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Ok My Karma hates water

Rory J

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I took my Karma for a swim actually it dropped into the sea (Shallow) plans was shoot from the sea to the beach :confused: I was able to recover it though I had to get wet in cold Irish atlantic seas.:rolleyes:
SO after the recovery I washed it in fresh water and cleaned everything with isoborneol and contact cleaner camera did not survive or the batteries but drone is looking pretty goon despite not turning on.
so question is has anyone found source for parts other than the limited supplies,like where to get a gimbal without the handle or a motherboard.
I have just bought a crashed drone and hope to salvage parts from this.
any help welcomed and hope to be flying again soon.

Rory J
 
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G'day mate.
From what I understand landing these things in/under salt water is fatal for all the electrical components not even rinsing in fresh water etc will help. I may be wrong though. You may need to buy another crashed one to get more parts.

Good luck,

Have fun.
 
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Thanks for your reply I hope to have the crashed one here soon so will get working on it then not trouble getting them all apart but will have some extra spare if anyone need them a controller and a bag and charger too

Will keep you posted and some pics too
R
 
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Thanks for your reply I hope to have the crashed one here soon so will get working on it then not trouble getting them all apart but will have some extra spare if anyone need them a controller and a bag and charger too

Will keep you posted and some pics too
R

G'day mate.

I also picked up a second controller, charger and bag. The second charger comes in very handy dont get rid of that if you have more than one battery......

Have fun.
 
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G'dsy mste.

I also picked up a second controller, charger and bag. The second charger comes in very handy dont get rid of that if you have more than one battery......

Have fun.
Gday to you too
Thanks will hold onto the charger and have 3 batteries well 4 if you count the dead one
plane to enjoy again soon pity they will not fly cameraless or least it understand they need the camera to fly?
 
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Gday to you too
Thanks will hold onto the charger and have 3 batteries well 4 if you count the dead one
plane to enjoy again soon pity they will not fly cameraless or least it understand they need the camera to fly?
Yes the camera needs to be mounted and will turn itself on upon startup of the quad.

Have fun.
 
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Would like to find a fix for that so you can test the quad in the air with the gimbleand camara just for test purposes like other drones but no worries.
R
 
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How about buy 3 cans of WD40 and disassemble the drone and spray all over the board. Hopefully to displace any water inside.
WD stands for water displacement. Might work.

then after rinse with a can of electronics cleaner spray.
 
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Have been sailing a long time and have dunked more things in salt water than one would think possible. Have NEVER been able to salvage anything electronic. WD40 etc all tried. Is like bad magic .


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Have been sailing a long time and have dunked more things in salt water than one would think possible. Have NEVER been able to salvage anything electronic. WD40 etc all tried. Is like bad magic .


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Saline + electronics = black magic big time! lol
 
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G'day mate.

I also picked up a second controller, charger and bag. The second charger comes in very handy dont get rid of that if you have more than one battery......

Have fun.
Agreed, have three batteries and its nice when you take a lunch break to charge 2 batteries at once! I also like to charge my batteries right before I head out and two chargers come in handy.
 
Ok Folks sry.update great news really crashed karma arrived as expected with 3 rotors broken but lighting up, and a bit gimbal stuck in it .so I took 3 rotors from the my own one fitted them to it charged all up and updated controller and hey prresto it lights up seems ready for action now just need to get camera to fly it
 

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Not sure how stabilizer responds to not having a camera in it but usually stabilizer is level. Is wacko in picture. You can pair the karma without stabilizer installed. I would do that. It will not even let you power up motors without stabilizer but since you don’t have a camera I would be hesitant to power up stabilizer in any case.


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Right. Im happy for you. The happiness of seeing something you thought was dead come alive is amazing.

cant wait for you to complete it.
 
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Thanks for your replies,I am very happy with the results so far and have a new camera on the way so will wait for that to arrive before i know all is good again.
I am disappointed though that it took to me having to buy a crashed drone to be able to get the parts I needed from it,I now have 2 bags 2 controllers 2 chargers one I will keep the rest of the bits that will come in useful spare battery and clamp but will hopefully sell on the bag,and controller parts.
Spare parts are not easily available and Gopro are not it seems able or will to keep a supply going for the die hard Karma fans like ourselves.
Maybe I am mad but I actually prefer the Karma to other drones for some of the work I want to do with it,yes DGI are flooding the market and being lightweight and more compact thus popular,but the Karma has integrity all of its own and with the new upgrade has proven to be up the job also very steady at higher altitudes.

Rory
 
Hi JCLs. thanks for your input don't worry I will be calibrating on a flat and stable area when new hero5 arrives just hope my gimbal is ok replace the connection motherboard in it so hope the rest is ok controller seems to say all is good but will know more when camera is fitted.
R
 
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Dont sell the other parts.
The extra charger can come in handy when you charge more batteries at once fast.
The controller will surely come in handy when the first battery of the first controller finally dies coz its non replacable.
 
I forgot. With the latest gimbal firmware you can do gimbal calibration right from the karma controller when everything is on and connected.
No need to take the gimbal out of drone and into the grip.
 
One more tip and you might not like me for this but i swear your drone will love me for this. Once you do get everything running please dont take the gimbal off the drone ever.
I know you might want to play with the handheld stabilizer and hero 5 but i suggest you buy another cheap gimbal like a feiyutech G5 G6 for that.

taking gimbal off the drone multiple time will wear out yor usb connection betweeen gimbal Drone and you will never get that bird back to air again because the drone will stop connecting to gimbal.

either drone usb or the gimbal usb connector will wear out. Either ways its gonna cost you money.

when storing you karma for longer than a couple of weeks of not using it, take off the camera from gimbal and the drone battery off.
If you dont then youll experience the sudden death phenomenon where the gimbal just stops working or the karma drone istelf like many here has the unfortunate way of experiencing.
The batteries current messes with the gimbal/drone circuitry.

maybe we should make a sticky about the storage issue and the usb ports wearing out.
Im beggining to think some here in the forum are tired of me repeating myself hehe.
 
OK, enough biting my tongue. Until dronelover came along I doubt anyone ever heard of USB connectors wearing out or current leaking and ruining capacitors being a problem. Both are very highly improbable if not impossible. I am only an EE but I did look up articles on USB C and found what the usage cycle is as pasted below. Mostly what we see on this forum are failures because people complaining and looking for solutions, people don’t generally talk about success . That implies many,many thousands more had no issues caused by dronelovers factors and in fact dronelover is first I have ever heard stating these “facts”. Birth of another urban legend.


“The new connector is also physically quite small, measuring 8.4 mm wide by 2.6 mm high, making it a fine size for any device, be it a laptop, a slim 2-in-1 or a thin smartphone. Obviously, the existing USB Type-A connector is a bit too large to be elegantly used in many of today's svelte devices, but the smaller micro AB connector is potentially too flimsy. The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) believes that the Type-C connector solves both problems, and the connector's 10,000-cycle durability will be sufficiently robust to handle the rigors of use in our mobile computing lives.”

Want more?


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