By making Caddx Vista “naked”, you can shave almost 10 grams off your DJI FPV setup which is a huge flight performance boost to any micro FPV drone. I will talk about what a naked Vista is and the things to be aware of.
Table of Contents
What’s a “Naked Vista”?
A naked Vista is basically the Caddx Vista Air Unit with the heatsink removed to make it lighter. The weight difference is actually quite significant as the heatsink takes up half of the original weight (9g vs 18.8g).
It’s useful for micro quads like 2″ and 3″, because every gram can make a noticeably difference to performance. And these small FPV drones are normally short range flyers anyway, so lower power levels are enough.
Disclaimer
The Vista is not designed to run without heatsink, without the heatsink the processor will have a shorter lifespan due to overheat, especially if you leave it powered on on the ground for too long.
I don’t really recommend performing this hack, unless if you don’t mind damaging your Vista, and want the lightest possible DJI FPV setup. You will hear people say “oh I have 5 quads running naked Vista for over 6 months now and they are all fine”, and then you will have other people say “mine died within a week”. So don’t just listen to people, understand the risk and decide for yourself.
Or as a trade off, you can keep the heatsink on the processor side of the PCB, I think this might be a safer approach. The processor is the big chip that is labelled P1 on it.
Mine actually got so hot when I was working on it on the bench, it started putting out smoke only 3 minutes after being powered on (somehow it survived and still works). Make sure there’s good airflow to the air unit either when you are flying, or working on a bench. I think most people use 25mW or 200mW power levels only, higher power levels will generate more heat.
Note that by removing the heatsink, the boards also becomes more exposed to physical damaged.
Lightest DJI FPV Setup
The lightest DJi FPV system compatible camera is the Caddx Nebula Nano, at only 4.5g. However the image quality is not great and it only works in 16:9 mode, so you might want to upgrade to the Caddx Nebula Pro which is as good as the original DJI camera, and it’s 6.1g which isn’t too bad.
As for antenna, you could use a dipole which is the lightest, but to get decent range, a CP antenna is preferred. The lightest one I can find is the BetaFPV Air LHCP.
With Nebula Nano and the Air antenna (with four screws and standoffs between the boards), makes the total weight of my naked Vista setup only 15.5g. The weight is similar to an analog FPV setup :)
Before Making Naked Vista
- Update firmware first
- Clean blue glue off the PCB
- Avoid high power setting
- When flying with naked Vista, take off as soon as you power on, don’t let it sit on ground for too long or it will overheat
How to Strip Down Vista
Here’s a useful video demonstrating how to remove the heatsink and the blue thermal grease. You might also need some hardware for mounting, the stack holes are for M1.5 (1.5mm diameter thread) screws and nuts.
11 comments
Hi Oscar
Your articles are great, all your reviews are technical and so useful!
Thank you for your work
I will never do this again. As you said, if don’t mind throwing 100€ on the window, yes its very good ideea.
Hi! my first drone is flywoo baby quad with naked vista and seems that it overheated, because i was too long on the ground after power on (30-45s) and now when i power on the drone, vista shows no signs, i put it to another drone and its same result. after power on no led signals, nothing.. do you have ideas what it can be?
thanks
Honest best mistake ever! I know… but im a lazy fpv guy soo I stripped the vista placed standoffs DID not clean BG off placed an sma antenna adapter on ufl. Then here is the cool mistake that happened…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….dunk it into silicone modified conformal coating by accident looked at it lazy and clam…. now ive seen it on pcb. but it fucking works dude!!!!!!!!! cooler… greater distant….
I was wondering about adding a small additional heat sink, but light weight. Perhaps aluminum fins. I dont mind a tiny bit more weight to prrvent issues while im flying. Just spent a hour getting my Flywoo Explorer LR 4″ quad with Vista out of a tree due to sudden loss of video. Possibly related to heat issues.
Saved parts when doing the naked, can be mounted again? I mean, I have heating issues and that causes the freezing the image when fly. I might consider that to re-case it, I wonder if the blue goo on the heatsinks can be effective as its before if I put it back.
Yes, but you probably want to apply new thermal paste again (the blue goo).
And how high is the naked variant?
Hello Oscar!
How high is the naked variant? Do you use the original spacers? Have seen on the internet some use 3D printed.
Greetings!
Those are 4mm tall standoffs, not the original spacer. Yea you can totally 3D print them.
I saw someone on RotorBuilds.com do this naked vista hack to his Ummagawd 2-Fiddy sub250 5″ build.
I do believe the vista ended up getting nuked, although OP said it was by his error. But I do honestly think that the Caddix Vista would of had a much longer lifespan if it wasn’t de-cased.
I initially thought of taking of the case off my Caddix Vista for my Catalyst Machineworks Shocker UL. I decided against, primarily because the benefits do not out weight the cost.