I have done some searching and it seems no one has a solution that seems to answer the question of "Can I Charge My Phone and/or Controller While Flying My Mavic Pro". Well I found a solution. I purchased a new battery backup and as it turns out a feature I thought would be kind of useless I think is what makes this solution work. NOTE - At this time this solution has only been tested on an android phone using a USB Type C connection (LG V20). I have some older android phones I will try it with and I will also see if I can get ahold of an IPhone of a recent model to test this out as well. Since the piece of equipment that makes it work is the battery backup and it is shown primarily with Apple devices I doubt it will be a problem.
To start off you need to purchase this
You will also need to get some cables. If you own them great if not, I have had good success with Anker brand which are easily found on Amazon.
The part that makes this work is that the power bank has iSmart 3.0 tech. what this allows is Data transfer through the power bank while charging your phone, or the Mavic Pro controller in this case.
Unfortunately, since the Mavic Pro Controller does not use its USB ports in a normal manner this process is overly complicated. What I mean by this is that for some reason, as far as I was able to find, the micro USB-ish port on the side of the controller will only charge if you use a standard Micro USB cable. If you want to connect a device for video and control you HAVE to use the included cable. By contrast I have not been able to charge the controller using the full Size USB port on the bottom of the controller however, it works just fine for video feed. Because of this you will need to use 3 cables for this to work. I am sure most of you know this, but I wanted to put this here so you can see why I did this the way I did.
So to start off you have the RavPower unit
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Now the unit has 4 ports.
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I have labeled the ports because according to the manufacturer it matters which ports you use in order for the data transfer to work.
Port 1 is where you would plug in the phone using, in this scenario a USB 3.0 to USB type C cable. Port 2 is where you plug in the micro USB-ish port on the controller Port 3 is where you plug in the full USB port on the controller Port 4 is not used but can be used to plug the batter pack for charging.
Once done it will look like this, Sorry for messy pic.
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For the data transfer to start working make sure you double press the power button on the battery pack.
And that is it. This should work and allow you longer flight times on both the controller and your phone/tablet/whatever video device you choose to use. As I test more configurations I will add to this post just to confirm it works. If anyone chooses to try this and can get it to work in a more simplified configuration, please feel free to add to the post. |