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No power to drone board

joeh6966

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I have a Karma here that does not turn on. I have a newer battery fully charged and the controller fully charges, but when I swipe up on the controller screen, I get the message, "Karma not found be sure that Karma is powered on". I have pressed the start button many times but nothing happens. There is no voltage on the black and white wires connected to the battery. I have not been able to measure voltage on the battery, however; all of the LEDs light up.
 
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No. This Karma was given to my brother by a superintendent of an apartment building that he works for. It was left behind by someone who moved out. I got a newer battery from GoPro and it charges up, but can't measure any volts on it.
Are you referring to firmware on the controller? Still no.
 
You might want to try to update the firmware, but if the quad doesn't turn on it probably won't work. You might want to seek help from GoPro.
 
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GoPro agreed with me that if the battery charges normally, like one LED flashing and then staying on and the second LED flashing and staying on all the way to 4 LEDs on when the test button is pressed; then there should be 14.8 volts at the battery's terminals. Mine are at zero with a new battery bought from Amazon in late December 2019. So, they are sending me a new battery.
On a side note; has anyone taken a battery apart? I did 2 days ago and it has a circuit board inside. There are heavy insulated wires inside the same size as the ones going to the power board in the drone. There was no voltage at the output terminals, but the actual 4 pack of lithium ion cells had a voltage of 6.69 volts. So, I assume there is a failure of the circuit board inside that battery; and could be the reason the newer battery has no voltage on the outside terminals.
 

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The larger red and black wires are the two poles (+ and -) of the 4 cell batter pack. The white connectors you see are standard just connectors and the smaller leads are connected to the + terminal of each cell and there is one black - common lead. Those leads required to balance charge the lipo battery. The circuit is the balance charger. Each battery has one. More expensive but let’s more people plug n play.


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Okay, cool; but the point I was making is that it blocks all voltage to the outside terminals even though there is voltage on the inside.
Perhaps my newer battery that looks like it charges correctly but has 0 volts on the terminals has the same blockage or defect.
When I get the new battery I'll let this forum know if it fixed the power problem or not.
 
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Hard to see the circuit board completely blocking the path to the main leads. Nothing on that board can support the full current drain while flying or the the flow while charging. The board is all about routing smaller currents through the smaller leads while balancing . When I finally loose a battery I will tear it apart and take a look.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
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Hard to see the circuit board completely blocking the path to the main leads. Nothing on that board can support the full current drain while flying or the the flow while charging. The board is all about routing smaller currents through the smaller leads while balancing . When I finally loose a battery I will tear it apart and take a look.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Do you want a better picture? I can take one of each side.
 
Not sure I can tell from picture. Look where red wire comes in and out of board. Is there not a pretty big flow path on board between the two attachments? The black leads are “common” and should be attached to a big ground plane.


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Not sure I can tell from picture. Look where red wire comes in and out of board. Is there not a pretty big flow path on board between the two attachments? The black leads are “common” and should be attached to a big ground plane.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
There is no "visible" ground plane. No connection between 2 black wires or 2 red wires.
 

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Yesterday after posting the 2 pics above I tried the newer battery that I got from GoPro yesterday in the mail. The results were the same; no voltage at the 2 large terminals of the battery after charging. It doesn't do anything to the drone even after pushing start button.
So, I can assume that the batteries are probably charging and carrying power as intended by their designer. Since none even gets to the first power board is the area that I need to look at now. There are 7 fine wires that go from the battery to the first board, and they must be the conduit for getting the voltage to the main board, so that is where I should test next.
 
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Possibly a bad motherboard
I was surprised by this short suggestion when I first saw it, but it turns out that you were right! There is a part on the motherboard called L11 that has visible damage to it. See photo.
 

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No one has responded so I assume that there is no chance anyone will be able to tell me what value that L11 coil (inductor) is. I called GoPro and they refused to help with that info.
As I was looking around, there is another coil right under the large black wire called L10 that is also smashed. If they were replaced there is a good chance of flight.
 

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