Get rid of the USB ribbon cable!

[beeline]

I seem to recall that a number of you (me too) have not been pleased with the flimsy, dinky ribbon cable that DJI thought was a good idea for pulling a video feed from the GoPro (what were they thinking?).

This may already be common knowledge but thought I'd share my findings whilst recently assembling FVP capability. Is this the same part many have cannibalized an H3-2D to get?

Using this 30-pin connector, the GoPro attaches to the H3-3D via the Hero Port instead of USB. Works great!

http://www.getfpv.com/gopro-live-video- ... ector.html

Not affiliated with this company in any way (other than I've ordered from them) and they were the ones who brought it to my attention.

 

[skysteve]

watches post with great interest...hopefully it will be as easy as this to fix..

Awaits the guru's responses.

 

[IrishSights]

Ok, great sort of...how does it connect with the Zenmuse? Plug as shown will not do. Also will the gopro still fit in the gimbal back?
____________________________________________________
Find much more relevant results this way when searching rather than the built-in search:
PhantomPilots.com Custom Google Search Good for a Bookmark!

 

[OI Photography]

Ok, great sort of...how does it connect with the Zenmuse? Plug as shown will not do. Also will the gopro still fit in the gimbal back?

My thoughts exactly. Without the correct connection on the back it's a no-go, and even if it had that it may or may not fit in the space the current one does exactly (which is pretty critical).

But thank you very much for the suggestion beeline!

 

[beeline]

The connection to the gimbal perfectly fits the slug that's screwed into the back. Peel back the black tape covering the USB ribbon cable, remove the ribbon cable, unscrew the slug and install. Keep the slug for mounting the Hero Port connector to the gimbal.

The GoPro perfectly fits the connector. Connector supplies video/ground/power out. I cut the connector off the other end and wired the video/ground to the iOSD, or you could wire it straight to your VTx. Didn't use the power cable to the GoPro because of voltage differences between the Phantom and the GoPro. Could be done but I really didn't want the Phantom to power the camera anyway.

Why will the plug as shown not do? I've got mine hooked up and it works fine.

 

[OI Photography]

Well if you got it working then all good! I couldn't tell if it would fit in exactly, and I've always eschewed using external cables like that on a zenmuse due to how sensitive it is to resistance to movement. Do you have pics of how you have that cable routed?

IrishSights and I were both looking at it with the plan of connecting the standard Zenmuse cable that port used in the previous models it was included with...so vid and regulated power would still be piped through the gimbal slip rings, and up to the Phantom/iOSD/etc (in the case of the vid feed).

 

[beeline]

Cable comes out of the back of the backplate. I should tidy that up a bit.

 

[OI Photography]

Ahhh ok makes more sense now that I can see the slug, I didn't realize that came out. So the cable routed that way lets it move through the full range of possible motion w/o any protests from the gimbal?

I already have an H3-2D to steal the port from, but this looks like it might be a great option for others who don't have one and don't mind the re-wiring that's required.

Thanks again for bringing this to everyone's attention!

 

[beeline]

Plenty of slack for full movement, the cable weighs nothing with no performance hit noted (but I've only flown one battery with it so far lol). Saw substantial jello for the first time, but I attribute that more to other added components.

 

[IrishSights]

This is looking good. Thanks for this. So you are taking it straight to the vtx? One question...I would prefer not to have to charge the gopro via the usb. Can this be powered from the Zem?

 

[beeline]

I'm taking the output to the iOSD. There is a power cable included in the wiring harness that could charge the battery, but the GoPro takes ~5v and the Phantom delivers ~11v, so you would have to step it down somehow. Way beyond my pay grade! I'm satisfied powering the camera with its own battery.

 

[OI Photography]

This is looking good. Thanks for this. So you are taking it straight to the vtx? One question...I would prefer not to have to charge the gopro via the usb. Can this be powered from the Zem?

That 3-pin cable does have a power lead for the camera in it like beeline said, and your Immersion Tx actually has a pin on it that will backfeed 5v power to a camera...you can connect that to the red lead in the 3-pin cable to power the gopro (bypassing the gimbal for that).

 

[QYV]

this is a great idea, I'm very tempted to try it. I'm also wondering about power and how that would integrate into my setup which is the "standard" internal install with patched cables from the mainboard / iOSD mini / vTx. I already know I'm going to have to cut that connector off and splice cables... I guess my question is: is the black cable 'power ground' or 'video ground' ? or both?

scenario 1: yellow + black = video signal and video ground. If I simply cut out the red cable, the gopro will just power itself from battery... less draw from Phantom. cool

scenario 2: red + black = power and power ground. where does video ground come from? same cable?

 

[OI Photography]

this is a great idea, I'm very tempted to try it. I'm also wondering about power and how that would integrate into my setup which is the "standard" internal install with patched cables from the mainboard / iOSD mini / vTx. I already know I'm going to have to cut that connector off and splice cables... I guess my question is: is the black cable 'power ground' or 'video ground' ? or both?

scenario 1: yellow + black = video signal and video ground. If I simply cut out the red cable, the gopro will just power itself from battery... less draw from Phantom. cool

scenario 2: red + black = power and power ground. where does video ground come from? same cable?

I'm pretty sure it's a shared ground, like the one on the 5-pin port Immersion and Boscam Tx's have. In fact you should be able to wire the 3-strand cable above directly to the matching pins on your 5-pin port to get video and feed power both, and using the same shared ground.

 

[IrishSights]

What about this for a daft idea...replace the connector with a Usb mini female and plug it into the usb floaty plug off the back of the Zen. Just tape the flimsy plug to the back of the gimbal plate. No splicing, opening shell, or tinkering with the
TX connections.... OK you can shoot me now...

 

[QYV]

I'm pretty sure it's a shared ground, like the one on the 5-pin port Immersion and Boscam Tx's have. In fact you should be able to wire the 3-strand cable above directly to the matching pins on your 5-pin port to get video and feed power both, and using the same shared ground.

interesting. shared ground makes sense so I got that ya. I haven't paid close enough attention to notice if the H3-3D is currently powering the gopro or not... I know my H3-2D did, but does the H3-3D? I'd be fine with eliminating that although to be fair since I "fixed" my gimbal my flight times are back to normal... always looking for simple little ways to stretch it, ya know? so if I could just snip that red cable and make the gopro power itself that's all the better.

right now I just do the Boscam version of that firstpersonview cable with iOSD, tapping into the main board for video and power... power is easy of course goes straight to the vTx and I feel like it would be easy to splice this in for the video input to the iosd instead of the pair coming off the Phantom board.

 

[OI Photography]

The H3-3D does feed power to the camera, you can just bypass the red lead in that cable above and let the camera run off internal battery only. I confess though that I've grown to like the fact the camera stays powered by the gimbal and I haven't had to take the camera off to swap the battery in quite a while.

 

[IrishSights]

Mine is the IRC600. It has another small white socket on the top which I wonder does it mirror the large main video connector below it. Could I just attach the video, ground and power from this connector thing to it?

I suppose I'm wondering if both these sockets can take an input at the same time. The original connector bringing in the IOSD signal and the small one simultaneously feeding in the GoPro video. Get what I mean? Am I making it too complicated? I don't really want to mess to much and though this would just mean a plug change (presuming I could get one of the small plugs and wire it!)

 

[QYV]

I've never burned an entire gopro battery in 1 flight session (3 Phantom batteries), and when charge up my Phantom batteries I just plug in USB power to the gopro and charge it back up too. voila!

 

[QYV]

Mine is the IRC600.

hey man if you figure that out please let me know? If indeed that's another set of ports and we can just do a native thing with this new cable that started this topic and go straight to an iRC600 via that port then I'll probably just swap over to the IRC transmitter