Turning a phantom 2 Vision to a phantom 2 with gimbal/gopro and fpv is possible

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(skip the first part if you dont want the story/reason for me to turn it into a phantom 2 with gopro gimbal)
Last christmass i finally got back a drone again to fly with after my 3 year old ar.drone got to old to be worth repaired (sold as spareparts to my uncle). Then it was an used Phantom 2 vision my parents got cheap with everything working. I was happy again. But a few weeks later stuff began to happend. The drone itself was old (has stayed in the box for a while) the last owner almost never used it. But some problems got enocuntered. The first thing was that the gimbal was busted (the screw between the camera and servo was broken for some weird reason?) and the fpv on the app almost never worked. to make it work properly i needed to do the binding several times in a row before everyflight. Decided to do an update because everything was totally outdated. But then the biggest problem accoured. That STUPID vision camera DIED/GOT BRICKED after an successfull update. The camera on the vision is the worst piece of hardware crap i have ever seen. I used months trying different solutions. The warranty was all ready gone last year so sending it to repair/replacement from store was impossible without expensive bills. And the camera was way to expensive to get places i have seen it.

Now lets go to the point where i turn it into a phantom 2 with standard controller and gimbal!
After that stuff in the first part happened i got an idea. My dad had an gopro hero 3 he barely used for anything useful. I asked him to get it and he said i could use it on the drone (for some shots of our home etc.) and he happily gave it to me. I got in touch with a local private repair shop. The guy there was nice and sold me a h3-2D gimbal along with an 2,5GHz controller with an receiver (so i can use 5,8GHz FPV). I looked at videos (there is one guy that has done this before on youtube) and he explained how to remove the vision camera along with all the cables to it. I followed all the steps in this video nicely.
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Then i installed the gimbal with help of this video. It was plug and play even on the previous vision drone. It worked just fine after first boot and the gimbal was all ready updated when i got it installed. Only difference was that i got a h3-2d gimbal but it works just good enough for me for now.
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Well just having a working gopro was not my plan. I wanted working FPV. For that i needed of course to change the controller as the standard vision controller has 5,8GHz controller to not interfere with the wifi module in the vision camera. Unfortunately most analogue FPV systems also use that frequency. As said earlier i got an standard P2 2,5GHz controller along with a receiver for the drone when i bought the gimbal cheaply. So then i just removed the old receiver inside the drone. Attached the new reciever like it is supposed to and viola! It worked! I just needed to bind the receiver with the new 2,5GHz controller. And another nice thing is that the controller had the stick behind to tilt the gimbal correctly.

Later on i also bought a fatshark 250MW FPV transmitter from the same guy that all ready had the right connections and the cable correctly attached to a camera port connector so i just plugged it into the main board and used some duct tape nicely on the bottom to attach the video transmitter. After the power up it showed red light as it got power from the drone the way the camera does. Now i'm just waiting for some nice and cheap FPV goggles i bought from banggood. Cant wait to try them out! have been without fpv for months now due to transportation problems.

But people say this is hard and impossible to use Gopro and fpv on an previous drone. This didn't feel any hard for me. Nice and easy guides and most stuff is just plug and play if you know where to do it and if you get lucky.
So if you have an vision and it gets old and the camera gets bricked after warranty goes out you can simply do this. Buy cheap parts on internet and transform it instead of buying a brand new drone. Dont ask my why i didn't. I would have spent more money in my situation replacing the vision with a new standard/used p2.

So here is some pics of it.

Whole drone and the 2,5GHz controller
PzKIC42.jpg


From the side so you can see the 5,8GHz Fatshark FPV transmitter attached with some ductape
efgiqz1.jpg


Closer view of the gimbal.
TYo3vXd.jpg


Old camera that got killed by official update. "LOOKING AT YOU DJI!"
wE5Wlfn.jpg


If you are interested in my costs they are around this:
around 190$ for H3-2D gimbal along with 2,5GHz controller/receiver from private dealer.
50$ for the 5,8GHz FPV transmitter with P2 compitable cable from private dealer.
50$ on 40% sale for some cheap FPV goggles for newbies.
Camera is loaned from my father but that is around 200-400$ again for new gopros. So it may end up more expensive if you allready dont have a gopro like me.
 
Nice to see a P2V get recycled, after all it's just the P2 with a camera attached, I've had similar thoughts about swapping out the camera for a go pro but I like the apps such as Litchi etc which can do things with the P2V and plus that can't be done with the standard P2, that said if flying and viewing is your thing then go for it.


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app
 
Glad things worked out for you.

Another option is to get a used FC200 on eBay. You can find 'em for around $100-$150.

Thanks for sharing.
 
I'm back with an update on my vision -> gopro FPV project! Some weeks ago i finally got my FPV goggles proving that the video output from the p2 mobo worked like an usual P2. It detected the signal at once! And i flew around 450m away from my location with clear video signal. didn't even know a 250mw transmitter worked that great! im sure i can even make it to 500m away.
jkZTXc8.jpg

Can't believe i got these goggles for around just 50$ well it was on sale but stil, they have just enough resolution for me to see cables when close enough.
And it made everything so much more fun! Was planning on paying 90$ on a FPV screen but they are so freeking expensive compared to this.
sRQp7gD.jpg

The HUD you see is the one transmitted from the GoPro to show setup and if you are recording or not.

Well just seeing out of the drone was not enough. I would never properly know my battery power or anything like that so it ended with allot of flying back to let me see the battery by my eyes. Then i went on and bought an iosd mini. it was allot of planning because i didn't even have the canbus cable and was not sure if i got the connector on the drone board to put it in. But it is really exactly like a usual P2 mother board. It got the canbus port. I just bought the canbus cable from a local dealer, then ordered the iosd mini online.
dllDrg6.jpg


When i got it i loaned some soldering equipment from my neighbor :) i worked with some soldering at school so i would handle it but was not as easy as i remembered.
yvOr8xL.jpg


After finishing soldering i turned it on for a test. And it worked! Well for the first time i turned it on the gopro osd was stil on so they where inside each other. turned off the osd on the gopro and everything worked just fine!
OwJz9Mc.jpg

I was actually afraid it wouldn't work but then the thought came to me, the old cam sent pretty much the same information to my phone while it worked. Means that the iosd should also work. And the canbus connector and everything was there. And so it did.

I went on a test flight to see if it worked correctly, but i experienced some scary wobbling on the drone. It made me land to check things out and i detected some bad looking engines:confused:
NzKCPyF.jpg


But that local dealer which i bought most of the drone stuff from has told me he can fix it for me in his repair shop. I also gave him the old 5,8GHz vision controller for free so it might be because of that.
 
Well just having a working gopro was not my plan. I wanted working FPV. For that i needed of course to change the controller as the standard vision controller has 5,8GHz controller to not interfere with the wifi module in the vision camera. Unfortunately most analogue FPV systems also use that frequency. As said earlier i got an standard P2 2,5GHz controller along with a receiver for the drone when i bought the gimbal cheaply. So then i just removed the old receiver inside the drone. Attached the new reciever like it is supposed to and viola! It worked! I just needed to bind the receiver with the new 2,5GHz controller. And another nice thing is that the controller had the stick behind to tilt the gimbal correctly.

I know this is very old thread. Hoping someone might be able to help. Doing the P2V conversion from 5.8ghz to 2.4 (for the same reason...putting new FPV 5.8hz transmitter). I am confused about one task... Where is the 5.8ghz receiver board in the P2V and how do you replace it with the 2.4Ghz board? I was hoping it was fairly simple, but I can't seem to find any YouTube or web sources with images / "How-to".

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
I know this is very old thread. Hoping someone might be able to help. Doing the P2V conversion from 5.8ghz to 2.4 (for the same reason...putting new FPV 5.8hz transmitter). I am confused about one task... Where is the 5.8ghz receiver board in the P2V and how do you replace it with the 2.4Ghz board? I was hoping it was fairly simple, but I can't seem to find any YouTube or web sources with images / "How-to".

Thanks for any help you can provide.


with the quad open and the battery compartment facing you its on the left side and is partly underneath the motherboard, its identifiable as it has 2 servo plugs that come out of it and into the NAZA and of course has the 2 thin grey cables that are the antennas for the transmitter. you just need to unscrew the 4 screws for the motherboard and then gently move the board over and its 2 screws for the reciever board, be careful not to trap any wires when changing it out.
 
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with the quad open and the battery compartment facing you its on the left side and is partly underneath the motherboard, its identifiable as it has 2 servo plugs that come out of it and into the NAZA and of course has the 2 thin grey cables that are the antennas for the transmitter. you just need to unscrew the 4 screws for the motherboard and then gently move the board over and its 2 screws for the reciever board, be careful not to trap any wires when changing it out.

Thank you so much for the reply. I am just having some fun rebuilding an "Injured P2V" that was donated to my son. Still contemplating the expense to make all these modifications. So far, I've replaced a ESC and a Motor... The Egg won't transmit, so I thought going this route might be a good one... but... All said and done, with camera, new remote, new receiver, ImmersionRC 5.8 transmitter, and a receiver to interface into cell phone/tablet...I might as well just buy a P3 of some sort... It is, however, a lot of fun to do these modifications...so there's that. LOL

If my son would show enough interest in helping with these mods, it would be a no brainer...but alas...He'd prefer to wait on me to do all the work. Teenagers!

Thanks again.
 
Thank you so much for the reply. I am just having some fun rebuilding an "Injured P2V" that was donated to my son. Still contemplating the expense to make all these modifications. So far, I've replaced a ESC and a Motor... The Egg won't transmit, so I thought going this route might be a good one... but... All said and done, with camera, new remote, new receiver, ImmersionRC 5.8 transmitter, and a receiver to interface into cell phone/tablet...I might as well just buy a P3 of some sort... It is, however, a lot of fun to do these modifications...so there's that. LOL

If my son would show enough interest in helping with these mods, it would be a no brainer...but alas...He'd prefer to wait on me to do all the work. Teenagers!

Thanks again.

If you’re in the UK would I be able to have your camera off you, I collect failed units as spare parts for repairing other egg cameras
 
If somebody still in 2019 trying to find how use TILT without any strange moving.... DJI bastards.... Connect F2 to any gimbal PITCH input... Go to Assistant - gimbal press here something for example fpv mode and press CTRL + TAB and after that you will understand.... HOPE IT HELPS to somebody. DJI bastards.
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