After tempting fate on here about how robust the mini quadcopter is, it seems I’ve gone and broken it…

There was a sequence of unfortunate events…

1/ Quad landed in cat’s water bowl (D’oh)
1a/ After a quick shake dry it appeared to fly fine on the next flight
2/ While doing the next flight (or maybe the one after) the controller slipped out of my hand and hit the kitchen floor fairly hard.
3/ After that the LED on the controller would only blink and it didn’t make the usual power-on beeps…
4/ I opened up the controller and a capacitor appeared to be bent over and it’s casing was touching the circuit board
5/ I know little about electrical components but this seemed “bad” so I gently levered it back upright.
6/ After piecing it back together the LED was solid and the normal beeps were heard (Hooray!)
7/ The quad’s motors now appears to only power on for quick burst at full revs or longer at lower revs…

In the video below I put it to full revs twice and it has enough oomph to get about 12″ in the air then the motors cut out and it plummets. I then but it to 1/3rd revs and they spin for a second or so and then cut out again. I can put the throttle to a lower rate and it will power on for longer before cutting out…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anx-3Cl1xb4[/video]

So… Is the quad knackered or the remote…

If it was the quad I would expect the water to prevent the motors spinning at all… Could the capacitor in the controller be overheating at higher currect/revs?

Any suggestions for diagnosing further or bringing it back to life?

Seems most likely the quad, but given your sequence and the symptoms I wouldn’t be all that confident until I’d done an elimination test with known working components! The water could have damaged something in the electronics of the quad. From what you’re describing it sounds like a power issue (the sort of behaviour you see when the receiver/controller browns out due to the motors pulling the voltage down), so either the power supply circuitry or the battery itself. Is it possible to measure the battery voltage with a multimeter whilst you power up the motors (may need a helper)?

I agree it sounds like a power issue. While reading your description my first thought was battery. If it’s removable then get another and swap it over. See if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the pointers so far.

The battery in the quad looks kind of proprietary, similar to this;

The quad’s been in the airing cupboard for over 24hrs, will dig it out tonight and see if that’s helped.

I’ll borrow work’s multimeter and try to get some measurements tonight.

I might just treat myself to another though.

Wonder if they use the same channel… Could I get 2 flying in formation from one remote?! 😀

Is there a sync button perchance?

Depends what you mean by propietary – that looks like a standard small single cell lipo (is it just that you’ve not seen batteries like that before?) A replacement is cheap enough http://www.banggood.com/Cheerson-CX-10-RC-Quadcopter-Spare-Parts-3_7V-100mAh-Battery-CX-10-002-p-930476.html?p=X02823074870201208QV though another heli is cheap enough that you might as well just get one of those.

It’s on 2.4G which is coded spread spectrum, so channel doesn’t quite mean the same thing. The quad and controller should be linked by a unique code – though I suppose it’s possible they could ship them all with the same code it wouldn’t be normal for 2.4G.

Is there a sync button perchance?

It seems to sync automatically on power on, no seperate sync that I’ve found.

(is it just that you’ve not seen batteries like that before?)

^This 😳

I might order a new copter and a battery, my daughter’s been pestering to play with it so if it revives it she can have one of them, if not it could come in handy.

I’m thinking of getting one seeing the price (hadn’t spotted the previous thread, so thanks for the bump 😉 ), and would definitely get a spare battery (or two) if I did for extended runtimes – I’m assuming I could find a way to get one of my fast chargers to work with that. I normally get 1 or 2 spare batteries for anything RC. Though I’m a bit cautious looking at the comments on that battery link I gave – other sources for batteries also available (eg kit on DX including battery, motors and blades, all bits which break and wear out).

The battery is pretty fiddly to access.

The Quad charges within about 10 to 15 mins and I think you’d probably spend getting on for that amount time swapping the battery over…

EDIT: There’s a good video here showing the “teardown” process;
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYUANzAzkuY[/video]

My controller’s internals looked a little different, possibly a newer revision.

Ah, thanks for the info, just for use when you knacker the existing one then.

The airing cupboard hadn’t made the slightest difference, and I forgot to take the multi-meter home… So a second CX-10 is now winging its way around the world to me… Roll on 7-28 days later…

FYI aracer, I found this guide for swapping batteries more easily, it’s not pretty, but it appears to work;

http://testblog.arles-electrique.de/2014/10/cheerson-cx-10-battery-mod.html

He’s a bit vague (to my novice-brain) about what he did exactly;

all there is to do is remove the built in battery and bridge the switch as in the picture. In case it’s hard to see: It’s the outermost pads that need to be bridged, but it doesn’t hurt if you bridge all three terminals

Has he just soldered a wire between the terminals on either side of the switch?

Clicked brain into gear 🙂

Presumably he means “snip the wires that held the original battery on, and join them together”?

Rumours of how in gear my brain was may have been overstated…

I think this piccy I’ve knocked together shows what he was describing;

And he’s saying to connect terminals 1 and 3

What does the switch do? I’m guessing it switches between the battery between powering the quad and charging…

From what I can work out without seeing one, he’s disconnected the original battery and then connects the new battery to the charging port, so presumably the switch has to be bridged so that the charging port supplies power to the quad.

It’s just an on-off switch. Switch on when using the quad, off when not.

Thanks – I presume you’ve not tried charging when it’s switched on, and I have a suspicion it won’t as the charging port is disconnected, which would explain the reason for bridging it.

Anyway thanks for the info, looks like that would make it worth buying a spare.

I haven’t done the mod; was just sharing as you’d mentioned you’d possibly want to be able to swap batteries.

Other than the fact it doesn’t work any more, mine’s still standard and appears to charge OK.

IT LIVES!

I hadn’t used it for a week or 2; I’d just left it sat on the shelf in the lounge doing nothing.

Yesterday the spares pack I’d ordered arrived, I stuck it on the shelf next to the quad to wait till the replacement arrived.

This morning, on a whim I fired it up and it sprang into life! Woohoo!