No Video On Screen After Crash, Red Light on RC

[Trucklord]

Hi Folks
First post after reading through the site, tearing my hair out and stripping the gimbal for 14 hours. Long story short I am an idiot and clipped a tree branch and it tumbled like a stone about 30 feet at 9.8m per second into the hard grassy ground.

So I got it home and started to take a good look at it, very minor damage as follows:
1. Small crack in the lower shell at the base of a leg - most likely saved by the gimbal protector.
2. The camera was twisted backwards, not completely 180 degrees but not far off, the small retaining part on the pitch motor arm is not broken.
3. I am not sure if when you look at the gimbal from the side if the pitch motor arm should be slightly angle upwards or not ( it is )
4. The cables do not appear damaged at all, neither the ribbon cable or the other 2 antenna cables - I have released and re-attached them after refitting the gimbal.

Other hair tearing Issues!

The RC control red light will now not turn green, I have connected the controller by scrolling the the gimbal dial down and flicking S2 - the AC light goes green.
UPDATE THIS MORNING: - The AC light will not even go green now, since trying and failing to reinstall firmware, the link button does not seem to do anything now - not even light up.

I could start, stop and rev the motors but no video signal on the GO app, no battery strength and no communication with the AC in the app whatsoever. ( not now since firmware not working ) just constant Di Di, Di Di, Di Di from gimbal.

I have reset the WIFI to standard ( it was anyway ) and still no Green light on RC or Image in the GO app.

Once again trying to install latest firmware ( have tried older many times, all failed )

I don't get it - going back to the basics, the controller which was working perfectly with the drone until I crashed it will not connect with the Wifi on the drone, it did ( now doesn't ) connect to the drone to allow starting the motors ( I reckon I messed up the firmware )

Since the crash the red light on the RC has always stayed constant red, never green.
( I'm not counting when toggling the s2 switch etc )

Could all this be solved by replacing the ribbon cable? ( it doesn't look damaged )
Does the ribbon cable control the Wifi for video?

Update this morning, cannot update firmware at all.
Drone will not read firmware off the card ( freshly formatted each time ), also tried with pressing link button etc when starting.

I'm flummoxed - any help appreciated please, not much hair left now.

 

[Trucklord]

No One has any idea?
Would a ribbon cable sort it ?

 

[Brother Dave]

I read your post, sorry I haven’t answered, but I can’t help. I’m already BALD! Lol! Oh, wow. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help that. I am a one liner kind of guy.
Anyway, just dealing with the camera issues, it sounds like you have a disconnect in the ribbon cable. At least, to me. The cable plugs in to the gimbal as well as the main board in the bird. It may be loose or damaged.
The red light on the controller, I have read this is caused by disconnection of the camera ribbon cable. I haven’t experienced it myself, but read a lot.
I believe that if you repair this, it will enable you to repair most, if not all of the other issues, not to include the landing gear.
Yes, even the firmware issues.
I’m sure that someone better at repairs than I will get involved now, to tell me I’m wrong, lol.

 

[Trucklord]

I read your post, sorry I haven’t answered, but I can’t help. I’m already BALD! Lol! Oh, wow. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t help that. I am a one liner kind of guy.
Anyway, just dealing with the camera issues, it sounds like you have a disconnect in the ribbon cable. At least, to me. The cable plugs in to the gimbal as well as the main board in the bird. It may be loose or damaged.
The red light on the controller, I have read this is caused by disconnection of the camera ribbon cable. I haven’t experienced it myself, but read a lot.
I believe that if you repair this, it will enable you to repair most, if not all of the other issues, not to include the landing gear.
Yes, even the firmware issues.
I’m sure that someone better at repairs than I will get involved now, to tell me I’m wrong, lol.

Brother Dave.
I have just had delivered a new repair kit from Amazon inc the aluminium arms and ribbon cable. Painstakingly and meticulously replaced all the parts, taking immense care to do it all correctly following a great youtube video.
Nothing was rushed and nothing left out AND nothing flaming works, the gimbal doesn't even do it's start up dance.
I am now very annoyed, been at it 4.5 hours and even carefully dremelled out the motor from bent arm and replaced into new gimbal arm
Really F*&^ed off now.

 

[RodPad]

Your first post was very lengthy, created a lot of questions I don't think any of us really new where to start.

I will start here.
"The AC light will not even go green now, since trying and failing to reinstall firmware, the link button does not seem to do anything now - not even light up."
Firmware was probably the killer.

Note: the link light and link button are not the same so its possible the light is not working and the button is, but I doubt it.

Since your last post does the link light work now?
Does the light work on the gimbal?

Rod

 

[DaveD]

From what I've read here I'm leaning towards the main gimbal board being bad.

 

[Brother Dave]

I agree with Rod, the Firmware was the killer. You may be able to rescue it by downloading the firmware to a SD card, putting it in your gimbal slot, and turning on the AC. There are YouTube videos on how to upgrade using SD card. I highly advise watching a few first. If you turn off the AC before it is finished upgrading firmware, you can brick the bird.
There is a tiny light on front of the gimbal that will tell you when it’s done.

 

[Brother Dave]

You might also look up hard resetting the bird, but I haven’t tried thatone. Sounds too scary,lol.

 

[RodPad]

I have never seen anyone post that you could hard reset a Phantom.

Rod

 

[MrAirForce]

I had a similar issue (my cam was in worse shape though).
If you're powered up and can't get a green light, try resyncing. I will assume your bird is also flagging yellow lights?

Go into the DJI app to the controller section. Scroll down to the bottom to Relink Controller. Once you click it, you'll get about 45 seconds of "beeps" where you should press where the red light is for about 2 seconds. I had to do this a couple times to get it right.
Once I got it right my camera came back up and things started to work better.
You can YouTube phantom 3 synching and find several vids that will walk you through better than I explained.

Hope that helps!