I know this is long, but there may be something helpful in here for someone...
So, I can't afford a gimbal for a bit due to Christmas and all that, and the bidding seems to have gone up on all of them on EBay, likely because of Christmas...
I decided now that I have a working camera (GoPro Hero 4+) to see what I could do about vibration on the standard mount. Looking at flight video it was obvious that there was seriously increased vibration on the right side, which is where the HDMI cable plugs in. Wiggling things around by hand made it obvious that much of that vibration was being transmitted from the body to the mount through the cable.
Having read many posts, I removed the cable, stripped the insulation and set about reinstalling it. I cut a round slot in the edge of the mount plate so I could route the cable entirely away from the suspension/dampening and feed it to the camera with no tension on it. All of this, of course, involved removing the main board, which involves moving around the power and data cables the feed the left rear motor (as viewed from the back).
Put it all together and test. Solo says it has zero battery voltage. Having done my homework I know about the little battery data wires that feed off the battery connector. Back apart again, nothing wrong with data wires. However, I had removed the insulation from the HDMI cable and then re-secured it with a new tie wrap. With no insulation the two solder joints on the bottom of the board pierced the paper wrapping on the cable and -- of course -- shorted the data feed. OK, easy fix, did that.
Retest and Solo is not happy -- won't progress to fly mode. Hmmmm. After much messing about I realize that somehow I've disconnected the power wires to that left rear motor. Now, I had disconnected the data cable to the motor pod before removing the board, so that couldn't be a problem (sure). Pulled motor pod and sure enough the power cables are both unplugged (easy). However, the ESC data cable connector had also fallen off of the ESC board! No bent pins, so sign of a struggle or stress, it's just hanging there connected to the cable. If I put any stress on it at all it was minor -- because I had it unplugged from the board for everything I did.
Everything looked good for resoldering -- but those pins are tiny and there's not a lot of room for error on the board. I also don't have a hot air solder station (yet). So, I put a point on my trusty soldering iron, tinned the connector pins, brushed some flux on, rigged a way to hold the thing in place, etc. I gave myself a 50/50 chance of making it work. It did! Solo is all back together now and flies. I can't get a camera test in (which is where all this started) because it's raining outside.
The moral of this story is: Silver solder sucks putty balls. For those who are not aware, someone decided that lead free solder had to be used on all consumer electronics -- and that's silver solder. It's harder to use, and the connections certainly don't seem to be as strong. On my Solo's ESC connector they were obviously brittle as could be. The connector had just parted ways with the board -- nothing bent or twisted, no lifted pads, etc. I've read of other connectors on Solo boards and gimbals falling off. The silver stuff won't take anywhere near the stress that good old lead/tin will. So, once Solo passes her flight test and all is good, out comes the hot melt gun for every motor's ESC, the HDMI cable, etc.
So, I can't afford a gimbal for a bit due to Christmas and all that, and the bidding seems to have gone up on all of them on EBay, likely because of Christmas...
I decided now that I have a working camera (GoPro Hero 4+) to see what I could do about vibration on the standard mount. Looking at flight video it was obvious that there was seriously increased vibration on the right side, which is where the HDMI cable plugs in. Wiggling things around by hand made it obvious that much of that vibration was being transmitted from the body to the mount through the cable.
Having read many posts, I removed the cable, stripped the insulation and set about reinstalling it. I cut a round slot in the edge of the mount plate so I could route the cable entirely away from the suspension/dampening and feed it to the camera with no tension on it. All of this, of course, involved removing the main board, which involves moving around the power and data cables the feed the left rear motor (as viewed from the back).
Put it all together and test. Solo says it has zero battery voltage. Having done my homework I know about the little battery data wires that feed off the battery connector. Back apart again, nothing wrong with data wires. However, I had removed the insulation from the HDMI cable and then re-secured it with a new tie wrap. With no insulation the two solder joints on the bottom of the board pierced the paper wrapping on the cable and -- of course -- shorted the data feed. OK, easy fix, did that.
Retest and Solo is not happy -- won't progress to fly mode. Hmmmm. After much messing about I realize that somehow I've disconnected the power wires to that left rear motor. Now, I had disconnected the data cable to the motor pod before removing the board, so that couldn't be a problem (sure). Pulled motor pod and sure enough the power cables are both unplugged (easy). However, the ESC data cable connector had also fallen off of the ESC board! No bent pins, so sign of a struggle or stress, it's just hanging there connected to the cable. If I put any stress on it at all it was minor -- because I had it unplugged from the board for everything I did.
Everything looked good for resoldering -- but those pins are tiny and there's not a lot of room for error on the board. I also don't have a hot air solder station (yet). So, I put a point on my trusty soldering iron, tinned the connector pins, brushed some flux on, rigged a way to hold the thing in place, etc. I gave myself a 50/50 chance of making it work. It did! Solo is all back together now and flies. I can't get a camera test in (which is where all this started) because it's raining outside.
The moral of this story is: Silver solder sucks putty balls. For those who are not aware, someone decided that lead free solder had to be used on all consumer electronics -- and that's silver solder. It's harder to use, and the connections certainly don't seem to be as strong. On my Solo's ESC connector they were obviously brittle as could be. The connector had just parted ways with the board -- nothing bent or twisted, no lifted pads, etc. I've read of other connectors on Solo boards and gimbals falling off. The silver stuff won't take anywhere near the stress that good old lead/tin will. So, once Solo passes her flight test and all is good, out comes the hot melt gun for every motor's ESC, the HDMI cable, etc.
