LFC#157 - DJI Spark Drone Repair - full strip and rebuild

[Music] hello interwebs welcome to let's fix computers I'm aware this isn't a computer this is a DJI spark drone and as you can see it's not looking very happy so when this was bought in by by a local lad who obviously got it for Christmas and unfortunately on either his first or second outing with it he came a bit of a cropper and crashed it onto a rooftop he managed to recover it but unfortunate as you can see it's a bit bashed up and but you know I don't know anything about drones never the floating one I don't know anything about them but I thought how hard can it be passed for this thing seem to be readily available so what I did was I jumped online did some searching about and found that some in order to deal with this broken arm I bought I think this was called a shelf so this this whole chassis is known as a replacement shell and as you can see it's more or less basically just the entire bottom end of the of the drone so basically what we have to do is gut this thing out for everything that's in there into here and we should be fine we've got a few bits that could be a little bit tricky we've got a we've got to transfer these motors across and this thing is pre-wired but we've got to solder the wires into place so I'm not sure how I'm travelling that will be so we'll figure that out as we go basically so yeah full disclosure as I say I don't know what I'm doing here I'm making this up as I go along I figured how hard can it be so let's find out okay so let's get started on this thing it's got screws on the bottom those are hexagonal but they'll probably answer to they'll probably answer to talk screws these hex screws normally do now what's that that's a t6 let's try that that feels pretty good some of these t6 screws look like they've been filled with epoxy which is a bit of a dick move that could be an issue that's very much going to be an issue we're gonna have to dig those out mm-hmm okay can I get the ones down the side of the camera yeah I think we can get those let's get the easy ones first don't know much about drones as I mentioned this all feels very self leveling and anti vibration and stuff like that this thing is while I was looking around I think this thing retails are like you know 250 to 300 you know it's like 270 pounds that kind of thing I think it's it seems to be not bad but as I said I don't know much about drones so I don't know if this thing is actually any good or not it looks quite nice then I would like to have a go with one right I'm just going to use this cheapo Phillips screwdriver I've got here just to dig about in the screw head and I can just dig out some of that epoxy glue stuff that's in there and if I can just if I can just butch it out enough oh that's coming out quite nicely actually and I should be able to go in there with the proper screwdriver that might just give me enough clearance yeah easy peasy I don't know why they bother anyone with an ounce of common sense can get through that kind of security downs oh all right does this top cover come off now yeah that seems to be on flippin not going without a fight I can tell you that much there we go Wow look at that as fancy isn't it it's got a cooling fan in and everything so someone who knows more about drones than I do would probably be able to go or yes that's this that and the other but I I don't have a clue what any of this is let's have a look we've got a dedicated DJI chipset there this this is all sealed cans it's all multi-layered so there's probably that cooling is all over there so there's probably cut some kind of central processor this thing has multiple sensors and cameras in it looks like we've got something forward-facing there that's going through this smoked lens at the front and we've got the dual cameras we've got a we've got a moveable camera there and another camera there and there's some more sensors in here so this thing has a huge number of sensors on it which might seem really obvious to someone tell you what if someone knows what any of these are tell me about it in the comments because I don't know what any of this does I don't know what features this hasn't it'd be interesting to know I'm very interested in drones but I haven't had the money to look into it properly hmm okay I'm gonna stop trying to guess because I have no idea what it is let's just start taking everything out so I'm just gonna start on doing screws basically I'm gonna be doing a very bind approach to this and thankfully because I record my work if I get a bit stuck as to where something came from I'll be able to review my footage I need to go and grab the correct screwdriver okay let's start taking bits off got a little connector there yep this video is probably going to be hideously long okay right now I bet these screws are gonna be quite varied so I'm gonna try and plan my screws out I'm gonna try and make a little matching screw map up here I don't know how well that'll go but we'll find out I just try and lay out all the screws roughly where they came from as long with all these little fittings and stuff right I think this small circuit board does come off I was gonna see if I could take off the salt subframe that it was on but that doesn't seem to want to happen so I'll take these ones out as well curr no wonder this thing was expensive there seems to be a huge amount of technology oh that's part of the whole heatsink no wonder I didn't want to come off okay yeah there seems to be a huge amount of technology crammed into these things it's quite amazing I think the first thing we're going to be doing is taking off this cooling system that's on top that is this that's such an adorable little fan I love it now that screw is not magnetic and that came from there right are we getting anywhere now of course I'm not doing a tear down here so theoretically if something doesn't have to come off I don't want to take it off for example if I don't actually have to remove this heatsink from the board then I won because I just need to lift the guts out that's all I need we've got some interconnects there that are going down to other places let's pull them out how do those work that looks like a lift job' yeah that's fine these little clips these are the scary bits to me because if I break one of these then I've had it I'm trying to be a bit careful as to see how they work I think that one's gonna be a lifter as well let's just try having a go at the corner of that yes that's a weird little connector that is I don't like these connectors one bit those are all really weird connectors that I've never seen before laptops they're all zero insertion force but these are all like click jobbies I'm not sure why they're opting for that that seems that seems rather excessive but I guess they know it I guess they know more about designing these things than I do got water sensor there to see if it's plummeted into water that's not hiding a screw oh that's the other end of that huh okay now this one here is secured with silastic I'm just gonna see if I can just sort of rip that guy out no can I pull the silastic out no sure about that let's just try sneaking the prime tool no that's not gonna fit I need a flat head how about you there we go that's working let's do that from the other end cool right this is all still very firm so let's take out that screw and I'm kind of hoping that at some point soon things are going to feel like moving oh we've got another connector there let's take this screw out and then we'll get that connector and then that I think will be everything that I can see Oh everything just went a little bit loose after I took that one out yeah there we go we're getting some way I think this has to come out first that another pad or is that part of the connector it's a pad but that's on the connector I think I'm gonna lift that with where's my straight screwdriver to take that off yeah there's to that note my fingernail isn't strong enough prime tool yeah they really want to make sure that none of these connectors jump out after a hard landing which is completely understandable okay right that's that I think we might be able to sneak this out there we go is anything holding on nope that's it there we go Wow look at that it's all one complete unit this is quite heavy this bit absolutely unit so the main connector comes up from that go there I'm surprised by how little sort of power handling there is here I was expecting to see sort of a fairly chunky power connector but I guess all the high current stuff is all to the motors and it looks like all the current handling is done down in here and that doesn't need to come out so we've got one of those in the replacement shell so yeah no worries there so yeah we've got to dig in and get all this out cool okay let's the bat main circuit ball to one side I might some no I'm not gonna put whatever whatever this guy is I'm not gonna put that back on yet because oh that doesn't obstruct anything that can just go back on now I'm gonna refit that because this didn't need to come out where's its little is little doodad that goes there that goes on there that goes to that I'm just going to put the screws for that back in because that will take four screws and a bracket out of my little nest of bits and pieces okay right so that's to one side oh hang on a sec what was that where did that little bracket go that went across there okay that this bracket that went across there that's holding some stuff on like the connector under there so that stays off but we've taken four screws out the pile that's good right so let's just do a quick comparison with the other shell so that's complete that unhooks from there by the looks of things and go that's that antennas antennas that's there so basically everything from the heart from the back end to the middle is complete now so we need disassembly going up to the front and then the camera assembly down the bottom and oh I see that comes out and the sensors are all part of it okay cool right let's get this bit out and a bend that up that's just tin this looks like a grounding strap that's just attaching ground from that circuit board to the ground of the other circuit board so not super critical right okay some stuff is pulling out here what's coming with it quite a lot wants to come out here I'm not sure that's ready to come out I think we've got to take out this front board first I'm gonna do that this isn't too bad so far and haven't hit anything this made me go whoa or anything you know I mean I'm taking it slow and steady and I'm being very careful but I don't feel like I'm out of my depth yet whereas you know there are some disassembly as I do where I just feel really uncomfortable with what I'm doing Wow look at that I want to know what these are I want to know what it all does it looks fantastic I I don't know what features this drone even has like these range-finding sensors I don't know drones are cool and I don't know anything about them this is gonna be a terrible video if you want to learn about drones however if you've got a DJ or spark and you've broken an arm on it then this is probably extremely useful okay right this whole thing is on a shake mount on us and this is all like a scaffold with the camera dangling underneath it and it goes up to there which has a rubber mount how does that come out though so I'm gonna have a quick look to see what stays in so you can see we've got that hook them out there so that grommet needs to go through the hole so let's just see if I can push that through tweezers now there we go are the tweezers just make that breeze get some tweezers is anything else holding madam oh the camera oh no here we go it's coming out it's coming out here we go we go look at that guy fancy schmancy so it's got like a control board there then this whole thing is sitting on like rubber mount so it jiggles and it's all shock mounted and vibration proof so that's how you get such a steady shot from it and presumably this is up yeah this is what articulating and everything very cool it's amazing that these are affordable by the common man right now we've got some more sensors down here let's some undo this guy okay I see what's happening we've got a flex that comes up here along there and round and up to this bit here so we've got up and thread that without damaging it now usually you can peel this but I'm going to be very very careful about that that's screwed in down there let's take those screws out and just try not to let my hands get in the way it's the problem you've got a pair of I are looking census there and the Boston camera down there that doesn't want to jump out I need that to come out all there we go okay that's all loose there now it's held in just by this flex coming down here get my hand on that I think I can and I'm just gonna gently pull that up there we go this does a bit of origami for this turn here if you look under that flex what's actually happening there it comes under folds and then goes around a 90 degree Bend that's a very strange maneuver but I guess that's how what they thought would work I'm just going to very gently peel this off the base and we need to get clear of these cables I'm very tempted to cut these wires because we don't need this base and I just don't really want to cut anything if I don't have to now I'm going to cut that this whole base is 20 pounds so it doesn't really matter there we go look at all that clearance I just achieved and I might do the same thing with the antenna as well well it breaks my heart to cut wise like that I really don't like doing that but I've just got to remind myself we don't need that it's in the other it's in the other shell okay let's just peel this back oh these cables go off in such strange directions but that comes back and then rejoins what a bizarre layout why is it like that okay I think I've got it all there we go okay so that was down the bottom yeah so that was kind of sitting like that cool right and I think that's a lot we need to recover the motors as well I don't know if you call these motors I would say their motors engines whatever okay let's take a look at this one so I can cut these wise which means I can take a closer look at this engine and see how it cut and see how it works and how it falls out let's put the old body to one side all right what does this do does this does this open and it just seems to be a landing skid does that pop open I'm not sure where's the replacement right there are screws there okay this bottom bit must come off Oh No ooh look at that fancy so we've got some a light step and quite a lot of circuitry in there the what more than I thought there would be okay so when so that's how it does its signalling lights cool give you a close-up of that so as you can see there's actually quite a lot going on in here we've got we've got some active circuits down there to control the LED we've got power coming in we've got positive and negative and I can't read what that is is that T a Yeti X transmission so it says emphasis a transmission signal and so presumably this thing has a decoder in it which is then going up to those three pins up there CBA those will be going to the motor that itself to control the motor because it's a stepper motor so it moves in very weird ways and yeah the rest of it is all just control circuitry so we'll take these two screws out and we should be able to disassemble this so we can transfer over to the new one and I have a sneaky little peek under here yeah there's some kind of processor or something there I'm gonna leave that well alone I think okay so we're going to need to be sold at these incoming wires and we need to remove these three screws in order to remove the motor Oh God heavens okay yeah and we also need to disorder the motor itself in order to remove it from the broken bear this is quite involved considering this is very breakable I'm surprised at this I'm surprised that replacing a motor is this much hassle we'll take out those screws first and just make sure there's not a plug on the other side or something like that I'm surprised that it's that difficult for a part that is right in the firing line and liable to get damaged I expected that to come apart easier than this no there's nothing coming out from there cool okay right let's pull those screws out and put them safely to one side because I'm gonna need them okay and we're gonna fire up the soldering iron and D solder this little controller board and we're gonna have to do this for another three motors course truth I was not this this is definitely more a lot more involved than I was expecting to be right at soldering on time for my soldering iron I'm going straight to my TS 104 this which is a precision soldering iron with a knife edge tip on it I'm not gonna mess around with my web soldiering iron which is my daily I need something with a lot of control for this I don't want to mess it up you probably could do this with the basic soldering iron with my web I go I could probably get on yeah we could get onto there with the web soldiering on but I'm gonna use the TS 100 because it's more apt for this so let's get some power onto it okay right irons a little slow to warm up I think my battery's low you might have to switch over to the bench power supply and let's just see if we can just rip this apart got one off the other two you're holding on because of the silastic I think they are I'm gonna give that one more try then we're gonna have to dig them out just to be safe there's another one and there's the last one there we go we'll clean up all these solder joints in a moment any damage to those wires nope that's fine and that's our motor free I should have been a bit more careful with those actually because I don't get another chance with this motor those lines are just falling off okay I'm gonna put that in the helping hands and cleaned up and now I'm just going to take off all this old solder with some solder wick here and we'll put down some nice fresh leaded stuff there's a lot of extra solder on these they really blobbed it up it'll do it okay let's turn this around do the other side I hope I'm not overheating this board because I am putting heat onto it that'll do that's enough that I can get the wires back in again right okay so we'll do a test run by trying to fit this motor into the new body and if that goes well then I know I'm doing it right and we can go on and do the rest of it okay so here's the new body where's the how did that'll work that went in like that ish that was like that okay let's back out getting a bit cluttered on my workbench here I'm not a fan of that but right so the fan goes on the the fan that's here the the motor goes on top so let's thread that through and I may as well screw that into place right that's all oh crap I didn't pay any attention as to which way around these wires go I assume it goes black red white but I'm actually gonna have to stop recording and check that because I'm a numpty or I'll tell you what else I could do is I could just look at the old one so let's do that I'm just gonna pop off another one of these motor covers so I can check the wiring darn it doesn't tell me anything we'll go a little bit deeper okay so the color goes black red white white is see red is B and black is a right this is gonna be a bit of a bastard to solder on it's not much to hold on to so we're bringing in the helping hands again okay I think we've got a good enough grip there let's fire at the soldering iron again okay let's try 10 in the lead this whole setup is a bit horrifying I don't like this at all I might just do this with three hands right how does that look possible let's just see if I can press that in a bit let's just turn my heat down a bit I don't like the amount of heat I'm using here drop it to 380 now that kind of did the job that's possible anyway right what did I say red is in the middle and let's tin that up again [Music] alright that was a bit nerve-wracking but we're okay so that's the motor wide back on the frustrating thing about this is just this bit wasn't even broken I had to I had to D soldier those just to move it to the new shell and that bums me out these ones of course that's fine it's a new shell of course I've gotta sold to those on but it sucks though got to do these motor wires as well that seems very unnecessary but there's nothing I can do about that and these the black wires those are not coded at all however I think that these motors go either direction so I don't think it makes a difference so yeah either way I'm going to assume that they are in the correct orientation because everything else seems to be so let's try and get those guys on can I get those to stick in place so that would make my life a lot easier yeah kinda now I just need this to stay exactly where I'm holding it which I don't think is going to happen okay let's stop trying to do three at a time here now let's abandon that we'll just do the standard one that's okay yeah okay I think that's working if you're wondering why I bothered remove them all the previous solder it's because I'm new I'm using leaded solder now and let it solder has a lower melting point so it makes this bit easier it makes the solder easier to work with and try not to drift off camera but I'm more worried about getting this right than getting the perfect camera angle at the moment we'll just move because I'm slowly wandering across the desk damn it when I push this cable along it just drags everything with it no that's not gonna happen I need to I need a third hand super bad here come on get in there get right in there there we go I think that'll do it that middle one's no good you can see that's not improperly that needs redoing that might be easier now the other two are in that's better and let's do the N one is well well in here there we go once we've got one in the others become easier so I can just I can just walk those in that's cool right I'm gonna flood fill those now there we go they had an excessive amount of solder in there so so will I cool right that's that guy back in place and so this should just squash down into place now which it does that's cool can I pull that back slightly no okay I'll just let those wise squash down that seems to be fine let's move the helping hands because they're not helping ah and about the camera it's in my way I think I'll put the wrong one on there yeah I don't like that that's coming off this is the one that came off the second motor that I uncovered I just took for granted that they were the same but they're not whoa Oh easy you jump out of this screw you'll go straight onto those circuits so be careful I was a little bit rough there I haven't damaged it but we're okay but I need to be careful that's fitting better that's correct something didn't feel right when I was putting that in but now I'm putting the correct one in it actually is going in a lot better it doesn't feel like I'm forcing it cool there we go so that's one of our rotors in position do they go like that I don't know or they just fling out either way whirlybird we're more likely a brat as they go I don't know anyway there we go we've got a rotor on only three more to go I've only been going for a million our buddy hub part me kind of wants to just build the rest of the drunk just so I I'm visually more completed however at the moment it seems a lot more sensible to do all of those motors because these these motors this seems to be the hard bit if there's any reason for a amateur in the audience not to try this at home it's this bit by a long shot I wasn't expecting this bit and and here we are right okay I'm gonna do the rest of them now and I'm probably gonna give less commentary because you've seen me do one and so let's just see if we can just zip through the rest of them [Music] things will be okay we can fight against the fear [Music] jairs you [Music] that does mean you should when life is up to you [Music] because I have to remove the writer it pushes down I'm smart [Music] just [Music] just hang on [Music] okay that's the four motors done and that was by far the hardest part of the whole job I think I wasn't expecting those to be that much different that much trouble I just assumed that these motors just snapped out but they'd have some pogo pins underneath there was something like that but yeah though I guess and as well as I've said repeatedly I don't know anything about drones this one is obviously a consumer drone it's not a turbo performance aftermarket thing I assume the aftermarket ones are a bit more modular than this but yeah anyway we've got it done we've got four motors I'm fairly confident that they're all gonna work hopefully I'll be able to test this because it's you know one of these control it from your phone jobbies I believe so one let's start putting in all the internal components now so we'll start with those sensors that were buried down the bottom and let's see if I can remember how this all goes together now I've got to take that cap off there we go this feels good now because all of a sudden I'm now taking bits off of the bench and the amount of clutter and all the bits and screws on the bench in front of me are now doing dilling they're going down instead of going up and that feels good it feels like the end is in sight which on a big repair like this where you've kind of been making it up as you go it's very very relieving when you see the part numb the Park count going down we go bullied believe those wires into place just about I think that'll dig none of this was a super super tight there it seems to be reasonably forgiving so I'm fairly happy with this I tell you what I'm not happy with though those screws aren't supposed to be in there yet which is marred Lee concerning because it means I don't know oh yeah that's fine I've got two extra screws because the shell came is covered that I'm putting in now I've got an extra one of those that came with the shell so that explains why I have some extra screws okay that's the lower sensors in place now the main camera goes in just nudge that through it's opening in the front there we go and now I've got to negotiate all the wires around it oh man I've got to get this grommet through that very small hole as well this bit is not gonna be fun there's probably a way of doing this and I have no idea what it is can I just get one bit up and then feed the rest through can you guys even see what I'm doing okay let's try a different approach that's choice squashing the top part the actual rubber is very soft and squidgy but because I can't get underneath there I can't do anything I wonder I wonder I wonder let me just would this be easier if I did it from the other point does the shock mount come off at the other end it does there's an easy way of doing this okay I've taken that rubber mount off of the actual sway bar as I'll call it so now I've got something that I can hold in my hand and I can actually I'm actually gonna remove this again Russell knew back out a little bit of through force and ignorance there we go now I've gotten much more clearance to be able to get this thing in when still none the wiser as to how to do it ah there we go okay I didn't do a very good job showing you that but what I did so I used my angled tweezers to squidge the thing flap push it up and then I just managed to get my fingernails on and just pull it through because it's very soft and squidgy that wasn't too much of a headache to do so yeah have fun with that guys I'm sorry I can't give you any more help that's all that right now I've got to get the now gonna get the mount back onto the metal bar this is gonna be a bit fun that's one side the other side is harder because there's a little shutter there blinker this is taxing I can't get the light where I need it there we go no idea if you guys saw what happened then I just grabbed it and just grossly stretched it around that little T piece don't know if you saw it or not but it's in whew alright four screws right there we go that's the main camera in place one is it a wobble map jiggle-jiggle okay front piece and with that we're ready for the main board I think everything else went across the main board must have all right this isn't exactly just dropping in but it does press down to the screw stops without significant force and everything is aligned so that's good enough for me I'm gonna put in some guide screws so I'll put in a couple of easy ones just to keep it all in place and buy a couple anyone who and let's grab my nice tweezers and we'll reconnect everything mmm this one isn't self locating normally these push connectors you can just kind of get them roughly in place and they'll just push down this one doesn't want to do that and I can't see where it goes quite far back is the answer to that there we go got it right now we're going to put in all the little fittings and stuff so I'll do my best to replace all of the all of these pads these pads do two jobs they provide grounding interface the shielding and stuff like that and they also serve to press down on these connectors and stop these connectors from jumping out all right let's put some screws into those and some of my screws have gone out of order so I may do a little bit of backing and forth in here Oh balls I keep forgetting the some of these screws aren't magnetic and one just fell off the screwdriver interesting part about running a computer shop is every time you drop a screw and you bend down to the floor to pick it up you find another screw but you think oh I was looking for that one I'm gonna hold on to that one in case I need it again it's a treasure trove damnit ah let's take off the magnet it's not helping me right now there we go this thing's looking a lot more like a drone I think that's all right and that would have been like there okay I've run out of bits so whenever you're putting together something complicated like this remember don't look at what's in there look at what you have left on on your bench and what I have left on my bench are the case screws I've got the two extra screws that came with this cover which was also a spare and those are some bits of old wire I've got the two props that were still on it and that's it I've run out of parts which means everything must be in there cautionary tale of when I used to fix phones back in the day and I spent a great deal of time putting an iphone 3gs back together only to find that I'd left the battery out because I was too busy focusing on what I'd put into the phone that I neglected to see that there was a battery still on the table therefore I had not put the battery in so yeah cool all right let's put the cover on right okay screws BAM let's get the battery out the box alright this battery doesn't have a lot of charge in it but hopefully it's got enough to just sort of turn on and prove that it works and I'm gonna grab the old shelf because it's actually got the connection information for this where's my phone right unfortunately oh yeah right testing it is a bust I don't have them remote control for this I was hoping I could connect to it with my phone because it's the broadcast of Wi-Fi network and stuff like that but it looks like that is just for monitoring it doesn't actually allow you to do any kind of control of the device so I'll have to call the client in and say can you bring in your controller so we can turn it on and just basically make sure that the motors spin that's what I care about but all the connections are good so to the best of my knowledge this fellow should be absolutely fine now but other than that thank you very much I'll see you all next time good bye for now you

Channel: Adamant IT

Views: 66,599

Rating: 4.8284521 out of 5

Keywords: adamant it, adamantit, computer, repair, shop, custom, gaming, modding

Id: XTwTG4FAgHE

Length: 55min 18sec (3318 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019