I have the ViFly strobes and I get constant compliments for my planes because of the high power and high visibility of the lights. a belly light strobing white, red strobe on left wing etc. I switch them from plane to plane and the effect is fantastic because, even on bright sunny days, the plane looks "scale". very realistic look is much more than what I would have guessed. I have the lost plane beeper as well but have not yet installed it. Cheap way to find your plane in the woods. Drones won't help finding a plane in a tree. Have experience. You have to go in on foot and direct the drone over to your location to direct the drone pilot right over the mode... and even then he won't see the plane, or you for that matter standing there on the ground, waving your hat wearing your yellow rain jacket. The beeper will help me find the plane.... guaranteed.
Vifly usually have very good products and also this one looks good, innovating. You don't need to wait for GPSs with powered drone, very good product. (Y)
JST for me will always be the little red connectors you often get in little 2S lipos - I know there's a whole rank of other JSTs, but I can't shake the image :D
God send. I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to find a quad. The GPS was not working, it seems to be misbehainvg and this was the second test flite - the VTX died. But after the 6s Lipo gave out last telemetry RX voltage was 4v - at the time of the crash the battery had 23v, and my battery tester could not detect any voltage after I found it. Anyway 3 hours after the crash and maybe an hour and a half after the flight lipo gave out the gps mate lipo and the automatic buzzer were faithfully buzzing away. $1000AUD saved.
You can do that with any 5V (or 3.3V if your GPS needs it) supply plugged into your GPS. The GPS on board battery will then keep the GPS data available for shorter periods. Don't forget you will still need to charge the GPS Mate.
I believe the SC and SC pads are for connecting the compass, when your gps has one. Works via the i2c bus? 🤔 Edit: i was too fast commenting about the compass i see now 😬
Can the vifly battery powers both, the GPS and the flight controller, keeping the 5V rail active in all components, connected with each other, so that the Rx will be able to still receive telemetry data?
great video! I gues at 4:50 you adress the same problem, i Have: I want to attach the Vifly to a Mamba F740 with just 4 ports on the GPS-area and 2 seperate ports on the Buzzer-Area. So what did you do with the "remaining" BUZ-cable??
Yes I have 1 and if your trying to find satellites rather than plug the lipo in , especially if you have the caddx dji system This get very hot and sitting waiting for a position fix, and satellites are not in the same position in the sky
I think the wiring you have showed without compass GPS is incorrect. The ViFly board has straight connections between FC pins and GPS pins. So the Rx and Tx are already switched using the labels provided on the ViFly board. All we require is to do a straight connection to the respective GPS and FC devices looking on the ViFly labels printed on the pins
Yeah - I'm not sure why my GPS's always are so fussy on a cold start, but they can take ages - but subsequent warm starts take seconds. I'm not exactly sure what almanac data is held on the GPS's own battery backed storage, but doesn't seem to last that long
@@CurryKitten Agreed, my more expensive quads with Compass GPS units on the other hand are much faster at collecting Sats, hot or cold...with Galileo enabled 20 plus Sats is normal ..You won't find that in BF though...lol..🤔😀🇬🇧
Great video! I'm in the UK and have never had 1 satalaite yet 😢 I have the GPS mate hooked up. Driving me mad. Quad is powered off and only GPS mate on. Same GPS as you. 🙈
You can sometimes find "dead spots" for GPS - like my garden where I can never get sats. Have you tried taking it out somewhere else to see if there's any change? I take it you can see the blue LED flashing that it's sending data, but the red never flashes to say it's connected. Usually in the situation where you haven't got any other interference from any other electronics (which you shouldn't if only the GPS mate is on) it's usually just a case of waiting. It could be 5 minutes or so, but by that time I'd expect more than 0. Excuse the question, but you do have the antenna facing upwards?
@@CurryKitten got sats in the end. Thanks for the reply. It was just a case of waiting for better weather and waiting a bit longer. Next time I powered up I got sata in seconds 😎
Hello, good video! What happens if you connect the lipo to the drone without tightening the mate GPS button? Also activates GPS as it would normally happen?
Ooh, it's been a while and I can't remember :D But IIRC, if you give the quad normal power, then the GPS mate charges it's own battery and passes the voltage through to the GPS without you having to do anything
RTH on betaflight is always a bit like "do I want to activate the homing missile, or should I just let it fly off" though - either option could end in disaster :D
@@CurryKitten Yeah Ive been doing this for years. Sometimes I plug in a power pack via usb and set it on my dash board as Im driving to the flying spot.
Hi! I have a newbie question because that’s what I am.🙂 I see a small battery on the gps pcb, what’s that for? Wouldn’t that already help finding satellites? Thanks for this interesting review.
Yes - the little battery on the GPS itself should keep the satellite almanac data. You'll notice a large difference between a cold start and then the subsequent power ons. I do generally see the initial sat data always slow again after I haven't flown for a little while. I'm not sure if there's a change because of the time which means the data is no longer any good, or the battery doesn't keep the data long enough or what
What the ViFly is doing is just powering the GPS and nothing else - so the rest of your quad doesn't overheat. As I mentioned, in a cold start, and despite the GPS's own storage, it can still take >5 minutes to get a 3d fix. During that time your FC and VTX are heating up and up and up, which isn't good for it. Once you have that fix after the first lipo though, you'll probably find that the GPS locks within seconds and you don't need the function of the ViFly until your next flying day (aside from it's lost model finder function)
What's your long term experience with the Vifly buzzer systems? I have a couple of them that have given up after a year or so. Perhaps I need a new lipo.
I've had a few of them running for a couple of years now. It is probably the case of checking the voltage on the existing lipo which could be well past saving and soldering in a new one.
The ones in the lost model beepers are still going after a few years, but just replied to another comment saying his went after around a year - so hard to tell. You can obviously solder in a new one if necessary - but hopefully it'll go on a decent amount of time.
It doesn't. The quad is setup to send telemetry back to the radio, so in the event of a battery disconnecting crash, the radio will show me the last GPS position that it sent... then from there I can (hopefully) find it via the GPS mate beeping away
@@CurryKitten ok so i have tbs crossfire nano and the full 2 watt tx module in by bay i get gps cord from it on the module its self and i get them on my screen radioking tx18s so when my battery ejects or i turn off my drone my on screen display goes to all zeros..... now im sure the tbs does the same thing .. how are you getting it to remain on screen the last coordinates? the radio i mean i know you can use the video from goggles etc and i have fatsharks and that screen with recording function thing forget what its called so i can go back and just go ahh./. so how are you getting them to remain on your radio screen? also how if battery ejects does my crossfire tx will it ping my quad? see i spend 1000 dollars on a drone and all this gear im still new to fpv not new to flying i flew 75 mhz and the first ever drone a dragaonflyer way back in the 2000s and when lipos first came out so yea im that old.. but i was like if my batt flies out my crossfires function where it can ping and go oh here it is does it require quad battery still active? or does it just hold the last cord? if i could get it on the radio too that would be good..
I'm getting f.port and smartport telemetry (from FrSky rx's) on these quads and what happens is the last GPS coordinates get lef ton the screen and start flashing. I can only presume that the Crossfire module decides that it has got nothing a thus puts out all zeros. You can log this telemetry to the SD card, but then you'll need a computer to access the SD and check. But never rely on a single method of finding a downed quad. Yep, you should always DVR record as the images of where it went down can really help (as well as looking at your GPS coordinates) I'd always suggest a buzzer with it's own battery as well (lots of reviews of these on my channel) they are fantastic when you go down in long grass and can be very loud.
@@CurryKitten oh when i said screen i meant the transmitter screen not the crossfire.. the crossfire i dont know i havent pulled the batt and then tried to use the recovery feature it has or even seen it hold the last coordinates what id like is if it stays on the screen of my radio thats what goes to zero i do dvr i use one of those lcd and dvr combos with some fatsharks and then i have a beeper with a battery on it.. is there a way to send gps data keep sending even with a battery disconencted? i see all thes batteries for the gps but thats just so that it speeds up the lock on time not that it keeps sending data to the flight controller and your radio.. this is what i want to do
Soldering the 5v to where. You are trying to do things so if the battery ejects you still have GPS telemetry? I haven't used crossfire for this specifically, but Betaflight telemetry will show the last GPS coordinate before the telemetry stopped - does Crossfire not do this?
some gps.. gets 15 sats in 30 seconds then alittle blue light will flas after 7 minutes saying 3d lock but inav shows 3d lock after 30 seconds.. so fly at your own risk i wait the full 7 minutes this is rediculouse dji drones get a home lock within 15 seconds... im not sure what the blue light does because i can rth without it i did it 3 times so why would it take 7 minutes for it to flash.. me being streeested all the time i just wait i plug in a burner battery when you disconnect it it still will hold your position for an hour or 2 with the onboard batt.. what gets me is whats the blue light for? anyone ever fly without it? and this little thing is good for when your batt ejects and you need to find your drone
Hello: I am going to ask you a very Dumb Question, please forgive me. I have about 5 of these quads with the GPS modules on them. I bought one of these units. My Dream was to build this on a board. And Connect it to the GPS unit let if acquire the Sat's it needed. Then disconnect it and them plug in the cable from the quad and them restart. So, charged the battery on the board, Hooked up a Volt meter to the Output wires from the unit Got no voltage??? Can this work?? I really don't want to buy one or install for each quad. Thank you in advance for your response. I really like the channel, Great work Ben Herr - USA
Hi Ben. If I've understood you correctly, it should work yes. You didn't mention if you powered the unit up though before you took the multimeter reading?
![☀ Беспроводная пищалка для вашего дрона??? Зачем она нужна? [ViFLY Finder 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8z__AxK8k1Y/mqdefault.jpg)
I have the ViFly strobes and I get constant compliments for my planes because of the high power and high visibility of the lights. a belly light strobing white, red strobe on left wing etc. I switch them from plane to plane and the effect is fantastic because, even on bright sunny days, the plane looks "scale". very realistic look is much more than what I would have guessed. I have the lost plane beeper as well but have not yet installed it. Cheap way to find your plane in the woods. Drones won't help finding a plane in a tree. Have experience. You have to go in on foot and direct the drone over to your location to direct the drone pilot right over the mode... and even then he won't see the plane, or you for that matter standing there on the ground, waving your hat wearing your yellow rain jacket. The beeper will help me find the plane.... guaranteed.
Vifly usually have very good products and also this one looks good, innovating. You don't need to wait for GPSs with powered drone, very good product. (Y)
if in doubt, its always a JST connector lol. Nice mate, clever lil gadget!
JST for me will always be the little red connectors you often get in little 2S lipos - I know there's a whole rank of other JSTs, but I can't shake the image :D
Great review, Wayne! 😃
Pretty interesting little device!!!
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Thanks MC!
God send. I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to find a quad. The GPS was not working, it seems to be misbehainvg and this was the second test flite - the VTX died. But after the 6s Lipo gave out last telemetry RX voltage was 4v - at the time of the crash the battery had 23v, and my battery tester could not detect any voltage after I found it.
Anyway 3 hours after the crash and maybe an hour and a half after the flight lipo gave out the gps mate lipo and the automatic buzzer were faithfully buzzing away. $1000AUD saved.
Yay - great news when a quad is recovered!
@@CurryKitten And not thanks to re-watching this vid my GPS is working. Cheers.
thanks as always... great lil product
You can do that with any 5V (or 3.3V if your GPS needs it) supply plugged into your GPS. The GPS on board battery will then keep the GPS data available for shorter periods. Don't forget you will still need to charge the GPS Mate.
SD and SC must be traces trough the board for your GPS with compass. So you dont have to run two different wires directly from GPS to your FC.
I believe the SC and SC pads are for connecting the compass, when your gps has one. Works via the i2c bus? 🤔
Edit: i was too fast commenting about the compass i see now 😬
It's all good. Rather than edit out my own "I dunnos" I just correct myself as I go as well :D
Can the vifly battery powers both, the GPS and the flight controller, keeping the 5V rail active in all components, connected with each other, so that the Rx will be able to still receive telemetry data?
Nice accessory!
great video! I gues at 4:50 you adress the same problem, i Have: I want to attach the Vifly to a Mamba F740 with just 4 ports on the GPS-area and 2 seperate ports on the Buzzer-Area. So what did you do with the "remaining" BUZ-cable??
Yes I have 1 and if your trying to find satellites rather than plug the lipo in , especially if you have the caddx dji system This get very hot and sitting waiting for a position fix, and satellites are not in the same position in the sky
I think the wiring you have showed without compass GPS is incorrect. The ViFly board has straight connections between FC pins and GPS pins. So the Rx and Tx are already switched using the labels provided on the ViFly board. All we require is to do a straight connection to the respective GPS and FC devices looking on the ViFly labels printed on the pins
Looks a useful little gizmo.....My 1.2g VTX sometimes suppresses my smaller GPS on a cold startup. This could be useful....🤔😳🇬🇧
Yeah - I'm not sure why my GPS's always are so fussy on a cold start, but they can take ages - but subsequent warm starts take seconds. I'm not exactly sure what almanac data is held on the GPS's own battery backed storage, but doesn't seem to last that long
@@CurryKitten Agreed, my more expensive quads with Compass GPS units on the other hand are much faster at collecting Sats, hot or cold...with Galileo enabled 20 plus Sats is normal ..You won't find that in BF though...lol..🤔😀🇬🇧
Great video! I'm in the UK and have never had 1 satalaite yet 😢 I have the GPS mate hooked up. Driving me mad.
Quad is powered off and only GPS mate on. Same GPS as you. 🙈
You can sometimes find "dead spots" for GPS - like my garden where I can never get sats. Have you tried taking it out somewhere else to see if there's any change? I take it you can see the blue LED flashing that it's sending data, but the red never flashes to say it's connected. Usually in the situation where you haven't got any other interference from any other electronics (which you shouldn't if only the GPS mate is on) it's usually just a case of waiting. It could be 5 minutes or so, but by that time I'd expect more than 0. Excuse the question, but you do have the antenna facing upwards?
@@CurryKitten got sats in the end. Thanks for the reply. It was just a case of waiting for better weather and waiting a bit longer. Next time I powered up I got sata in seconds 😎
Neat little device.
can we use this without the buzzer feature ? i have an autonomous buzzer from vifly that is louder
Hello, good video!
What happens if you connect the lipo to the drone without tightening the mate GPS button?
Also activates GPS as it would normally happen?
Ooh, it's been a while and I can't remember :D But IIRC, if you give the quad normal power, then the GPS mate charges it's own battery and passes the voltage through to the GPS without you having to do anything
great idea , i wonder how many people will power it on it the pits and forget then hit return to home =D
RTH on betaflight is always a bit like "do I want to activate the homing missile, or should I just let it fly off" though - either option could end in disaster :D
I always put my gps on the 3.3v pad then I can power the gps via the usb. forget about adding another component..lol
Interesting idea
@@CurryKitten Yeah Ive been doing this for years. Sometimes I plug in a power pack via usb and set it on my dash board as Im driving to the flying spot.
Hi! I have a newbie question because that’s what I am.🙂 I see a small battery on the gps pcb, what’s that for? Wouldn’t that already help finding satellites? Thanks for this interesting review.
Yes - the little battery on the GPS itself should keep the satellite almanac data. You'll notice a large difference between a cold start and then the subsequent power ons. I do generally see the initial sat data always slow again after I haven't flown for a little while. I'm not sure if there's a change because of the time which means the data is no longer any good, or the battery doesn't keep the data long enough or what
@@CurryKitten So is the Vifly GPS-mate not needed in any way then? If the battery on the pcb already does the same job?
What the ViFly is doing is just powering the GPS and nothing else - so the rest of your quad doesn't overheat. As I mentioned, in a cold start, and despite the GPS's own storage, it can still take >5 minutes to get a 3d fix. During that time your FC and VTX are heating up and up and up, which isn't good for it. Once you have that fix after the first lipo though, you'll probably find that the GPS locks within seconds and you don't need the function of the ViFly until your next flying day (aside from it's lost model finder function)
@@CurryKitten Ok, now I understand. Thank you for your very informative explanation! Wishing you a nice summer!🌼
What's your long term experience with the Vifly buzzer systems? I have a couple of them that have given up after a year or so. Perhaps I need a new lipo.
I've had a few of them running for a couple of years now. It is probably the case of checking the voltage on the existing lipo which could be well past saving and soldering in a new one.
@@CurryKitten So, if the battery dies, does the Vifly stop working? Seems the beeper should still work...
I would presume so.
How long will that little lipo last you recon?
The ones in the lost model beepers are still going after a few years, but just replied to another comment saying his went after around a year - so hard to tell. You can obviously solder in a new one if necessary - but hopefully it'll go on a decent amount of time.
how does it send the gps cord to your radio if the main battery comes out?
It doesn't. The quad is setup to send telemetry back to the radio, so in the event of a battery disconnecting crash, the radio will show me the last GPS position that it sent... then from there I can (hopefully) find it via the GPS mate beeping away
@@CurryKitten ok so i have tbs crossfire nano and the full 2 watt tx module in by bay
i get gps cord from it on the module its self and i get them on my screen radioking tx18s so when my battery ejects or i turn off my drone my on screen display goes to all zeros..... now im sure the tbs does the same thing .. how are you getting it to remain on screen the last coordinates? the radio i mean
i know you can use the video from goggles etc and i have fatsharks and that screen with recording function thing forget what its called so i can go back and just go ahh./. so how are you getting them to remain on your radio screen? also how if battery ejects does my crossfire tx will it ping my quad?
see i spend 1000 dollars on a drone and all this gear im still new to fpv not new to flying i flew 75 mhz and the first ever drone a dragaonflyer way back in the 2000s
and when lipos first came out so yea im that old.. but i was like if my batt flies out my crossfires function where it can ping and go oh here it is does it require quad battery still active? or does it just hold the last cord?
if i could get it on the radio too that would be good..
I'm getting f.port and smartport telemetry (from FrSky rx's) on these quads and what happens is the last GPS coordinates get lef ton the screen and start flashing. I can only presume that the Crossfire module decides that it has got nothing a thus puts out all zeros. You can log this telemetry to the SD card, but then you'll need a computer to access the SD and check. But never rely on a single method of finding a downed quad. Yep, you should always DVR record as the images of where it went down can really help (as well as looking at your GPS coordinates) I'd always suggest a buzzer with it's own battery as well (lots of reviews of these on my channel) they are fantastic when you go down in long grass and can be very loud.
@@CurryKitten oh when i said screen i meant the transmitter screen not the crossfire.. the crossfire i dont know i havent pulled the batt and then tried to use the recovery feature it has or even seen it hold the last coordinates what id like is if it stays on the screen of my radio thats what goes to zero
i do dvr i use one of those lcd and dvr combos with some fatsharks and then i have a beeper with a battery on it..
is there a way to send gps data keep sending even with a battery disconencted?
i see all thes batteries for the gps but thats just so that it speeds up the lock on time not that it keeps sending data to the flight controller and your radio.. this is what i want to do
soldering tbs 5v to this ant geting gps telemetry after crash ?
Soldering the 5v to where. You are trying to do things so if the battery ejects you still have GPS telemetry? I haven't used crossfire for this specifically, but Betaflight telemetry will show the last GPS coordinate before the telemetry stopped - does Crossfire not do this?
some gps.. gets 15 sats in 30 seconds then alittle blue light will flas after 7 minutes saying 3d lock but inav shows 3d lock after 30 seconds.. so fly at your own risk i wait the full 7 minutes this is rediculouse dji drones get a home lock within 15 seconds... im not sure what the blue light does because i can rth without it i did it 3 times so why would it take 7 minutes for it to flash.. me being streeested all the time i just wait i plug in a burner battery when you disconnect it it still will hold your position for an hour or 2 with the onboard batt.. what gets me is whats the blue light for? anyone ever fly without it?
and this little thing is good for when your batt ejects and you need to find your drone
Hello:
I am going to ask you a very Dumb Question, please forgive me. I have about 5 of these quads with the GPS modules on them. I bought one of these units. My Dream was to build this on a board. And Connect it to the GPS unit let if acquire the Sat's it needed. Then disconnect it and them plug in the cable from the quad and them restart. So, charged the battery on the board, Hooked up a Volt meter to the Output wires from the unit Got no voltage???
Can this work?? I really don't want to buy one or install for each quad. Thank you in advance for your response. I really like the channel, Great work
Ben Herr - USA
Hi Ben. If I've understood you correctly, it should work yes. You didn't mention if you powered the unit up though before you took the multimeter reading?
oh my god
Yes my son
@@CurryKitten lol. hope your well
MAYBE dont put GPS directly on carbon fibre ?
It is conductive but pst, dont tell anyone - it will be secret between you and me.
You realise the GPS is wrapped in heat shrink and then has an additional layer of mounting tape - so no possibility of shorting on the CF at all?