Mavic Mini antenna mod

[Dbentzjr]

Just to be clear, i haven't actually tested this design in flight yet. I hope to get a stronger signal to my drone, Im not worried about the overall range but that should be extended too. This is such a cheap and quick modification, you just have to be REALLY careful if you try it on your own because the Mavic Mini is an extremely fragile drone. My phone is currently in the shop getting some tlc, so it will still be a while before i can actually test this project. The best part about this mod is that the drone is still under warranty, there is nothing modified to the drone at all. Nothing is soldered and nothing was taken apart, except 2 small clips in the front legs. The antenna wires simply wrap around the existing antenna, where it meets the circuit board then the clip goes back in place. So This could all be easily removed and it would just be normal again. But as it is here with this mod, I hope and expect this will strongly increase the wifi signal stability, especially when turning the drone at a far distance away. The only materials use are fm antenna wire, 2 small wire ties, 1 larger wire tie, and a small screwdriver or something similar to carefully remove the clips around the arm antennas. This took me under 30 minutes or so to do, and as i said, I only wrapped the wire around the antennas, its not soldiered in place, but it is tight and shouldn't move. Where the wire meets the antennas, the fm cable must be stripped down to about a little over an inch, because I sort of made a small loose knot to help it stay in place. I can't wait to get my phone back and test this out. I will post back with the results of flight testing as soon as I am able, it will probably be a few days still. Im unaware of anyone else trying anything like this and i was looking, everything for boosting the range seems to point to the controller transmitter and range extenders. I believe I am the first to actually try it another way by enhancing the drone itself. This mod adds next to nothing in weight to the drone, I dont have a scale, but go weigh 3 wire ties and about 30 inches of fm antenna wire and whatever that comes to is the added weight to the craft. As for wind, I can only imagine that this will add a small fraction of drag but nothing substantial enough to harm the flight stability. The wires were carefully placed to avoid allowing contact with vitals, and especially the motors. When folded, its slightly more difficult to fold, but it can be done. The battery is the same, just takes a small moment longer to get the wires out of the way. Lastly, if I find this does not work, or doesn't do what Im hoping for, it can all be undone and back to completely stock in a few minutes. I just wanted to share this experience with the community to get some new ideas out there.

 

[girnas89]

cool.....so did it work?

 

[Dbentzjr]

I just recieved word that my phone has finally been repaired, it took longer than normal due to COVID-19 but things are shaping up, I should have my phone back within about a week and I will be ready to give this test a go. I will be testing how this functions at longer range, like every 1000 feet, and see how stable it remains, even while turning the drone to look around. If I can get about a mile, 5300 feet, without any signal issues, then I would consider this mod a success. My maximum distance ever with this drone is over 7000 feet, and that was running completely stock. I will report my findings after the testing phase has been completed. I feel pretty confident that this will work. Im sure not looking for a miracle, I just want to get a slightly better wifi signal to the drone and I feel this is a much better way then investing in directional parabolic antennas for the remote controller. Once I get my phone returned, its just a matter of waiting for clear weather to fly safe.

 

[Dbentzjr]

So I got my phone back today, and I went out and tested the drone. It is a cloudy/rainy day, but I caught a break in the weather, and even with a lot of clouds and fog, i managed to get out smoothly about a mile, near 4500 some feet away without too many hiccups. I did end up losing connection after I turned, but I feel that for as well as the drone did in this horrible weather, I think the mod is an overall success because I feel theres no way this drone would have made it that far normally. In this bad cloudy weather though, I am very surprised that I successfully made it to where i was trying to get. This is probably not going to be a drastic improvement, there will still be signal loss and breakups, but overall, I feel that it is a definite improvement over the stock antenna setup. I would say this offers about a 10-20% signal improvement overall (perhaps more in better conditions), but take that with some salt because Im only guessing after about 2 test flights with this new setup. In a nutshell, its definitely better, but its definitely not OcuSync. If you typically fly far, or in a congested area, I would say give this a try yourself and let me know if it helps you out. If you normally don't fly too high or that far away, then you probably won't need this mod.

 

[Dbentzjr]

Yeah...long story short, don't bother with this mod after all. As it turns out, I attempted to fly twice on 2 different days and both times I could not get a successful GPS lock, it would just not pick up more than 8 stable satelites. Once I removed the antenna wire from the aircraft, the gps worked again nearly immediately. While this can be a hit or miss attempt to improve the range on my drone, i feel that in the grand scheme of things, it didn't offer enough of an improvement to continue. The Mavic Mini has decent enough signal without the mod, and theres just not enough of a positive effect to pursue this any further. Perhaps though, someone else might find a different way to boost the antenna signal that works better than my attempt did.

TLDR: BEWARE, I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT THIS CAN POTENTIALLY IMPAIR THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE GPS DETECTION OF THE MAVIC MINI

 

[Davros007]

Yep. Antennas are funny things! They are not just like the receive “aerial” for a car radio, but are very critically tuned for length, to match the length of the frequency of the signal travelling through them (multiples of the frequency length). Same with CB antennas. In fact, on a powerful radio, an incorrect broadcast antenna (or snapped-off one) may cause signal to “block up” on the way out, and burn out the final stages of the transmitter. Google “swr” and CB if you want a lot of tedious math to go through!

 

[Imnotsure_YT]

Cool. Or you could attach a LightBridge Flight Control Transmission system on the drone.

 

[SW_Drone_Guy]

TLDR: BEWARE, I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT THIS CAN POTENTIALLY IMPAIR THE FUNCTIONALITY OF THE GPS DETECTION OF THE MAVIC MINI

Thanks for doing this. Saved me agrevation. Happy flying

 

[MavicFun]

It's is fake information. Long coax=high lost.

 

[icecoldgin]

Some mods on increasing the WiFi range and reception of cell phones entailed putting a cut stainless steel razor blade near the internal antennas. It served to "amplify" the signal being sent (or received) by the internal antenna.

I have always wondered if this will work for the Mini antennas? ?

 

[DanMan32]

Some mods on increasing the WiFi range and reception of cell phones entailed putting a cut stainless steel razor blade near the internal antennas. It served to "amplify" the signal being sent (or received) by the internal antenna.

I have always wondered if this will work for the Mini antennas? [emoji848]

I think that helped when phones had stick antennas and didn't have fractal antennas as they do now.

 

[icecoldgin]

I think that helped when phones had stick antennas and didn't have fractal antennas as they do now.

This was done on a Samsung phone with an internal antenna that was flat. Is this a fractal antenna?

 

[RChadwick]

Gone are the days where tin foil on rabbit ears will pull in your favorite station. All antennas have a critical length, and a longer antenna can actually work worse than a shorter one. If you position certain things (Razor blades, wire, etc) in a certain way, trying to pick up a certain signal, you might have a .01% chance of getting better reception, and a much better chance of making things worse. Even worse, you might improve reception in a certain direction, and when your Mavic is a mile away, and you turn around to RTH, you lose signal completely. Antenna mods need to be carefully thought out with all factors in mind. I'm an Electronic Engineer, and even I think that designing RF is at least part black magic. There are two ways to increase signal strength: Increase output power (Not legal), or focus that power in certain direction(s), which increases the gain of an antenna. In general, a dish of some sort will at least not make things worse, and work on all frequencies, and it's much easier to add than an antenna replacement. A Yagi mod should help as well, at least in theory, but will be more directional. Modding the transmitter seems a better idea, as you can manually keep the antenna pointed at the Mavic.