Hi all,

I'm in the process of repairing a crash damaged Phantom 2 Vision Plus v3. An ESC failed during a test flight, the corresponding rotor stopped, the drone went out of control and of course fell out of the sky. Now I've got the body open, I can immediately see that 3 of the ESC's are marked as v2.1. That's all good. But the 4th one, the one which caused the issue as far as I can tell, is a v2.0. All the other 3 have a blob of white glue/rubber on the 3 motor wires to hold them in place or reduce vibration or whatever, but this is missing from the faulty one.

To add a little background to this story I'm in the process of purchasing this drone from it's current owner, who flew it only a little before crashing into a tree and breaking the camera. He sent it away to a repair shop where they assessed the damage and diagnosed a faulty ribbon cable on the gimbal. But instead of getting it repaired, he left it in the shop and bought a Phantom 3 Professional instead. So it sat in the repair shop for 9 months until about 3 weeks ago when he offered it to me for practically nothing if I could fix it. So I fixed the gimbal issue with a replacement ribbon cable. All good. Until the crash I described above.

So, my question is, did it come out of the DJI factory with mixed ESC's (seems extremely unlikely to me but I'd like to hear other peoples' opinions) or did the guy in the repair shop decide it was a handy source of spare parts and steal one of the 2.1 ESC's, replacing it with a faulty 2.0 and hoping nobody would ever notice? I'd like to think not but I can't see any other reasons for it to be different to the others.

Thanks,

BarnStormer

The two versions of ESC's are compatible. You can mix those with no problem. The only difference in that version is the firmware. They will operate and function the same.

Thanks for your reply Roy. I had read somewhere that they could be mixed without issues. My question was, would it have come from the DJI factory with a mixture of 2.0 and 2.1 ESC's installed? It seems unlikely to me but I wanted to see if other users had found mixed ESC's inside their Phantoms from the factory, not swapped out afterwards by themselves or by a repairer etc.
Thanks,

BarnStormer

Most likely from the factory they would be the same. If it had been repaired the. It's open for who did what  I would bet your fried forgot and eith repair it some time befor he sold it to you. Do a little fishing and you might catch a shark.

roy@mcscomputer Posted at 2016-3-23 11:58
Most likely from the factory they would be the same. If it had been repaired the. It's open for who  ...

Hi Roy,

It was a brand new drone when he purchased it. It had flown for less than 2 hours when he crashed it, at which point he sent it away to be repaired. He'd never done anything to repair it himself or sent it anywhere else for repair previously. It's currently all pointing towards the repair shop having raided it for spares whilst it was in there for 9 months - they probably thought he was never coming back for it.

Not that it really matters now what happened. I've got a replacement ESC v2.1 on order as well as a new body shell and will be swapping all the parts over to the new shell when it arrives later this week (hopefully). Looks like a fiddly but rewarding job. I can't wait to get her in the air again and maybe actually shoot some video this time.

Be sure to take photo and mark the wiring before disassembly. Will definately help with the swap out. Good luck and you'll be flying in no time. Just remember patience is you friend in this job.

roy@mcscomputer Posted at 2016-3-24 07:57
Be sure to take photo and mark the wiring before disassembly. Will definately help with the swap out ...

Sounds like good advice, many thanks. I always like to take loads of pictures of things like this so I know how it all goes back together. I won't know whether anything else is broken until I've put it all back together and put a battery in it. Hopefully nothing but knowing my luck there could be all sorts of things wrong with it.

Let us know how you make out. Always like following a good ending. Good luck!

roy@mcscomputer Posted at 2016-4-1 10:55
Let us know how you make out. Always like following a good ending. Good luck!

I swapped all the parts over to the new body shell and she's in the air once again.