Hi all , just after a bit of help with setting up immersion vortex 285 with dji air unit , I want to swap out the 5.8 ghz system and use the air unit , I have powered unit direct from battery pads and the unit gives me video .. however I would like to get immersion OSD to be able to use wizard etc , I am using ezuhf not dji radio so just need to know where grey and white wire should be soldered or plugged into fusion board or pcb , is it even possible to do this ? I used vortex a few years ago with great success which is why I bought again . Any help is greatly received !!!

The DJI Air Unit takes OSD data from Betaflight over an MSP connection. It doesn't use the actual OSD overlay that you would normally see in the goggles so you won't be able to have the ImmersionRC overlay in the screens of your DJI FPV Goggles, but maybe you already know that. Because of the way the ImmersionRC OSD works, I don't believe any of the ImmersionRC OSD settings get stored in the Betaflight firmware settings. It's a completely independent OSD system which means it's unlikely you will be able to use any configuration from that in the DJI FPV Goggles.

Even though the ImmersionRC Vortex 285 doesn't have text based OSD via a MAX7456 OSD chip, can you confirm if you're still able to set OSD elements within the Betaflight OSD tab? If you are then there's still a chance you can get OSD data to the DJI FPV Goggles, but you may also need to be on a much newer version of Betaflight because with the Vortex 285 now being a 5 year old quad, I'm guessing that it probably came shipped with quite an old version of Betaflight installed.

If you want to try and get this working, there is going to be an element of trial and error involved with no guarantee of success. You will need to connect the grey wire of the DJI Air Unit to the RX pad and the white wire to the TX pad of a spare UART. There is only one spare UART on the Vortex 285 which is labelled as a "GPS" connector as shown in the photos below. In that connector you will see an RX and a TX pad for the UART.

Oh dear looks like I’ve made a boo boo with this purchase , I was hoping I could use the dji to set the wizard up as there doesn’t seem to be an option to do this via direct connection to pc . Thanks for your reply I will do a bit more research

TBH, if you're intending to use all the DJI kit then you would be better off buying (or building yourself) a more modern quad which is designed to take the DJI Air Unit and has an F7 flight controller. Some of those flight controllers are also plug & play meaning that you just connect the DJI Air Unit up to a dedicated socket on the flight controller without any messing around. The Vortex 285 is quite dated now and runs on an ancient flight controller plus other out-of-date hardware so it will be a PITA to set up with modern peripherals. Like with all technology, things in the FPV world have moved on massively in the last 5 years.

Yes agreed , made a right cock up buying this , I suppose it’s possible to buy and F7 board and get it into the frame so I could still use the motors escs and so on ,

The ESCs and motors on the ImmersionRC Vortex 285 are also ancient. I really wouldn't waste any time with the hardware on it TBH. It will be easier with less headaches to just start again from scratch IMO. Who did you buy the Vortex from? If it was one of the reputable UK RC hobby suppliers and you haven't started messing with the quad or damaged it in any way then you might find they will take it back in exchange for something else.

No it was a private sale on eBay , waited ages for it as well , I am absolutely gutted as I had some good times with this quad a few years ago , guess I can’t fly at the moment anyway so will have a bit of time to get something else .

In that case either just have some fun with it the way it is using the analogue video feed to get your skills back up to scratch, and then get yourself a modern quad designed for the DJI kit when you feel the time is right. You can then always just sell the Vortex 285 on to try and recuperate a bit of your money, unless you just want to keep it for old times sake, because once you've experienced flying a quad equipped with modern flight electronics and motors, you will likely just stick the Vortex in a cupboard and never go back to it.

Lol yes might just do that , I was thinking that I could maybe keep the 5.8 system in for now so I could set up wizard on a 7 inch screen and strap the air unit on top where I would normally set a GoPro or Mobius and fly it that way , do you think there would be any issue with the 2 running side by side ??

The DJI system runs on 5.8GHz as does the ImmersionRC VTX. With both running on the same quad there is a high chance of them interfering with each other. I wouldn't want to risk losing the quad along with a £175 DJI Air Unit due to loss of video feed which will result in a crash somewhere you may have no idea where it came down. If you want to take the chance, I guess it's entirely your call, but I doubt anyone on here would recommend trying it.

Did you ever do anything with the vortex ? I have two of these and had the same idea and ran across this thread while researching how I might upgrade them . I wonder if I just put a new F7/ESC stack in them would the motors be decent enough ?