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Anyone Hacking the Karma?

No, I don’t think so. But I’m around several airports so I also try to remain legal. Open area, I don’t like flying around buildings. I’ll post some videos!


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No, I don’t think so. But I’m around several airports so I also try to remain legal. Open area, I don’t like flying around buildings. I’ll post some videos!


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Nice man.. Can't wait to see!!
 
Nice man.. Can't wait to see!!

Got to fly today finally. Went to an AMA heli only field (quads welcome). There are housing developments on two sides, one about 1/4 mike, one closer to 1/2 mile. Two cell phone/microwave towers about 3/4 mile away. A fairgrounds with ham radio guys on another side1/4 mile away. No issues flying helicopters but does seem to limit control on 2.4 GHz. Then you start flying with video and it makes BIG difference. 5.8 gets beat up pretty bad. You fly in and out of interference bands and can tell there is a a high level of background interference. I have flown stock Karma there and video was a real issue limiting flying range. (I will not fly without video! If ever an issue I need camera to orient and get any unit home.)

The flight pads and roadway into the field were recently upgraded and sealed by the county. Very nice. Used. The Karma to get some shots. Flew to max. 400-ft and out in two directions. Had no issues ever with video. The new antennas made a definite difference! Is impossible to be quantitive here but the improvement was very noticeable.

I will post some new pics on the website soon and anyone in Houston, TX area wanting an AMA field to fly out of should look us up. Fort Bend Helis
 
It’s working great. It’s adjustable so you can point it at the drone. We don’t know how far it extends the signal but it’s definitely stronger it at least doubles the signal. I bought 2 of them, but only needed one.i have the other one for sale on eBay for 80.00 if you want it.


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Im the guy who bought other one from u on ebay. Cant wait to see it fly with modding antenna in vietnam. will reponse some testing video with modding antenna.

FB Group
 
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Im the guy who bought other one from u on ebay. Cant wait to see it fly with modding antenna in vietnam. will reponse some testing video with modding antenna.

FB Group

Thanks for purchasing it. Hope you received it ok. Works great for me !


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Has anyone tried this range extender? 9000M Signal Range Antenna Booster

The sme adapters seem the same as the GoPro karma controller antenna adapter. Not sure about the cable length though because itelite has much larger from what i've seen on youtube but it's much cheaper..
 
Is anyone trying to hack the KARMA controller (USB) to get access to the flight logs (which can only be uploaded) ?
 
Has anyone tried this range extender? 9000M Signal Range Antenna Booster

The sme adapters seem the same as the GoPro karma controller antenna adapter. Not sure about the cable length though because itelite has much larger from what i've seen on youtube but it's much cheaper..

They should be cheaper! They are Omni directional antennas with about same gain as internal antennas. The internal antennas are patch antennas and are directional which gives them significantly more range. The antennas a bunch of us have are bigger patch antennas with about 9 db gain.

Long discussion Range Extender Antenna



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Is anyone trying to hack the KARMA controller (USB) to get access to the flight logs (which can only be uploaded) ?

Seems with all the issues nobody has said much about hacking into the controller. Makes one think. If you got copy of the flight log would you be able to interpret it?


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Seems with all the issues nobody has said much about hacking into the controller. Makes one think. If you got copy of the flight log would you be able to interpret it?

Good question!
 
Seems with all the issues nobody has said much about hacking into the controller. Makes one think. If you got copy of the flight log would you be able to interpret it?


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Well for that I would need to see the flight log. Has anyone tried to intercept it while uploading (putting a proxy between access point and internet) ?
 
any one know if the police helicopters have blockers in. i was flying my drone today and a helicopter flew past. my controls where delayed really badly and then dropped out. however the video wasn't affected. has any one had the same issue and if so would a bigger antenna boost the signal so the blocker wont affect it as much.
i was bringing my drone to the ground because the battery was getting low. when the helicopter went passed my battery was on about 1 minute 50 seconds. the helicopter then affected the signal. (blocker or not i don't know) my drone got stuck in the air for a good 1m and a half. when the helicopter passed i was able to regain control of my drone and land it with only 20s of battery left.

- the drone didn't land automatically because it thought i was controlling the drone even when i had know
 
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Hi there, hello to everyone. Just arriving here. Got a few karma drones on a blackfriday on November.
Seems nobody is trying to do some reversing on this drone.
There is hardly nothing documented out there.
Last week I had time to start working on one.

First impressions:

1) Main CPU seems a STM32. Although there is a black resin around it, there is a STM32_SWD pads just beside it. This is the Serial Wire Debug port of this CPU.
Has anyone tried to connect a STM debugger to this CPU? There is a soldered miniKK conector with the label STMDBG UART and a XI2C line.

2) There is an AMOTECH GPR7 just left of main CPU. Looks like JATG pads are also there. Can’t tell if they are wired with GPS or CPU. Anyone knows? There is also pads for GPS UART and GPS USB.

3) There is a shielded area I haven’t open yet. Will try to get a dead board so I won’t risk damaging my working unit. On the bottom of it there is a connector labeled DM_368 DBG. I guess under these shielding lives a Texas Instruments TMS320DM368 DaVinci doing the heavy work of encoding and compressing h.264 video. There are two red wires acting as antenna, at first I tough they are GPS Antenas, but now I think they are the antennas transmitting video on 2.4 ghz band.
I think this because the DM368 itself won’t need any shielding. The shielding is only needed because there is also a transmitter coupled with DM368 encoder.
Anyone knows if karma uses one radio link for control and other for video? That would make sense and avoid a lot of trouble on the project (like using upper layer protocol priorities schema to avoid delay in comands if video is using too much bandwidth).
But if that’s the case, then these are poorly designed antennas that explains why video behave bad once we go a little far, or the noise level on 2.4 ghz spectrum is high.

4) On the bottom chassis there is another board that seems the control one. Another shielded area, linked with two X (looks like circular polarity antennas), built in the lower chassis. Much better antennas than the ones that I think are used for video link. These modem board is linked by a flat cable to the main board, and right beside it are pads with a label MODEM. Looks like a serial pad. Has anyone tried listening to it? If the modem board is speaking serial with the main CPU, it should be easy to send commands from another onboard CPU, adding collision avoidance and other pretty stuff. Anyone?
 
One more free day with the Karma.
Did some testing and validate the specs that it can take off with 1.1kg payload.

Added a 5200 mAh 35C battery and will do some endurance and flight time tests with it today.

Did some range extending work too, using 20 dbi yagis and sunhans amplifiers..
Enough talking, to the pics!!
 

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Hello @guiaoa84
How was your test with battery? And what about the cables you added? Are they for the range extender?
I bought a Karma for 400€ (2 batteries) some months ago. It's true that is big, noisy, and not so much stable (especially during landing) but I really like it ?
If I solve range issues and battery, it would be a monster! Unfortunately, video starts lagging at ~200meters usually (gopro 6)

? Video Test ?

By the way, is anyone selling a range extender?
 
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on Internet there are several videos on DIY extenders, using aluminium foil (or something similar). Of course they will not perform as the professional ITELITE extender I guess, but they are way cheaper and easy to install, so they can worth a try.

s-l640.jpgHowever, they are used with controllers with external antennas. Is it possible to do something similar with the Karma controllers? I am not an expert with this, so sorry if I asking something impossible.
But Itelite extender is not that cheaper, and difficult to find here in Italy. I'd like to try some alternative.
Thank you
 
De Lac, add me on Instagram and I can guide you all the way to get this beast further than the battery allows it to go hehe
@guiaoa84
 
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