By the way, I’m starting to get questions about the EX5, which obviously has significant limitations (like no sdcard support, ouch). Has anyone seen one of these yet? Does it have any kind of USB interface present? Since it apparently has waypoint support, I assume ArduCopter is probably being used. Thanks.
I’ve only seen Captain Drone’s review of the EX5 and it’s a sorry excuse for a Mavic Mini clone. Not really worth the money nor the time. I think Eachine is trying its hand with new models and features but they seem to be the testing bit on the expense the customers which is understandable from the point of view of a small company but not cool if you’re a customer given how little they respond or reimburse if things go wrong, and they do.
— Thanks very much!
Here’s someone who tried a range test a few days ago with an EX4 “Pro” unit, to see if it would reach 3km. He got out to a bit over 1.5km in an open area, FPV dropped out even earlier:
Well sadly this just proves the advertised features aren’t even in the ballpark. I guess the live video streaming performance, including range and continuity, could be improved if they use a better compression method for the video feed, increase the WiFi’s transceiver power output as much as they can, I think the US standards are more relaxed than in the EU so if they forget to limit the max power for the WiFi radio for the non-US versions then theoretically they could increase the range. But I’d rather rely on reflection and better receiver than increasing emitter power, after all it has to draw more juice from the same battery.
On a brighter note, you’ll be pleased to hear that the MOLEX connectors I ordered a long time ago have finally made it from freakin’ china after almost 3 months of wandering the world’s postal services.
Since the required USB plugs were already here I wasted no time to solder them up and after switching the DATA+ and DATA- wires (looks like I also have the green board) some magic happened and my X12’s PX4FMU showed up on COM41.
Since I’ve already changed the params I was going for I didn’t really had any urgent things to modify but I did calibrate the accel and horizontal level which were a bit off.
I’ve included some picture with the cable wiring and how it looked with the X12 connected to the QGC and Mission Planner. It seems my MP version doesn’t quite know about the PX4 as it doesn’t know how to find the params I was looking for. But then again with all those warnings about failsafe and batter level blaring in my ear I had a hard time focusing. QGC on the other hand behaved exactly like on my Android smartphone so it seems that will be the app of choice.
Here are the pics I took, hope they prove useful for someone:
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Good job Denis.
With some drilling, epoxy glue and a mini usb receptacle here is my permanent setup:
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Ciao Giulio,
never tried to FTP the drone, but I guess you’ve already gave a chance to root/admin, isn’t it?
Nice one Daniele, now that I see how flush with the shell you’ve mounted that micro-USB plug I’m thinking to use one of the many (by the bucket I’d say) USB sockets I got, micro-USB included, to make the connection permanent. One question though, the micro-USB plug I have also has an ID pin which if I recall is used for OTG cables or something like this. How did you connect, if you did connect it at all?
Regards,
Denis
I’ve left the ID pin unconnected.
Thank you very much Daniele. Really I read one of your comments in which you mentioned the couple root/admin and I tried right away this in various combinations. Moreover I tried also the most known password like admin/123456/administrator/root and so many others but none of those works.
I wrote both to Eachine and C-Fly hoping they would send me the magic key but as far as today I didn’t receive it.
Neat, I’ll give it a go soon-ish, see how it goes. Would be awesome to have a microUSB connection for the X12 
I wish I’d had those connectors (with the pigtails) when I started. I have them now, but since my current hookup works I’m not going to try change it (which will mean cleaning out the current socket, which won’t be easy) to use the official connectors again. When placing a usb socket in the drone itself, keep in mind that exactly where you put it matters if you ever intend to use it in flight for a companion computer. Same applies to bringing out the power for the companion computer. My choice is the side, centered away from the props at both ends.
I should be seeing an EX4 “Pro” (“3km”) within 2 or 3 weeks, I’ll see what I can divine then. In the meantime, it suddenly occurred to me that I don’t know where the EX4 ESCs are integrated. Anyone looked at that? Thanks.
I think they’re embedded on the main board, with the FMU. I looked up on the now infamous BG site for EX4 spare parts and the main board I see here:
seems to have on the down facing side, the same with the custom USB connector, close to where the motors have their soldering points for the leads, what appears to be 3 small MOS-FETs which I believe are part of the ESC circuitry.
Here’s where I think the ESC chips are located on the main board:
If someone with more electronics knowledge than me could identify what those are and confirm if they’re indeed ESCs. To me there seems to be a similar set of components around those solder pads for the motor cables so those might just be the circuitry for ESC.
That definitely looks right to me. So burn-out of a single ESC means the whole main board is pretty much toast without a lot of work. Thanks!
Well the key driver for this drone IS its low price. Looking at the total price of getting a replacement board (approx. US$75 including shipping) all of a sudden this isn’t that low cost anymore, at least not if you have to fix something. Seems these are very consumable products, as in “if it works - fine, if it doesn’t - get another one”
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Come to think of it, does anybody here know the designation for those battery connectors on these units? Thanks.
no clue but today I had to throw away another one as it swell like crazy and didn’t stay flat even after a full day in the fridge. One that previously did swell a bit came down but I had two that didn’t so those obviously became dangerous and had to go.
Also I can’t seem to find any extra info about the code on the LiPo packs: HDJ803868MP
Has anyone ever seen similar code on a LiPo or LiHV?
I haven’t seen any swells yet, but currently I only have two batteries. I do try to store them (as much as possible) at “3 flashes” on the charger – so 50% - 75% charge or so.
I haven’t found that exact nomenclature either, however – and this may be a false lead – there is a firm in China called Honcell (www.honcell.com) that has some lipos with a somewhat similar pattern, e.g. three letters starting with H, six digits, then alpha suffixes. Again, they may be completely unrelated, and making it more difficult this may be an OEM battery that wouldn’t even show online in normal searches.