q500 antenna problem

[Douggieboy]

The q500 has a tiny antenna wrapped into the front of the plastic housing, and in a minor mishap the cover popped off and I was unable to fold that antenna back into the tiny space, so I bought a bigger external antenna, disassembled the gimbal, and ran the cable from the new one through the housing and tried numerous positions on the drone’s body. Every time, the video feed cuts out completely at under 50 meters distance. The antenna is obviously not working, but the gimbal is, because if it was damaged, I wouldn’t get any video feed at all. There’s also an annoying half second lag in the video to the display. My though was to install a 5.8 gig repeater near the gimbal to pick up the weak signal, and boost it to a level where I’ll be able to fly the drone normally.

I do have a gopro hero 4 black, but I really prefer the factory gimbal, and that camera is mounted on another drone that has no factory gimbal available.
I still have the gopro interface, maybe that would work?
Any ideas? Please help--- merry Eeggsmess and happy newY ears--*

 

[WTFDproject]

[QUOTE="I was unable to fold that antenna back into the tiny space[/QUOTE]

Not sure which camera your Q500 has (CGo2, CGo3), but here is basically how the antenna is normally mounted on a CGo2. CGo3 is similar. Note the antenna does not fit INTO the space, it just kinda hangs in front of it. Did you ensure you got one of the leaf rods into the little notch?

 

[Douggieboy]

Hi—
My camera is a CGo3. There’s a tiny plug on the back side of the motherboard that the antenna lead snaps into. I took the original antenna off, and snapped on the lead for a larger external clover leaf antenna that mounts to the drone’s body with a sticky peel tab.
No matter how or where I place this antenna, it doesn’t give more than 30 meters range, about the same as get with no antenna other than a short, straight pigtail running out the back of the gimbal. There’s obviously no signal extending beyond the antenna lead, which means that I have to take that signal and run it to a repeater running in sync with the gimbal transmitter, or find some other way to get the signal to an antenna capable of reaching the ground station.
Repeater or antenna, either will work, but I can’t have a 5.8g signal coming from both the gimbal and another transmitter broadcasting at the same frequency unless they’re in sync. If they’re not, you get harmonic dissonance interference of the waveform, aka. distortion in a very big way. A repeater puts those waveforms into synchronization, so the two devices keep the signal in phase, actually boosting it.
The drone came with a 5.8g transmitter designed to work with with a GoPro camera. It affixes to the drone,s body with a sticky patch, and a fixed GoPro mount seats where the factory gimbal normally would.
I could mount this interface anywhere on the drone, and run a USB cable from the body for power, and 4-pin data cable to the gimbal.
Any other suggestions are welcome, and if there’s anything in my analysis and suppositions that needs correcting, feel free to tell me so. I don’t take offense if someone points out that I’ve made a mistake.
Thanks, merry Eggsmess, God bless, happy NewY ears, and may the bluebird of happiness lay an egg in your nose.....