Close

The Controller Part 3

A project log for DJI FPV Investigations

Things I've learned about the DJI FPV quadcopter.

duane-degnDuane Degn 03/25/2021 at 04:182 Comments

Here are some photos of the chips inside the controller. As I was cropping the photos I realized they weren't as clear as I had hoped. If anyone more better photos of any of the chips, let me know. I don't promise I'll get better photographs of the chips but a request will make such an event more likely.

The heart of the controller has two large heatsinks. There's a black one near the back of the controller and bare metal one just behind the top of the controller. Between these heatsinks are two PCB with cans covering portions of the board.  Above you can see the top of the smaller square PCB with the can removed. The can also acts as a heat spreader. It was interesting to see the four similar rectangular chips are cooled from the opposite side of the PCB.

Below you can see the backside of this PCB with the thermal paste cleaned away from the heatsink area of the PCB. The metal can is shaped to bring the metal in contact with portions of the board and some chips.
I'm pretty sure the chip in the lower left of the photo above is a Winbond flash chip. Below shows the small square PCB next to the larger "L" shaped PCB. I also removed the lid of the metal can from this PCB. You can see the round speaker/buzzer in the photo below. The black heatsink has a circular cutout to accommodate this speaker.
Below is a photo of the other side of the "L" shaped PCB. Again the lid of the metal can has been removed to provide a view of the chips inside.
Below is a photo of the bottom side of the top heatsink and the two main PCBs with the lids back on the metal cans.
Finally here are a few photos of the controller's enclosure. 
I hadn't removed the button/gimbal wires which connect to the USB PCB in these last photos.

While most of the buttons can be removed from the controller, the C1 and power buttons have plastic attachment points which have been melted to hold them captive.

The two wire harnesses seen in this last photo are sandwiched between the copper tape inside the top of the controller and bare metal heatsink.

I have plans to examine more of the components which come with this drone in the near future. 

Discussions

Andrew Young wrote 03/26/2021 at 02:17 point

Very interesting indeed, thank you for taking the time to disassemble and document this!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Duane Degn wrote 03/26/2021 at 02:53 point

You are welcome. 

It's very different than other RC controllers I've taken apart.

  Are you sure? yes | no