Gimble crashed. What is the best way to fix?

upintheair · May 24, 2017

Hello Droners!

Today I took my P3S out almost after 3 months... naturally by this time I forgot most of the critical controls and warnings written in the manual. Learned my mistake in the hard way! :-(
Ignited the drone at Laguna beach (CA) and I confidently overlooked the ATTI mode on display, and immediately after taking off the drone got drifted by the sea breeze and hit a nearby resident wall and fell on ground just 10 feet away from me. I rushed to find that the battery was out, the gimbal is broken and camera got detached.
I switched on the body later at home, lights are on but propeller not starting and in the mobile showing 'not connected'. Now at this point I don't know what all are damaged and need to replace.... only gimble? camera? wifi module? something else? even tho the body and props are intact!
Do you guys suggest to send it to DJI to repair or try 3rd party repair store or by myself!?

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

Sorry to hear about this. The gimbal on this thing is very fragile and unfortunately the most expensive part of the drone. I had a minor crash on mine which seems to only rip the connection cables (wifi antennas) out but since then no matter how many times I took the gimbal apart, checked everything, and put it back together - it has not been as good as new as far as giving me silky smooth video that it did before the crash. So the answer probably depends on what your goal is and what your main use is. If you mostly use it to fly it for fun, use camera as FPV, and take pictures: I would say fixing it yourself is the easiest and cheapest way to go, it is really not that hard if you are handy and there are plenty of videos and help available. If you take a lot of videos and absolutely require to have smooth footage - then I would say your best bet is to send it to DJI or try a repair service as long as they stand behind their work and would guarantee 100% functionality. Be prepared though since it will cost you a good amount of money. Also, I recommend a gimbal guard that would prevent camera separation like this in the future. Although I only had one minor crash and hope will not have one again, I installed one on mine as a precaution. Good luck with your repair.

upintheair · May 24, 2017

ykamenet said:
Sorry to hear about this. The gimbal on this thing is very fragile and unfortunately the most expensive part of the drone......... Good luck with your repair.

Thanks for the info!.... But do you know if there is any way to understand which part(s) in the gimbal/camera set is working and which is not? For e.g. if camera is not damaged then I would try to repair only the other part...etc.. the whole camera+gimbal is coming for $220 from B&H and looks like that will save me the repair charge which is very high for service centers..

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

It's hard to tell from the two pictures, but at a minimum you will need a new roll arm (~$15) and a new flat cable (~$25) here is one example. Since it comes out to about $40 already I would probably order the whole Fstop kit from Amazon for $42 shipped which includes yaw arm and alignment tool. Assuming all motors are good, you'll just need to follow youtube videos on flat cable replacement and roll arm replacement. It's not that hard really. If your gimbal motors and shafts were not bent and no other damages, it's definitely worth a shot - I would do that first. If you replace those and still have issues, then professional repair or full assembly replacement is probably in order. Another option - if you don't mind doing it - you can sell drone with everything on ebay and sell camera parts "as is" to someone who is looking for parts. You may recover almost the same amount as what refurbished P3S go for these days. That is if you don't want to deal with repairs, but you still need to list, sell, ship, etc.

upintheair · May 24, 2017

ykamenet said:
It's hard to tell from the two pictures, but at a minimum you will need a new roll arm (~$15) and a new flat cable (~$25) here is one example. Assuming all motors are good, you'll just need to follow youtube videos on flat cable replacement and roll arm replacement. It's not that hard really. If your gimbal motors and shafts were not bent and no other damages, it's definitely worth a shot - I would do that first. If you replace those and still have issues, then professional repair or full assembly replacement is probably in order. Another option - if you don't mind doing it - you can sell drone with everything on ebay and sell camera parts "as is" to someone who is looking for parts. You may recover almost the same amount as what refurbished P3S go for these days. That is if you don't want to deal with repairs, but you still need to list, sell, ship, etc.

Yeah..sounds like a good plan... and my drone itself was refurb so won't hurt me a lot financially if I sell as is..

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

upintheair said:
Yeah..sounds like a good plan... and my drone itself was refurb so won't hurt me a lot financially if I sell as is..

Mine was as well. For me tinkering with it is part of fun (kinda like grown man's Legos

) so I can probably take it apart and put it back together now with my eyes closed. The hard part is when there is absolutely no visible damage and it is still mis-behaving a bit. That's when it gets a bit frustrating.

dchao · May 24, 2017

Is the gimbal flexi cable broken? If not I would try to assemble the gimbal back myself and then connect up the flexi cable, and see if it works, there is nothing to lose.
Also make sure the ribbon cable and two antenna wires coming out of the AC to the gimbal are not loose.

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

dchao said:
Is the gimbal flexi cable broken? If not I would try to assemble the gimbal back myself and then connect up the flexi cable, and see if it works, there is nothing to lose.

The cable is definitely broken. The roll arm separated from the rest of the gimbal so the cable was ripped. It will need to be replaced.

upintheair · May 24, 2017

The tape like cable is broken, as you can see the entire camera came out of the main gimble body. Now I am wondering if it is just the broken arm and cable or wifi/camera as well that need to be fixed...

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

Wifi antennas connect to the gimbal main board and looking at your picture the base is still attached to the drone. If the two wires (black and grey) are still attached to the base of the gimbal then wifi should be ok as long as there is no damage that you can see visually. I think you only need to replace the roll arm and cable, but you may have other things out of alignment.

upintheair · May 24, 2017

okay...given my case...if camera is detached... should the propeller start tho? I am not expecting any camera footage, just trying to kick start the propeller..

ykamenet · May 24, 2017

They should start. Since camera is disconnected, you won't have wifi connection and won't be able to connect via the app. The light on the remote will probably be red. However, you should still be able to get GPS lock and start the motors using boths sticks down-in or down-out. You should be able to fly the drone without camera, you won't have any telelmetry since there is no app connection, but you should be able to fly it visually.

Dpemberton415 · May 24, 2017

From my understanding no camera no motors

ykamenet · May 25, 2017

Dpemberton415 said:
From my understanding no camera no motors

That's incorrect. As I mentioned, it flies just fine without gimbal and camera. You can remove the whole gimbal and it will still fly. You just can't connect the app or get FPV and telemetry data of course. Remote control should still work.

dchao · May 25, 2017

ykamenet said:
That's incorrect. As I mentioned, it flies just fine without gimbal and camera. You can remove the whole gimbal and it will still fly. You just can't connect the app or get FPV and telemetry data of course. Remote control should still work.

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That's encouraging! IMO, OP should go ahead and remove the entire gimbal assembly (including the gimbal base), and disconnect the thicker ribbon cable, and then see if the motor will start. This way, we can make sure the AC is working, and go from there.

Dpemberton415 · May 25, 2017

That's kinda why I worded it the way I did because I haven't tried but when I was looking at options when I need a new main board I read someone saying there's was good but motors wouldn't start because of no cam. Now you have made me glad I stayed away from that and went with a factory refurbished aircraft only just had to switch my cam over, beleave it or not it was the cheapest option.

upintheair · Jun 9, 2017

I tried to switch the motors on even tho the cam was disconnected, the lights were on but motor never turned on so I ended up sending the toy to the DJI because I had no clue what ELSE could have been damaged for that 10 feet free fall. I got some notification from dji that they are setting up the quotation... keeping finger crossed!!