NanoSync Antenna for DJI Mavic Coming Soon

[AnzacJack]

Dude. You are posting this on a public forum for all too see and comment on. I am fully entitled to comment on this. If you want to keep it private between you and Jake, then do so and keep your private crap off this public forum

 

[MacIak]

The way i see it, this is all about modifying a radio that works pretty good without mods. If you dont understand how this works or have any basic skills, you should probably leave well enough alone. You are complaining but dont understand really what you are complaining about or how to work with it.
I finished my mod a couple of days ago and stuffed my controller. Pointless coming on here and complaining Jake. I knew the risks and threw the dice. Good news. After a day of calming down and some fine work, all fixed. Hopefully some testing tomorrow

(go eazy on Yesandy dude) Good luck!! Give us all the juicy details please. And absolutely you are 100% correct about the stock TX. That is, what I think frustrates me when it comes to these (premium) aftermarket antenna's. They promise so much but don't deliver, could have known off course and it's too much fun playing a bit.. (I have waited since beginning December for the Nanosync as preorders were already announced before that. Also had to wait a long time before my mavic was delivered and I was a very early adopter).
The DJI designers did such a fantastic job on the Mavic (hardware...the firmware issues we know.).
Everything from folding design to components inside..have you opened it? It's beautiful.
Also a lot of thought got into the TX including the folding antenna's which are near perfect. Don't you think that DJI would not have been able to fit a panel antenna with folding design (flip it to the rear) and sacrifice maybe 1cm extra if it would have been possible to double the range?? They didn't cause the gain of signal is not worth it...
I even saw some reseller claiming " triple the range" with Nanosync. That makes a porcupine go into defence mode inside my belly.

 

[AnzacJack]

(go eazy on Yesandy dude.

Fair enough. But those that agree with him don't get told to mind their own business.
Anyway

Your right, but. I did get fantastic performance improvement with the inspire, so thought it worthwhile to play again, (plus I see this playing as part of the hobby. My wife always rolling her eyes at me for pulling apart stuff that is perfectly serviceable haha)
My inspire experience was (In Australia we have the same limitations as the Europeans)
1. 3D print parabolic reflectors. I got about 10% boost.
2. Installed Jakes antenna and I reckon I got about 30% increase
3. Installed some amplifiers and easily doubled performance.

With that experience I thought why not play with the mavic. This is despite I alradynflew out to 1500m very easily and to honest will prob never do this again, so this playing with the controller is really not needed (but hey, it's my hobby)

Our cyclonic weather has cleared so I'll test tomorrow with and with out boosters.

 

[AnzacJack]

On my installation nightmare.
The little tab that holds the LCD ribbon cable in place fell of and when I was trying to refit it broke and bent a pin.
I decided to see if all would operate without the LCD, as all (most) info is on the iPad anyway.
But
My controller would connect but just kept beeping and didn't seem to function correctly.
I tried to fix the ribbon connector - so hard with my old eyes but in the end I set my phone up on a stand, used the camera to zoom in and was able to fix it using screen to see what I was doing.
I was able to successfully fix the ribbon connector, insert a thin piece of plastic to hold in place and all seemed to work.
Now when I powered up, as before all worked, but again I'm getting the constant beeping. However, now I have my LCD screen and it's telling me I have stick error
WTF
so pull apart again, and after some investigation I find the problem. The sticks have a small magnet at their base that a sensor reads to detect the movement. One of these magnets had picked up a small washer and this was screwing up the sensor.
Removed this washer, and now finally everything appears to functioning as it should. Was a frustrating few hours and I was very annoyed at myself throughout, for wrecking a perfectly functioning controller.

At the end of the day, I am hoping test flights tomorrow will make it worth while. If not, I still learned something

 

[MacIak]

Fair enough. But those that agree with him don't get told to mind their own business.
Anyway

Your right, but. I did get fantastic performance improvement with the inspire, so thought it worthwhile to play again, (plus I see this playing as part of the hobby. My wife always rolling her eyes at me for pulling apart stuff that is perfectly serviceable haha)
My inspire experience was (In Australia we have the same limitations as the Europeans)
1. 3D print parabolic reflectors. I got about 10% boost.
2. Installed Jakes antenna and I reckon I got about 30% increase
3. Installed some amplifiers and easily doubled performance.

With that experience I thought why not play with the mavic. This is despite I alradynflew out to 1500m very easily and to honest will prob never do this again, so this playing with the controller is really not needed (but hey, it's my hobby)

Our cyclonic weather has cleared so I'll test tomorrow with and with out boosters.

Good one on fixing the ribbon! Those things I normaly never work with, they freak me out for obvious reasons.
The eyerolling business sounds familiar. She goes: "are you on some forum with your nerdy helicopter "friends" again"..
Normaly I do not buy pre-assembled stuff and whatever I assemble (with the exception of 1 so far, knock wood) ends up in the E.R. or graveyard sooner or later because of gravity, static object, angry God and/or some glitch in by braincell. So I get a lot of non-flying quality time. The Mavic is indeed kind of boring if you leave it untouched yet luckily im new to " camera drones" too. So kind of compensates for the fiddling around but still my toolbox(es) need attention...
Im really curious what the Nanosync will do for you. Did you boost both sides or just left antenna? My guess sill is that the technology is pretty perfect antenna-wise in the Mavic. Couple of years ago you could buy a Lightbridge module for 1000 euro to extend range to 1-1.5km...
The windsurfers on the mavic stock TX made my signal worse, that already was an indication to me this system is not comparable to Lightbridge as used in Insp1/P3.

 

[AnzacJack]

Good one on fixing the ribbon! Those things I normaly never work with, they freak me out for obvious reasons.
The eyerolling business sounds familiar. She goes: "are you on some forum with your nerdy helicopter "friends" again"..

Hahaha so funny, my wife is doing that right now..
I'll try and boost 1 then both, but from what I'm reading, only need to boost left?
I boost both on inspire

 

[MacIak]

Hahaha so funny, my wife is doing that right now..
I'll try and boost 1 then both, but from what I'm reading, only need to boost left?
I boost both on inspire

I'm at work now, here they understand!
Well, the left antenna is TX, right one RX on the remote. CyberNate reported that boosting the receiver part gives slight " observed" improvement. And boosting left antenna I can say it gives significant performance increase as in: 4-5 bars solid instead of total signal loss on RC (same distance, same homepoint, same route, similar weather type, same altitude. For real improvement on the downlink you definitely need to boost onboard the Mavic. Id say try both and then only left. I cannot perform this since I have no 2 boosters.

 

[AnzacJack]

I'll give it a go and report back.

 

[Yesandy]

The Nanosync should do more or less the same as stock, maybe a tiny bit better if lucky. Why buy it? Because aftermarket stuff is gold business and since success was proven with P3 I was hoping for an equivalent improvement. But in your case a defect of some kind explains the situation better.
Look..face it. All these long distance runs done by some people (like Chuck)..have you seen where he flies? Flat, no structures, wifi etc. Or people leave from congested areas straight over open water. Even in CE regions people are able to get 6km out of the mavic in stock, that's 2km more than advertised so it is likely the distance runs done could have the same results with stock tx . OR the Nanosync is a lot better with NO interference at all and FCC output level. Even ItElite cannot answer me this simple question: HAS THE NANOSYNC BEEN TESTED WITH CE OUTPUT LEVELS??? If yes, why does it have insignificant effect? For my results comparing them please see previous posts. In short: Nanosync seems kaka.Just like DBS02 and windsurfers.

The reading in litchi (I don t use it)..does it correspond to what the TX is displaying by the " bars" . Seems sometimes even in GO4 the app shows no signal on RC while TX shows 3 bars (just read this somewhere, I have not seen this myself)?!

@JakeMaxxUAV : we also need to wrap-up via mail, I will contact you later.

The Tx reading show in Litchi is by number, max is 100, then 75, and 61. Seems that there is no other numbers shown between these three numbers. I did not fly more distance to lower than 61 so I don't know if the next lower is 50 or what.

Regarding the doubts on whether modified antenna might give you more mileage. My experience with similar flat panel antenna is quite positive. The one that I used is similar to what is shown in singlag's post #37. In one of my flight with the original controller, I only got 2 bars on GO4 only 180M above ground and after I adjusting the angle of the antenna to be perpendicular to the drone. After I installed the flat panel antenna, I can get full bar signal even at 280M. So I can tell flat panel antenna do works on my Mavic. The theory is simple that these flat panel antenna focus the signal to be a more focused and narrow beam and only to the front. I do notice that by adjusting and pointing to my drone directly, I do can get more signal shown on Litchi.

So after I saw the NanoSync, I immediately ordered it because firstly the NanoSync looks really good and compact which goes well with the Mavic controller. Secondly, I do know it should work because of my experience with similar flat panel antenna.

I am not asking for more flight distance but more reliable control of the Mavic because of the more congested 2.4g frequency and more high rise buildings in Hong Kong.

 

[Yesandy]

Do you have a link to the Chinese Antenna? I would like to see what you're talking about.

It is the same as what singlag shown in post #37

 

[MacIak]

The Tx reading show in Litchi is by number, max is 100, then 75, and 61. Seems that there is no other numbers shown between these three numbers. I did not fly more distance to lower than 61 so I don't know if the next lower is 50 or what.

Regarding the doubts on whether modified antenna might give you more mileage. My experience with similar flat panel antenna is quite positive. The one that I used is similar to what is shown in singlag's post #37. In one of my flight with the original controller, I only got 2 bars on GO4 only 180M above ground and after I adjusting the angle of the antenna to be perpendicular to the drone. After I installed the flat panel antenna, I can get full bar signal even at 280M. So I can tell flat panel antenna do works on my Mavic. The theory is simple that these flat panel antenna focus the signal to be a more focused and narrow beam and only to the front. I do notice that by adjusting and pointing to my drone directly, I do can get more signal shown on Litchi.

So after I saw the NanoSync, I immediately ordered it because firstly the NanoSync looks really good and compact which goes well with the Mavic controller. Secondly, I do know it should work because of my experience with similar flat panel antenna.

I am not asking for more flight distance but more reliable control of the Mavic because of the more congested 2.4g frequency and more high rise buildings in Hong Kong.

There are many ways EM signals travel. All im trying to say is that the Mavic is a completely new ballgame compared to the Phantom series. If you look at the stock antenna's: They are flat for portability but also for the directional use of them. I do not know where you are testing but im sure there is no way in a congested area to perform a " fair" comparison. It could change from day to day and also your signal can be bouncing all over the place. As said before, your Nanosync could be defective or one of the connectors faulty.
In a previous post I explained that I had a severe signal degradation because of a powerbank delivering 2.1 Amp!? Still no clue why but I do not blame the powerbank nor the amp. It's just an unfortunate combination of variables..it happens sometimes.

 

[pjd900]

Well, the left antenna is TX, right one RX on the remote. CyberNate reported that boosting the receiver part gives slight " observed" improvement. And boosting left antenna I can say it gives significant performance increase

I would have thought that one antenna was for the transmitter and the other for the video feed.

 

[MacIak]

I would have thought that one antenna was for the transmitter and the other for the video feed.

Uhh..yea, that's what im saying. TX=transmitter (rc signal TO aircraft), RX=receiver (Downlink info/ Video FROM aircraft)

 

[CyberNate]

On my installation nightmare.
The little tab that holds the LCD ribbon cable in place fell of and when I was trying to refit it broke and bent a pin.
I decided to see if all would operate without the LCD, as all (most) info is on the iPad anyway.
But
My controller would connect but just kept beeping and didn't seem to function correctly.
I tried to fix the ribbon connector - so hard with my old eyes but in the end I set my phone up on a stand, used the camera to zoom in and was able to fix it using screen to see what I was doing.
I was able to successfully fix the ribbon connector, insert a thin piece of plastic to hold in place and all seemed to work.
Now when I powered up, as before all worked, but again I'm getting the constant beeping. However, now I have my LCD screen and it's telling me I have stick error
WTF
so pull apart again, and after some investigation I find the problem. The sticks have a small magnet at their base that a sensor reads to detect the movement. One of these magnets had picked up a small washer and this was screwing up the sensor.
Removed this washer, and now finally everything appears to functioning as it should. Was a frustrating few hours and I was very annoyed at myself throughout, for wrecking a perfectly functioning controller.

At the end of the day, I am hoping test flights tomorrow will make it worth while. If not, I still learned something

I also broke the latch on the ribbon cable socket. Those things are ridiculously flimsy. I was being careful when I moved the latch, but broke anyway.

 

[MacIak]

This controller does not want to be opened guys...
Had a couple of messy flights today. Again issues using a setup that worked just fine before. After about 500m significant signal drop, didnt even make it 1 km out. Went home and grabbed my old coax cables, had been using customized rg316's. After swapping cables all fine again. Seems that the issue likely to be one of the custom cables and not powerbank output as i suspected.
Made it 5.5km out overflying a small city at 90m (yes, i did this my soul will burn now), had to test how it behaves with lots of interference and also the polarpro filter catching lots of color.
And then...it happened! From a good constant 3-4 bars RC and 3 bars HD it went to exactly ZERO. In less than a second. At exactly the same time that the app was saying " remaining battery only RTH" or something and the app froze too after getting sluggish (i was filming all the time) Was planning to go out for another maybe 500-1000m. Wind was calm with still 68% in the pocket. After the app unfroze the Creep already had initiated RTH facing inbound direction and i decided to return. Made it back with 30%battery, sad i didn't climb a bit to see the result.
Can't say really what caused the sudden loss. My phone memory was kinda low< 1gb. Maybe caused the app to crash. Maybe the LoS was lost due hills/treelines/buildings? What got me by surprize is that both signals went from good to cr@p. Worth mentioning though: I ve done this route several times ( stock and nano unboosted,not this far out) and overhead the city id find myself struggling at 120m to keep the signal out of the red zone on several occasions between 1000-4000m. It could come back eventually but never strong. Today i did notice that the RC or HD signals would start blinking for extended periods with full signal indication.
@anzacjack, me curious! Did you fly yet with the setup?

 

[AnzacJack]

Just back from my flight 10 minutes ago.
not sure if my results will help you @Maclak, as im not aiming for long distance flights and dont see any time when id go to 5Km away from me.
but.
I was very happy with the setup. Remember that in Australia we have the dreaded CE and not FCC, which doesnt help. I flew today from where i flew previously to test some range. This is flying from a river bank so as low as i can be.
Also my testing is pretty simple but it suits me. Im not aiming for long range flying. I just want rock solid stable signal where i do fly. For testing I simply fly out until i loose 1 bar, or it starts to flicker. I know i can push this but dont feel the need.
Pre-mod i could fly out to around 1.5km and i would start to see reduced signal.
Modded with the nanosync antenna, i flew out to about 2.2km before i started to see reduced signal.
Boosted LH antenna, i flew to 3.5km - no reduction in signal and returned home. I did not proceed as Ill never be out that far so was happy to have absolute full signal at this range
I didnt try boosting both antennas as i didnt think it would be different to the 1 boosted.

For me, I am happy with the unboosted nanosync and will not be using the booster on it. I have very good signal within my flight envelope. I used all the leads and ensured the correct leads installed to correct location inside the tx (the left and right leads are different and this does make a difference) and Im very happy with this mod. My controller still fits in my flight case with the nanosync installed. (just)
I have no affiliation with JakeMaxxUAV
(other than giving him all my money) so am under no obligation to say Im happy if Im not, but I am happy with the mod in the knowlege that it hasd given me a more solid signal and increase my range if i want it, and I would recommend to anyone flying on a CE controller. I cant test the FCC so unsure how it will work with the USA guys

Appologies if I havent helped those who want testing of the extreme range of this, but Im not comfortable doing this where I am.

 

[Cfrankfly]

On my installation nightmare.
The little tab that holds the LCD ribbon cable in place fell of and when I was trying to refit it broke and bent a pin.
I decided to see if all would operate without the LCD, as all (most) info is on the iPad anyway.
But
My controller would connect but just kept beeping and didn't seem to function correctly.
I tried to fix the ribbon connector - so hard with my old eyes but in the end I set my phone up on a stand, used the camera to zoom in and was able to fix it using screen to see what I was doing.
I was able to successfully fix the ribbon connector, insert a thin piece of plastic to hold in place and all seemed to work.
Now when I powered up, as before all worked, but again I'm getting the constant beeping. However, now I have my LCD screen and it's telling me I have stick error
WTF
so pull apart again, and after some investigation I find the problem. The sticks have a small magnet at their base that a sensor reads to detect the movement. One of these magnets had picked up a small washer and this was screwing up the sensor.
Removed this washer, and now finally everything appears to functioning as it should. Was a frustrating few hours and I was very annoyed at myself throughout, for wrecking a perfectly functioning controller.

At the end of the day, I am hoping test flights tomorrow will make it worth while. If not, I still learned something

Great attitude and Hobby skills!!! Before late model SKI products I used to spend hours/days fiddling around or fixing issues with different platforms....but ENJOYED doing that... Now I am quite content that it works consistently which gives me more time for WHATEVER! LOL

 

[Cfrankfly]

Great attitude and Hobby skills!!! Before late model DJI products I used to spend hours/days fiddling around or fixing issues with different platforms....but ENJOYED doing that... Now I am quite content that it works consistently which gives me more time for WHATEVER! LOL

 

[MacIak]

Just back from my flight 10 minutes ago.
not sure if my results will help you @Maclak, as im not aiming for long distance flights and dont see any time when id go to 5Km away from me.
but.
I was very happy with the setup. Remember that in Australia we have the dreaded CE and not FCC, which doesnt help. I flew today from where i flew previously to test some range. This is flying from a river bank so as low as i can be.
Also my testing is pretty simple but it suits me. Im not aiming for long range flying. I just want rock solid stable signal where i do fly. For testing I simply fly out until i loose 1 bar, or it starts to flicker. I know i can push this but dont feel the need.
Pre-mod i could fly out to around 1.5km and i would start to see reduced signal.
Modded with the nanosync antenna, i flew out to about 2.2km before i started to see reduced signal.
Boosted LH antenna, i flew to 3.5km - no reduction in signal and returned home. I did not proceed as Ill never be out that far so was happy to have absolute full signal at this range
I didnt try boosting both antennas as i didnt think it would be different to the 1 boosted.

For me, I am happy with the unboosted nanosync and will not be using the booster on it. I have very good signal within my flight envelope. I used all the leads and ensured the correct leads installed to correct location inside the tx (the left and right leads are different and this does make a difference) and Im very happy with this mod. My controller still fits in my flight case with the nanosync installed. (just)
I have no affiliation with JakeMaxxUAV
(other than giving him all my money) so am under no obligation to say Im happy if Im not, but I am happy with the mod in the knowlege that it hasd given me a more solid signal and increase my range if i want it, and I would recommend to anyone flying on a CE controller. I cant test the FCC so unsure how it will work with the USA guys

Appologies if I havent helped those who want testing of the extreme range of this, but Im not comfortable doing this where I am.

Great job and nice findings! As you say, we have different ways of testing this stuff. For me also range is not paramount but the signal reliability at mid range needs to be solid and predictable in different environments. If not for this range fetish i would have never encountered issues that normally do not occur. I feel way more connected with my Creep, it feels like a having a very loyal pet now and happier by the day that i purchased it.
One thing for sure: as Nanosync did not help me a lot the mod itself is worth it. Gives a lot more flexability in use of different antennae and still compact and portable. Boosting works, also a fact. Thanks again for reporting back!

 

[hernan45]

[Quote = "Maciak, mensaje: 144.297, miembro de: 14978"] [ATTACH = full] 9466 [/ attach] Nate, perdona me..used su foto!

Pero ... ¿de dónde van a estos cables? [/ Quote]