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Camera ribbon replacement - my experiences

angusc

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Hi there,

I thought that I would post my experiences with camera ribbon replacement. It has be a frustrating 3 weeks for me and maybe can help others in the same position.

So to start from the beginning, I was hovering at around 3ft and AC started drifting towards a nearby wall. Hit the wall and fell noise first to a hard landing. On restarting AC the camera did not calibrate and I had the gimbal over load error message.

I found that the camera ribbon cable was parted.

I ordered 2 replacement cables from eBay. They arrived and I fitted the first cable. Calibrated gimbal and all seemed fine. A few days later the camera and gimbal would not complete the calibration on power up. The camera would start calibration but stay in the downward looking plane out rapidly move and crash in to the end stop positions. Also camera became VERY hot within 2-3 minutes.

I then removed the new cable and fitted the second cable (from same eBay supplier) and still the same problem.

I then ordered another cable from another eBay supplier, this one, in the eBay photos looked to have more sticky tape in the right places but still listed as a "replacement" cable and not OEM.

It arrived today and I fitted it but nearly had an immediate fail, which we will come to in a moment (lesson learned).

The new ribbon cable feels thicker and the connectors were much harder to "click" in to place. However after routing the cable around the gimbal, the last step is to refit the gimbal to the support bracket. To do this the top ribbon connector has to be fed through the gimbal bracket hole and I found the plug could not pass through the thin slot of the bracket. There was no crash damage to the bracket hole. So I peeled off the adhesive tape that was applied to the top of the plug. Then wiggled the plug through the hole, it was still a tight fit.

That was a near disaster, because as I wiggled the plug through the hole it was bending all the fine plug pins! I then spent an hour straightening then all with the point of a needle and magnifying glass. Lucky for me I was able to plug the connectors and it seems to have worked.

So what are the lessons learned?

1) Not all camera ribbon cables are made equal. Try to buy from a recommended source.

2) always consider ordering 2 cables as it is a fiddly job and can fail.

3) NEVER force the plug through the gimbal mounting plate home as it WILL damage the pins.

I'm in the UK so vendors for me will be different to USA and other countries. However it might be good to share success stories by finding the vendor links for cables that worked.

Also if we can find a suppliers of genuine DJI ribbon cables thunder would be the best solution.

So my working cable came from this UK eBay vendor: RC Part For DJI Mavic Pro Drone Flexible Gimbal Flat PCB Ribbon Flex Cable Layer | eBay
 
Last edited:
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FStop Labs ships worldwide if you buy from them here on eBay.
 
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FStop Labs ships worldwide if you buy from them here on eBay.
No one in the UK is going to order from a USA seller!

Guys the idea of this thread is for you to post only working cables and the vendor link in the following format:

UK: vendor xyz link
USA: vendor link
 
No one in the UK is going to order from a USA seller!
I'm super thankful that mentality did not stop DJI from starting a business that shipped drones from China ;)
 
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