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- Dec 16, 2024
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The issue has now been resolved, just giving a breakdown of how it has been repaired . I’m not sure if there was a faster way to achieve the result but I’ll give the best description I can on what I can remember. Also big thank you to WTFDproject for his time and patience , without ur help these units would likely have been parted out .
Backstory, I purchased a h plus , the seller said it hadn’t been used in years and the drone when it arrived pointed to this with slightly corroded battery connectors and contacts on the controller that needed cleaned.
On power up all looked normal. I then got a message that said “Compass initialization failed, please repeat the calibration process”
I performed the calibration but it kept failing. On inspection of the st16s i was getting 14 plus satellites, the horizon was showing level and when the hex was moved around the horizon matched the movements. I tried testing the motors but the rear lights on the drone kept blinking purple, the hex would not enter angle mode nor would it log new take of position.
Test #01 , I suspected the firmware might have had a mismatch or some firmware issue was causing the fault. I updated via sd card to build 822 . All updated successfully. I tested the hex again, still had blinking purple rear lights even though I was getting full satilite connection on both hex and controller.
Test #02 I tried to unbind the hex and st16s and then rebind. Unbinding was simple but I then had an issue trying to rebind. When I flipped the hex upside down the lights never started blinking yellow or orange or whatever that colour is to show manual bind. Eventually I discovered if i inverted the hex and powered on while upside down it would enter bind mode. All binded again successfully. After this the hex would still not get a gps lock.
Test #03 I suspected a bad connection on the gps module inside the hex even though I was getting lots of satellites on the st16s. I removed top shell, disconnected the gps module and cleaned the connectors with 99 percent ipa . Still no success. I then came across several posts mentioning the battery on the gps module. As the drone had not been used in years it likely went dead. To rule out the battery or gps module I removed another gps module from a fully working h plus. Once installed I still got full satellite connection but no gps lock.
Test #04 next on the suspect list was the imu , now with the working hex also opened it was a quick swap over. Yet again no success.
Test #05 sd card on mainboard swap. I didn’t have much of a choice now at this stage, I was more suspect of a faulty mainboard but I had no multimeter to test connection or not even a clue what a pass or a fail looks like with a multimeter. I took the sd card from know good unit and inserted it into the faulty unit. Success , gps lock achieved and angel mode activated and home point updated. Motors started as normal.
Test #06 next it was time to get both units working. I suspected the sd card was either faulty or corrupt . I inserted the bad sd card into pc, card looked to be working and it contained files , 3 files in total. I formatted the sd card to fat32 . I then took the known good sd card and copied the files to pc, I added them to the freshly formatted sd card. Tried both drones again. Disaster , now both drones were faulty and neither would achieve gps lock, the realsence module also appeared not to boot and the drone was now silent on start up with no fan noise from realsence. Horizon was also missing on St16s and it looked like it wasn’t binded . Somehow adding the good sd card to the pc and copying the files appeared to have corrupted it. I had one more good h plus but was afraid to also brick that unit so I reached out to WTFDproject for some much needed help. I explained what had happened and he took the time to go over everything I said . I also noticed when I inserted the known good sd card back into the pc it now contained 6 files . It originally had 3. The second set of 3 files had the same names but to my knowledge had a number beside each . At this stage I was lost and considered just parting out both faulty units. WTFDproject ran a few tests himself and reported success after inserting a bland sd card into the mainboard. On first boot the hex loaded the correct 3 files to the sd card. I tried the same process myself and sure enough now both units were functioning again. The controller prompted gyro calibration this time and all calibrations completely successfully.
Again perhaps there was a faster way to get to this conclusion, this was just the process involved with this unit. If I could recreate original compass fault and it wouldn’t complete successfully I’d first try a gyro calibration and then the compass calibration but until I hear otherwise I can’t say if this would resolve the issue. One of you guys might be reading this in the future or perhaps have a unit currently sitting at home with the same fault, hopefully someone else will report success .
Backstory, I purchased a h plus , the seller said it hadn’t been used in years and the drone when it arrived pointed to this with slightly corroded battery connectors and contacts on the controller that needed cleaned.
On power up all looked normal. I then got a message that said “Compass initialization failed, please repeat the calibration process”
I performed the calibration but it kept failing. On inspection of the st16s i was getting 14 plus satellites, the horizon was showing level and when the hex was moved around the horizon matched the movements. I tried testing the motors but the rear lights on the drone kept blinking purple, the hex would not enter angle mode nor would it log new take of position.
Test #01 , I suspected the firmware might have had a mismatch or some firmware issue was causing the fault. I updated via sd card to build 822 . All updated successfully. I tested the hex again, still had blinking purple rear lights even though I was getting full satilite connection on both hex and controller.
Test #02 I tried to unbind the hex and st16s and then rebind. Unbinding was simple but I then had an issue trying to rebind. When I flipped the hex upside down the lights never started blinking yellow or orange or whatever that colour is to show manual bind. Eventually I discovered if i inverted the hex and powered on while upside down it would enter bind mode. All binded again successfully. After this the hex would still not get a gps lock.
Test #03 I suspected a bad connection on the gps module inside the hex even though I was getting lots of satellites on the st16s. I removed top shell, disconnected the gps module and cleaned the connectors with 99 percent ipa . Still no success. I then came across several posts mentioning the battery on the gps module. As the drone had not been used in years it likely went dead. To rule out the battery or gps module I removed another gps module from a fully working h plus. Once installed I still got full satellite connection but no gps lock.
Test #04 next on the suspect list was the imu , now with the working hex also opened it was a quick swap over. Yet again no success.
Test #05 sd card on mainboard swap. I didn’t have much of a choice now at this stage, I was more suspect of a faulty mainboard but I had no multimeter to test connection or not even a clue what a pass or a fail looks like with a multimeter. I took the sd card from know good unit and inserted it into the faulty unit. Success , gps lock achieved and angel mode activated and home point updated. Motors started as normal.
Test #06 next it was time to get both units working. I suspected the sd card was either faulty or corrupt . I inserted the bad sd card into pc, card looked to be working and it contained files , 3 files in total. I formatted the sd card to fat32 . I then took the known good sd card and copied the files to pc, I added them to the freshly formatted sd card. Tried both drones again. Disaster , now both drones were faulty and neither would achieve gps lock, the realsence module also appeared not to boot and the drone was now silent on start up with no fan noise from realsence. Horizon was also missing on St16s and it looked like it wasn’t binded . Somehow adding the good sd card to the pc and copying the files appeared to have corrupted it. I had one more good h plus but was afraid to also brick that unit so I reached out to WTFDproject for some much needed help. I explained what had happened and he took the time to go over everything I said . I also noticed when I inserted the known good sd card back into the pc it now contained 6 files . It originally had 3. The second set of 3 files had the same names but to my knowledge had a number beside each . At this stage I was lost and considered just parting out both faulty units. WTFDproject ran a few tests himself and reported success after inserting a bland sd card into the mainboard. On first boot the hex loaded the correct 3 files to the sd card. I tried the same process myself and sure enough now both units were functioning again. The controller prompted gyro calibration this time and all calibrations completely successfully.
Again perhaps there was a faster way to get to this conclusion, this was just the process involved with this unit. If I could recreate original compass fault and it wouldn’t complete successfully I’d first try a gyro calibration and then the compass calibration but until I hear otherwise I can’t say if this would resolve the issue. One of you guys might be reading this in the future or perhaps have a unit currently sitting at home with the same fault, hopefully someone else will report success .
