Frsky Vantac ROVER3 USB Extension

thingiverse

The Frsky Vantac ROVER3 has a USB port on the flight controller located in the equipment bay for updating firmware and changing settings in Betaflight. The USB port is hard to access, so I decided to extend it out to a more convenient location. There is a mounting bracket in the battery bay right behind the battery, which is not used to hold anything. I used this to design a mounting bracket for a micro USB female breakout board which I wired to the flight controller. The safest option was to use a micro USB male connector with solder pads. 1. You'll need a micro USB female breakout board. 2. You'll need a micro USB male plug with solder pads. Make sure to pick one with at least 4 pads, the ones with 2 solder pads are meant for power only and won't have data pins. 3. You'll need two M3 bolts, 8mm long. You shouldn't need nuts as the bolts will cut their own thread into the print. If you want, you can get 10mm M3 bolts and two nuts to make sure they stay put. 4. You'll need four silicone wires approx. 75mm in length. It's recommended to have red, black, white and green to match the appropriate pads. Print out the parts. Solder the four wires to the male connector's pads, making sure to match the power, ground, data+ and data- wires. Green wire is data+ and white wire is data-. These pins are printed on the female USB breakout board. If you aren't sure which wires go where, plug the male connector into the female breakout board and measure what pad goes to which hole. The holes are all marked as GND, D+, D- and VCC. The D+ and D- pads are data positive and data negative. Just match them to the male connector using a multimeter and solder the wires on. Then solder the other ends to the breakout board. Now you can assemble the platform. It's pretty straight forward, just put the retainer on the female breakout board and put the two bolts through, then screw them into the platform and you're done. Next will have to take apart the drone in order to fit the platform in. It's not too difficult, the whole chassis splits down the middle. You will need to remove two of the rear motor screws to open the chassis. You also might have to detach one of the servo plugs. Once the chassis is open, slot the assembly into the bracket right behind the battery bay. Route the wires behind the assembly along the edge of the chassis down into the bottom equipment bay. Now you can close the chassis back up the same way you opened it. Make sure the antennas in the back aren't caught between the posts or the chassis. The flight controller platform rests in two brackets, make sure the platform is mounted correctly. After making sure everything is mounted correctly and the chassis fits together with no issues, you can put the screws back in. After that's done, plug the male connector into the flight controller's USB port and you're done. Now you can open the canopy and plug your USB cable into the breakout board anytime you need to update the firmware or change settings or set up your OSD.