As part of my new project to build a 120g micro drone including a GoPro, I stripped down a Hero 6 Black camera, from 117 grams to only 17 grams! It’s amazing how much weight we can take away from the GoPro and it still works :D

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This Hero 6 is a 2nd hand I bought over the weekend for $200, not too bad. Check on eBay or Amazon to see if this is available locally for you: https://amzn.to/2MkEjJy

By the way, this post is not a tutorial, I just want to share what I did. If you want to tear down a Hero 6 as well, check out this good video from FPV Whoop for detail instructions.

Okay! Let’s get started!

The GoPo Hero 6 Black camera weighs nearly 117g including the battery.

Removing the battery, only reduces the weight to 92.4g. The battery is not as heavy as I thought!

Next up is the door for the USB-C connector.

And the lens protector.

The front plastic is probably the most difficult to remove, because it’s glued really well to the metal bracket. As you can see I really struggled with it and I almost ripped the plastic in pieces at the end. It’s okay, I am not planning to put this back together anyway :)

A couple of tips:

• heat up the plastic with heat gun (or hair dryer if you don’t have one :D )
• use plastic tools – I used a big 7″ props and it worked well :D

So far we managed to reduce the weight to 77.2g! Still a long way to go.

But it’s all downhill from this point. Removing the screws on the front panel, you will have access to all the ribbon cables inside. You have to be extremely careful here not to pull too fast, it could damage the fragile connectors.

After disconnecting all the cables and removing the back housing, it leaves us at only 32.7g! Very impressive :)

To be safe, some people would probably decide to stop here, and use the camera as it is. It’s pretty light weight to be fair.

You still get the front screen for changing settings, and there is a metal bracket protecting it. Also the lens is fairly securely mounted as well.

However, I am not done yet! :D

The lens and motherboard can be separated from the metal bracket. You can also take away the USB connector module.

With over 100g removed, this brings the final weight of our naked GoPro Hero 6 to only 16.7g :D

That’s insane!

And this is what we are left with, just the motherboard and lens module :D

The whole process took me about an hour. I am sure I can do it faster next time :)

With the back you can remove the buttons/LED circuit and GPS from the back housing too.

But I am not sure how to remove the touch screen from the housing, so I will just leave it there for now.

I am using this naked gopro in my Umma85 cinewhoop build.

If you want to get a Hero 6, check here: https://amzn.to/2MkEjJy