Gimbal Chicken Dance most common reason and repair

hunch · Mar 15, 2015

So you crashed your Phantom 2 Vision+ and there is no visible damage to the bird or the gimbal yet your camera
still does a chicken dance when you power it up.
most common reasons for gimbal repairs are broken flex cable, bent Y arm, roll shaft alignment as we've all seen in numerous youtube videos.
but most common reason for a chicken dance is a pitch sensor board potentiometer cracking or braking which results in
values of resistance on it being way out of whack.
so if you feel like replacing the potentiometer on either, roll or pitch sensor board, here is how:

Faulty measurements on the potentiometer. it should be centered, and reading between center top to bottom left or right connector ~4kOhms. this one is reading over MOhms

on the other side

new potentiometer

take the old one off

tin the new one

hunch · Mar 15, 2015

Tin the connectors on the board

install a new potentiometer

new correct readings. now the gimbal won't come on with the chicken dance.... most common reason for it

Mako79 · Mar 15, 2015

That's awesome.
Are these the same size as the playstation/xbox 2 axis pots?
Thanks

hunch · Mar 16, 2015

Mako,
i don't know the size of PS / xbox size so i really can't give you a good answer.

burlbark · Mar 16, 2015

Hani is making this look easy but it is very easy to lift the single top pad/trace off the board so please proceed with caution. It can be a real pain to get conductivity through the top legs adjacent thru hole. If you look at his pic showing that removal it appears as if part of the pad has lifted and stuck to the potentiometer leg but the pic is not clear enough to be certain. I have pulled up 2 pads in the last 6 months.... Sometimes they are already lifted if the crash was bad enough.

Hani and I have done countless replacements of these and its only 10% of the battle. Once the motor shaft is bent then it is going to want to bind and give you the remove gimbal clamp warning. Then the motor shafts need to be straightened and turned down so they dont bind in the bearings.

Jeremy