FrSky Taranis Speaker Upgrade

At this point I think I've seen more of the inside of my Taranis than the outside. So here's another Taranis mod; not really a very important one but a simple one. The internal speaker of the Taranis isn't really the nicest thing to listen to so I thought I'd put a better one in. I found a little 1 W 8 ohm 36mm speaker on eBay for about $4 which is a bit bigger than the one in the from the factory but it will still fit with the help of a little hot glue. So here's the steps.

Step 1.
Open the Taranis up and unplug the stock speak and pull it out. Here's mine next to its replacement.

Step 2.
Now unsolder the connectors from the stock speaker and solder them onto the new one.

Step 3.
Trim off the little studs around the speaker mounting ring.

Step 4. Apply a little hot glue to mount the new speaker and plug it in.

Step 5.
Put the Taranis back together and fire it up!

FrSky Taranis Antenna and Sliders Upgrade Part 1

Well if you've read previous articles on this blog you'll know that I can't seem to stop modding my FrSky Taranis. It really seems to lend its self to modification. I've got some more planed as well.

Enough of that though, here's how to upgrade the main antenna of the Taranis and also the sliders. You might want to upgrade the sliders if you bought one before about February in 2014. Until that point they were shipping them with really cheap and nasty feeling sliders on the sides but fortunately you can buy the new sliders from places like Aloft Hobbies pretty cheaply.

Step 1. Things you'll need.
1. A pair of new sliders
2. A 5dB Omni Direction Antenna or A 7dB Patch Antenna
3. A coax cable (I would order this longer one because I ended up cutting the shower one too short and having to use another cable I had lying arund

Step 2. 

Open up the Taranis by removing the screws in the back and take out the sliders and switches at the top left and right. Be careful unpluging these from the main board as they are quite tight. I used a knife to get in and loosen the catches. 

Step 3.

Remove the hot glue blob over the soldered joint with a knife.Mine came off rater worryingly easy.  

Step 4.

Unsolder the coax cable for the antenna that's already there and then remove the main antenna. This will just slide up the top of the Taranis case as long as you use some pliers to squeeze the base of it so the little lugs come free.

Step 5.

Clean up the joint where the cox cable will be soldered on and add a little solder to the ground plates which are the two larger joints beside the little one in the middle which is the what the core wire will be attached to.

Step 6.

Get your coax cable ready. I cut off the little connector because I really don't think i'll be needing to change the connector any time soon so I just prepared it for soldering by feeling back the metallic shielding on the outside and making it into two wound strands which I've covered in solder as well as a little on the core strands to make them easier to connect to the board. 

Step 7.

Hot glue the coax cable into the hole where the old antenna came out of. I put a little bit of scrap wood underneath the hole to stop the glue from running down into the Taranis body

Step 8.

The coax cable hot gluded in place. 

Step 9.

Solder the outer shield joints to one or both of the outside connectors on the board and solder the core wire to the active connector on the board (the one in the middle)

Step 10.

Place a bit of hot glue (and do a better job than they did at the factory) on the joint for the coax cable.

Step 11.

You'll need to take the switches out to remove their wires and plug into the new ones which are attached to the new sliders. 

Step 12.

Put the new sliders back into the case, put the switches back in (make sure you didn't turn them around or put the back in the wrong side) and you're done. :)

Some notes:

One thing which I'm still investigating and testing is that SWR values with the new antennas are a bit higher than they were with the original stock one. I've read on the OpenTx website that this isn't a problem as long as it doesn't go about 50, however to my mind its still indicative of an imperfection somewhere so I shall keep investigating and make some more posts when I work it out.

FrSky Taranis Antenna Mod

So the FrSky Taranis is an awesome radio but with a little modding you can make it even better. Due to its ability to to use both its internal FrSky module and another one in the port on the back it has amazing flexibility. The only problem with using an external module is the fact that the antenna sticks out the back and won't let the radio sit flat on its handle. It also gets in the way when you try to carry it by the handle.

So here's what I did....

1. Take the module out of the radio and also take the battery out so you don't short anything out.

2. Unscrew the six screws in the back of the radio and open that puppy up. Always a little scary I know but this radio is designed to be opened up so you can change the mode if you want to.

3. Open up your module by unscrewing the antenna and the four screws in the top. I'm using the ORX DSM2 module from Hobby King so I can fly my Nano QX and my old foamies with this radio. The little antenna cable you here see I got from eBay for a few dollars. Just get a RP-SMA antenna cable like this one from an electronics store or eBay.

4. Put the module shell back in so you can drill through into the inside of the Taranis like I've done here. The hole just needs to be big enough for the small end of the cable to go through. Be careful when you drill through that you don't hit anything inside the Taranis. If you drill through here like I did you should be fine.

5. Now drill a hole in the top of your Taranis. This can be anywhere you want the second antenna to be mounted. I put mine up here behind the main antenna. The hole needs to be just big enough to put the big threaded end of the RP-SMA connector through with out letting the whole thing (the collar and nut) fall through.

6. Put the big end of the cable though the big hole and the little end through the little hole. Once you've got the big end though, put the washers and the nut on the top to stop if falling back into the Taranis.

7. Connect the little end of the cable to the board in the module and put the board back in the module case.

8. Close the module up and put it back in the case. You can close the hole left by the antenna with some tape if you want.

9. Screw the second antenna onto the SP-SMA cxonnector and close the Taranis case. One thing to note when putting the screws back in. If you don't hold the two halves together the screws won't grab in the front half and they will push it open. So just keep the two halves held together while you do it. Also make sure you put the top two switches back in the right way, brown wire to the top (like all the others).

10. All done!

11. It works :)

Scary time flashing the FrSky Taranis

So I just purchased my self the amazing new FrSky Taranis and have been having a fantastic time learning about the great open source OS OpenTX that it uses. One of the big advantages of this open source firmware is that you can always flash the latest and greatest updates when ever you want to and if you're like me, you might even have visions of grandeur about improving the code your self. So the first thing I did was set about flashing my new Taranis.

Well here's today's hot tip. Be careful! Right so you already knew that. It turns out that the Taranis and in particular its flashing utility DFU-util has some serious incompatibilities with both windows 7, 8 and 8.1 (what I was using) and according to some of what I've read, certain USB chip sets and seemingly USB 3. I managed to brick mine but flashing it from windows 8.1. But do not fret, this story has a happy ending. I installed all the drives etc. on my windows 2008 R2 Server and managed to flash it back to life. So my advice if you've found this post after frantically Googling "bricked taranis" there is hope. Just flashing it again from an older version of Windows and you should be OK.