Q500 4K - Camera WiFi stopped working

[fweih]

Hey fellow pilots,
as I already mentioned in the description, just after the last normal flight, my CGO3 camera on my Q500 4K stopped working Wifi-wise, it still stabilizes itself and the tilt still works). (Support btw. didn't help and wanted extreme prices for a turn in)
This problem started when I flew my Quad for the first time with a 128GB Card. After that, even other classes of cards, sizes, and formats didn't seem to bring up the wifi again. I found it to be really strange because the drone never crashed or anything and only got transported in its own case.
It gets even stranger when I turned it on yesterday to take a picture of the not lit up led on the front of the camera and the green blinking LED on the base when the front LED started working and the Camera booted up normally and started building up the Wifi connection. Sadly I hadn't charged my Remote so, after 3 mins of blinking, indicating that it searches for the remote, it turned red (Wifi Error) and stopped the connection again. after thatItried again, no Wifi and front Led again :/
So things I've done so far:
- unscrewed the casing, antenna not broken, all connectors in place
- tested 16,32,64,128GB Cards in exFAT,Ntfs and basically al other Formats Windows 10 lets you do
-tried updating the firmware on the camera, but no response (should be on 2.4 EU version)
- tried a rebinding with the remote


So if anyone has a clue what the **** is going on, every bit of help would be much appreciated! ^^

 

[WTFDproject]

- tried a rebinding with the remote

When you tried to bind to the remote, did the WiFi ID show up in white letters on the binding screen?

Have you tried booting the camera with NO card installed? Were the results the same?

Excellent first post, by the way. And good troubleshooting.

 

[Cmendemen]

If the LED on the front of the camera is not illuminating, that is a classic sign of a defective processor board. Another symptom is the MAC ID of the camera will not show up in the binding menu on the ground station. The gimbal board appears to be functioning since it is emitting a green LED as shown in the picture. Also in my experience, if the rear housing on the camera is not fitted properly, it can cause the two small buttons near the USB port to become permanently pressed in, which also causes the LED on the camera not to illuminate. You mentioned you unscrewed the casing, which I assume is the camera housing. The rear part of the housing could be misaligned. An easy way to eliminate this as a cause is to remove the camera housing and power the camera up on the drone. If the LED comes on and stays on, then the issue could be a misaligned housing. If the LED stays off, my money is on a bad processor board.

 

[fweih]

When you tried to bind to the remote, did the WiFi ID show up in white letters on the binding screen?

Have you tried booting the camera with NO card installed? Were the results the same?

Excellent first post, by the way. And good troubleshooting.

Yes, I tried booting up the camera several times without an SD Card.
In the Remotes Binding Menu only the Q500 is recognized , the CGO3 ID is not showing up.

 

[fweih]

If the LED on the front of the camera is not illuminating, that is a classic sign of a defective processor board. Another symptom is the MAC ID of the camera will not show up in the binding menu on the ground station. The gimbal board appears to be functioning since it is emitting a green LED as shown in the picture. Also in my experience, if the rear housing on the camera is not fitted properly, it can cause the two small buttons near the USB port to become permanently pressed in, which also causes the LED on the camera not to illuminate. You mentioned you unscrewed the casing, which I assume is the camera housing. The rear part of the housing could be misaligned. An easy way to eliminate this as a cause is to remove the camera housing and power the camera up on the drone. If the LED comes on and stays on, then the issue could be a misaligned housing. If the LED stays off, my money is on a bad processor board.

I unscrewed the housing and made sure that none of the buttons stayed unpressed, but still no Green LED in the front.
I'm not sure about the processor board, because it turned on normal again once.
Do you know where I can get spare parts like the board and how easy it is to install ?
btw. thx a lot for your long answer post already

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Not sure if this is related but I have a CGO3 camera that does pretty much the same thing as yours. I have found that after boot up it the LED light turns off with no WiFi. I believe the unit is over heating after a period of time. I also found that if I put the camera in the fridge for 5 minutes to drop its temp back down it will work again till it heats up again and stops working.

 

[WTFDproject]

I believe the unit is over heating after a period of time.

@Agustine makes a good point. The camera has a small cooling fan that keeps the boards from heating up. Power up the camera, and listen closely to the back of the camera. You should be able to hear the fan running. If it is not running, the boards heat up pretty easily.

"Do you know where I can get spare parts like the board and how easy it is to install ? "
The best bet looking for parts right now would be the forum, and on-line sites like eBay. They are not particularly hard to install. No soldering is required. The "Way To Fix Drones project" document already has Attachment 2 (CGo3 WiFi Board Replacement). The fan and the processor board are right under the WiFi board, and don't take much extra to change out. I will add a couple more enclosures to provide guidance for the processor and fan this week sometime.

Where are you located? It will become important if shipping is involved. And possibly some firmware differences, depending on what has to be changed out.

 

[Mb100]

Hi.
I have a brandnew cgo3 for my 2yr old q500 4k (old cgo3 had the gimbal tilt horror), and the new one does not seem to bind correctly. The first time it did not recognize the sd card, formatted sd card since then every restart the camera connects correctly, but seems to be initializing every 5 secs which gives me a blank screen on the st10 !!!
The camera levels out and tilts up down per the controller left hand slider so it connected. But it messes w the s10.
I have firmware 2.40, tried w and wo sd card. Tried the camera hard reset which works, as I need to rebind the camera. During rebind the st10 is ok, only once connected the camera seems to reinit all the time.
Any ideas ?