set Advanced settings to True then please be careful with Channel Settings. Only change things if you know what it means. And always use a new model in Model Select for it.

And I would recomment to create a new model from scrat, bind the camera&drone to it to fly. Because we never know what the previous owner did.

Regarding your batteries: Check Flight Logs after flight to see behavior of the battery at real load. It gives good hint how old and how good the batteries are.

Example for good, used and bad batteries:
View attachment 25571

br HE
Where do you find the battery logs like you showed? Im definately wanting to see how that oem battery did on that first flight.. it seemed to hold a charge quite well just based on the flight time and the battery voltage displayed by the remote.
 
I'm currently working on a small and easy to use tool as spin-off from the flight log analysis tool "q500log2kml". It is only to check batteries as post-flight-check.
The the thresholds for a proper battery assessment needs still tuning but charts are OK to quick check the battery.

Here is a beta-version to test.


br HE
 

Attachments

  • Batterietest.zip
    1.7 MB · Views: 6
well i tried using the email program on the controller to email the files to my pc but they wont attach... so i tried connecting a usb cable to the remote to transfer to pc via usb and it doesnt even recognise the tablet... says no drivers....
 
Never mind, figured it out from the forums here that the st16 had to be fully booted first. Should be able to transfer files now
 
batt1.jpg
batt2.jpg


batt2and3.jpg

I have no idea how old these batteries are or how long they had sat before i bought this package, but i finally got them to charge as mentioned earlier so hopefully after cycling a few times they might recover? If not i will just get a few more but it seems the oem 5400mah flies quite a bit longer than the 6300's right now ... ill give them a few more cycles before i make any sudden decisions lol
 
Battery #2 is the one that really needs obervation in the future. I would not use it for distance records.
#1 and #3 not new but OK so far.

I think, I should add Voltage Warnings 1 and 2 from the error flags to the charts. Would be a good indication...
A new version of the tool will come soon.

br HE
 

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