Drone Repair

[iDroneRepair]

Good Afternoon Everyone,

New member here just wanting to ask a few questions around drone repairs.

I am looking to set up a drone repair business in Sheffield UK, I will be going online though so that people will be able to send their drones from all over the UK.

What is the current situation regarding drone repairs? ie. Would you say there are enough at present.

What is the most common repairs you have needed?

Please feel free to get involved in this thread and I will answer any questions that you may have.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

[DoomMeister]

I am allowing this post on the condition that you do not use it as an advertising thread. In other words you can take members comments to refine your business model, but if you intend to gain customers from the forum you must become an approved vendor (start a conversation with @clackey ).

Be sure to review our Community Rules especially those that deal with advertising your business.

 

[iDroneRepair]

Thankyou @DoomMeister

I am just trying to gain a bit more information from drone owners to help form our business model.

We hope to be an approved vendor in the future and will be in touch with @clackey when that is needed.

 

[dirkclod]

Thankyou @DoomMeister

I am just trying to gain a bit more information from drone owners to help form our business model.

We hope to be an approved vendor in the future and will be in touch with @clackey when that is needed.

I hope you can get set up as I don’t know of any places for
our UK members to depend on.
Maybe check out this venders site as how he does it. Might
not be what you want to do but will show ya what works for them. DJI Drone Service - Your Drone Repair Shop
Best of luck to you.?

 

[Deleted member 103366]

If in accordance with DoomMeister's comments am I permitted to ask what sort of repairs you envisage doing?
Most physical repairs I personally would rather do myself. Aside from the cost saving there is some measure of satisfaction to be gained from a DIY repair.
However there are technical 'geeky' repairs such as resetting or replacing 'chips' that are, at a guess, beyond the capabilities of the average owner. In my own case and amongst the bits I have gathered there is a P3 battery board that needs resetting and P3 Adv with at least one ESC that needs replacing, they are just examples, I am not proposing to send them to you.
From memory Cheddarman? over on the Phantom forum sent his P3 to some place 'down south', I can't remember the reason for the repair.

 

[iDroneRepair]

I hope you can get set up as I don’t know of any places for
our UK members to depend on.
Maybe check out this venders site as how he does it. Might
not be what you want to do but will show ya what works for them. DJI Drone Service - Your Drone Repair Shop
Best of luck to you.?

Thanks @dirkclod

That seems to be the general consensus that there aren't enough drone repair shops in the UK.

There are a few repair shops but the websites don't seem to very user friendly and aren't transparent with their pricing.

This will be something we will be looking into, we want to make it as easy as possible to book drones in for a repair as the industry standard at the moment seems to be either the customer sends the drone off to be looked at and then receive a quote to repair or send details first to get a quote.

 

[iDroneRepair]

If in accordance with DoomMeister's comments am I permitted to ask what sort of repairs you envisage doing?
Most physical repairs I personally would rather do myself. Aside from the cost saving there is some measure of satisfaction to be gained from a DIY repair.
However there are technical 'geeky' repairs such as resetting or replacing 'chips' that are, at a guess, beyond the capabilities of the average owner. In my own case and amongst the bits I have gathered there is a P3 battery board that needs resetting and P3 Adv with at least one ESC that needs replacing, they are just examples, I am not proposing to send them to you.
From memory Cheddarman? over on the Phantom forum sent his P3 to some place 'down south', I can't remember the reason for the repair.

Thanks for your reply @PhiliusFoggg

I understand that there are plenty of DIY repairers out there and they are confident in doing so and like you said they gain satisfaction from this but for the general consumer there aren't many repair shops in the UK for the general consumer.

At the moment we are just looking for feedback from drone owners to form our business model so I can't go too much into what repairs we will be offering.

I hope this is in line with @DoomMeister comment.

 

[DoomMeister]

Thanks for your reply @PhiliusFoggg

I understand that there are plenty of DIY repairers out there and they are confident in doing so and like you said they gain satisfaction from this but for the general consumer there aren't many repair shops in the UK for the general consumer.

At the moment we are just looking for feedback from drone owners to form our business model so I can't go too much into what repairs we will be offering.

I hope this is in line with @DoomMeister comment.

It is OK to state the level of repair you will be offering. This gives an opportunity for members to give feedback on services they expect from a repair facility. If you go too far in a post we will give you fair warning.

 

[iDroneRepair]

Thanks @DoomMeister for clearing things up.

@PhiliusFoggg We will be focusing more on hardware repairs as these seem to be the most common type of repair.
The most common repairs seem to be Arms, Gimbal, Motors, Camera, Vision Sensor, Landing Gear and Controller Repairs.

Do you currently have your drones serviced?

I know that this might be useful for business in photography and surveying but as a consumer/hobbyist would you prefer to have it professionally serviced or carry the work out yourself?

 

[Deleted member 103366]

Thanks, I do not have my drones serviced, sorry.
Being honest I don't see the requirement for routine maintenance, which is what I would consider "servicing" to be. I do not know of any routine maintenance, as such, that needs to be performed. There are preflight checks etc. but as far as I am aware that's about it.
With regards to repairs, those that have been done I have done myself.
It's the likes of the "geeky" stuff mentioned above that is beyond me. I might have a go at reflowing solder joints and there is a possibility of my trying what seems to be a fairly simple chip reset on a 'dead' Phantom HDMI unit but that's about as far as I could go I think

 

[Jagerbomb52]

Unless you get authorised by DJI to do repairs any repair you do will void the warranty. You need to cross all the T's and Dot all the i's before going forward and I say good luck in getting authorisation for repairs.

 

[iDroneRepair]

Unless you get authorised by DJI to do repairs any repair you do will void the warranty. You need to cross all the T's and Dot all the i's before going forward and I say good luck in getting authorisation for repairs.

Hi @Agustine

Thanks for your response.

That is a very valid point. We understand that owners don't want to void warranties on their drones and we are currently in the process of looking into this.