Titan Atlas antenna mod + car kit

“Will be following this”

Pingspike have you robbed a bank or are you a millionaire?
From Wigan…
Must have loads of spare cash

Box arrived from Luxembourg this morning :clap:

Here’s what’s inside!

Mains charger was packaged separately, possibly due to different power plugs per country? The car antenna kit was vacuum sealed separately too.

Also included is the strongest magnet the world has ever seen, and two very thin metal plates, one of which has a 3M sticky pad on it. The magnet itself has a 3M pad on the back too. No idea what these are for yet. The dual-suction cups attach to the windscreen or in my case, the roof of the van and the Titan Atlas then just clips in to the mount. The antenna cables are about ten feet long.

Inside the box the Atlas is vacuum sealed. Two whip antennas and a spacer included.

There’s a “bag of bits” too, which is under the Atlas in the box.

Inside the bag of bits are the parts you need for modding your controller, a soft cloth to wipe finger prints off the Atlas (it’s Piano Black), a Titan sticker and the quick-release connectors for the antennas.

The Atlas itself, the whips clip on to the front here.

And on the rear is the T-Lock which connects to either your (modified) controller, or to the car suckers. The power switch is here too Two quick release connectors on the rear too. Along with a back-lit LCD display showing the battery level remaining (unsure on battery life yet, will report back). Annoyingly, the charger is 12V 1A output, Not sure I can rig something up to work with my existing charger, which means I might have to carry both.

Front view again, this time with the 5dbi whips connected (and the spacer to stop them falling over).

Backlit LCD.

That’s it for now!

It’s currently on charge, if I get time I’ll strip down the controller tomorrow and get the mods installed.

More news as I get it :+1:

1 Like

Will you be doing a video of the controller modification? I’m very interested in this modification.

Excellent pictures by the way👍

OMG it looks like you could remotely pilot an airbus with that thing, it’s insane! In a good way :sunglasses:

I won’t, no… I’ll be sure to post and document photos though :+1:

There’s a video how-to by Titan themselves here though:

:grimacing:

The weather forecast for here tomorrow says it’ll be pissing down all day.

So I shall be hacking my controller to pieces tomorrow :smiley:

Charger problem solved :wink:

I bought one of these USB step-up adaptors which puts out 12v at 1A.

This will plug in to the USB port on the CrystalSky charger, via the Phantom 4 PSU.

So I’m back to just carrying one charger for everything again. Sorted :+1:

Mod complete!

However did we manage before YouTube tutorials :thinking:

Hardest part was getting the bloody bottom cover off, DJI did not want us getting in to their controllers!

On the advice of @Ashmav I bought a ‘spudger’ tool kit on eBay for a couple of quid. It contains various nylon pry-tools, absolutely essential for performing this mod.

Few pics at random for you. First one here with the bottom cover removed and the top face-plate.

Don’t touch the screen!

You don’t want dust, fingerprints or dog hairs getting on it.

When removing the screen, DJI have kindly applied a spot of silicone glue to the bottom, to make it even harder to remove.

Because it wasn’t fragile enough already, they also stuck silicone on one of the bloody antenna connectors!

These ribbon cables are really fragile too :frowning:

Screen removed, antennas disconnected.

Antennas removed.

I struggled here to get the plastic clips to release, I actually destroyed both in the process. There’s no going back now!

Assembling the new quick-release connectors.

And installing and connecting them.

Bloody hell this part was fiddly. Big fingers and tiny delicate parts don’t mix. I had to be careful not to force the connectors back on. Alignment is critical.

Reassembly.

Done!

If you just want a quick flight you can use the 5dbi whips on their own. They’ll probably be a big improvement over stock, just on their own.

You don’t need to use the amplifier.

Full setup:

And with the CrystalSky in place:

First observations?

It’s bloody heavy with the CS attached!

The lanyard is essential.

My lanyard is clipped to the rear of the setup which means it naturally wants to tip forwards. Not sure if this will be an issue in flight or not. I might need to try and mount the lanyard more centrally.

Here’s how it connects to the car kit. I’m thinking you could use the car kit indoors too, just sucker the mount to a patio door window and fly from inside the house, HDMI cable to the TV… hmm… :thinking:

That’s it, all done.

Mod took about an hour.

Just need it to stop raining now :roll_eyes:

1 Like

Nice right up Rich. Wait to you get out with it. :wink:

Great work, looking forward to your test flight…:+1:

Did a quick test flight today.

I don’t do many launches from my house, I live on a little road which is part of a massive housing estate and don’t want to piss off the neighbours.

My house backs on to an old disused railway line that runs behind all the houses, with a big housing estate on each side of it. It’s a great place for running the drone up and down, and for testing various settings etc as you’re not flying over people’s houses etc. Bugger all of interest to film, but it’s a good test track.

Anyway, I can only usually get about 500m up the old tracks before the signal interference kicks in suddenly (real sudden!) from literally hundreds of wifi routers on both sides of the tracks and I dare not head any further for fear of 100% signal loss. RTH would probably save my arse but I don’t want to test it the hard way :roll_eyes:

Well, my test flight today saw me head 500m up the same route and at the 500m point I still had MAXIMUM signal strength!! Not so much as a flicker of a bar dropping out, This was still in standard CE mode too, I wasn’t even running FCC!

I was seriosuly impressed, it didn’t even break a sweat :clap:

I’ve not done a long-range test yet, didn’t have the time to travel out today, but first impressions are really good :+1:

I wanted this kit to cut down on WiFi interference (especially by the canals, I get massive wifi grief from all the posh flats up there now too) and it’s done exactly what it says on the tin :+1:

Well I’m encouraged by your report, I’ll just go lasso the wallet first…:smile:

@PingSpike
Is the car kit separate from the antenna kit? Is yours a directional panel antenna?

Yup, car kit is completely separate.

The Atlas is omni-directional (which is the one I wanted) or the Cyclone is directional.

They also do a new one called a Switch, which is possibly the best of both worlds, all though possibly heavier - check out commandcase.com for specs.

I bought from https://www.maxxuav.co.uk/collections/dji-mavic-pro which despite having a .co.uk domain is actually based in Luxembourg but they provide DPD end-to-end delivery with full tracking. Took four days to arrive :+1:

1 Like

Nice one Rich. Love my Car kit. It’s a little on the heavy side to be attached to the RC but when attached to the windscreen it’s great.

Got plans to use it on my disco

.

1 Like

Oh no, it’s happening again!!!

Started with that’s cool! Next day, wonder how it works? Then how much does it cost? Now I’m checking shipping times and installation instructions.

God damn you Rich for posting this.

I need to resist though and stop bloody researching it.

1 Like

:money_mouth_face: Oops it’s happened…after a big daddy, giant haystack, half nelson and a pinfall the wallet surrendered. I know a certain age group will know what I mean :nerd_face:

1 Like

Hurrah!

Another convert :+1:

Let us know how it goes and shout if you’ve any questions :+1:

I may be a generation (or two?!) behind you mate, but I still watch wrestling to this very day.

It’s Wrestlemania 34 this weekend :clap:

Oh, and UFC 223.

Oh, and MotoGP.

My wife’s gonna love me :roll_eyes:

Did you go for the car kit too @Njoro?

Believe it or not I had a look at Feabay and to my surprise there was one which has hardly been used.
Item 323177854081 £190. I’ll get the car kit later.

I used to go to our local arena here in Corby back in the early 80’s. I got invited to train as a wrestler but declined. I broke enough bones playing rugby in Kenya.