How to Pair Goggles and Controllers to the DJI Avata 360

Good day folks. Shawn here from Air Photography. Just a quick little video for you today. I’m going to demonstrate how to pair goggles to the new DJI Avata 360.

Why You May Need to Manually Pair Your Gear

If you’ve purchased the Avata 360 with goggles and a controller, everything is already going to be bound together. However, if you’ve purchased the Avata 360 as a drone only, or perhaps you purchased it with a controller because you already own goggles and a motion controller, you will need to update the firmware of your goggles. You’ll have to put them into the Avata 360 mode and then you’ll have to manually pair it to the drone, which I’m going to demonstrate in this video.

Compatible Goggles and Controllers

The Avata 360 is compatible with both the Goggles 3 and the Goggles N3, as well as the Motion 3 and the FPV 3 controller. I’m going to be demonstrating with my Goggles 3 and the Motion 3 controller, but this works exactly the same way if you’re going to be pairing it to the Goggles N3 or the FPV 3 controller.

Before you get started, you want to make sure you’re running the latest version of the DJI Fly app. That’ll be necessary in order to update the firmware.

Powering On and Pairing the Controller to the Goggles

What we’re going to do is power on our goggles, and I’m going to power on the Motion 3 controller. It’s a good idea to make sure everything is fully charged and you have plenty of battery power. The other thing we’re going to do is power on the drone.

Your controller might already be paired to your goggles, but if not, you want to pair them first. It’s pretty simple to do. Just press and hold the power button on the controller that you’re pairing. It will go ahead and start beeping. Then we’re going to press and hold the power button on the goggles. You can see there it went ahead and paired. We got some fast beeps to confirm that it paired correctly.

Updating the Goggles Firmware with the DJI Fly App

Before we pair the drone to the goggles, we do need to update the firmware on these goggles to make sure it’s compatible with the Avata 360. We’re going to use our smartphone and the DJI Fly app. Take a USB-C cable, or whatever type of cable you need to connect it to your device, and plug it into the USB-C port on the goggles. Plug it into my phone, and I’m going to launch the DJI Fly app.

Once I connected it, it prompted me to download and update to the latest firmware. We’ll just go ahead and let it do its thing. There’s updated firmware for the Goggles 3 and for the RC Motion 3. As you can see there, we got confirmation on the smartphone that the firmware has been updated successfully. At this point, we can now unplug the phone — we no longer need it.

It’s very important to make sure you get that firmware updated, as you will not be able to connect your goggles to the Avata 360 until that’s been done.

Switching the Goggles to Avata 360 Mode

Before we can pair the DJI Avata 360 to the goggles, we do have to select the Avata 360 in the settings. These goggles are compatible with a wide variety of aircraft, so we have to select the aircraft we’re going to be connecting to. The Goggles 3 and the Goggles N3 are very similar.

We’re going to use our 5D button to scroll around the menu system. First thing we’re going to do is press to the side, and that’s going to bring up the menu system on the side. We’re going to select Status and press down on it to select it. At the very top, we’re going to move up to where it says Switch. Again, we’re going to press on it to select Switch. Then we’re going to scroll until we select the Avata 360. Once we have it highlighted, we’re going to press to select it. It may ask you to confirm the selection.

Pairing the Drone to the Goggles

Once we have the goggles switched to the Avata 360, we do have to pair the aircraft to the goggles. We do so by pressing and holding the power button on the back. Just press and hold. The drone will make a beeping noise. Then we have to put the goggles into pairing mode by pressing and holding the power button. We got a beep confirmation that the aircraft has now connected.

At this point, you should be able to look through the goggles and get a visual feed from the camera. And yes, there it is. That is something you only need to do once. If you’re going to be connecting the FPV controller, you follow the exact same procedure. Or if you’re going to be connecting the Goggles N3, it works exactly the same.

Pairing the DJI RC 2 to the Avata 360

Just for good measure, I’m also going to demonstrate how to pair the RC 2 to the Avata 360, because perhaps you purchased the Avata 360 as the motion combo with goggles and the motion controller and you’ve added an RC 2 for some flexibility. It’s a very simple procedure to pair it.

The big thing is that you want to make sure you’re running the latest firmware on the RC 2 to ensure it is compatible with the Avata 360. When you turn on your RC 2 and you connect to the internet, if there’s any available updates, it should prompt you to download and install them. If not, you can go to your profile, go to Settings, go to Check for Firmware Updates, and as you can see, it’ll list that there is a firmware update. The main thing here, it says it adds support for the Avata 360. We’re going to tap on Download, and it’s going to go ahead and download the firmware update.

Now that we have the firmware updated, we can go ahead and pair it to the Avata 360. It’s a pretty simple procedure. What we’re going to do is power on the Avata. Then we’re going to tap on Connect to Aircraft and scroll through the list until we find the DJI Avata 360. You may be asked to download a piece of resource — that’s something that only needs to be done once. But what we do have to do here is switch the firmware that we are currently running on the RC 2 to the Avata 360 firmware. We’ll just hit Confirm. Then we’re going to tap on Powered On to pair it. Next, we’re going to tap on where it says Aircraft Beeped. That’s now in pairing mode, and we’re going to put the Avata 360 into pairing mode by pressing and holding the power button. There we go — they went ahead and connected.

Switching Between Controllers and the Bound Device Warning

This message here, I want to point out because it’s really important. Once you have the RC 2 paired to your Avata 360, you can switch back and forth between the RC 2 and the goggles with the Motion 3. You don’t have to repair it every time. Just simply power off the RC 2, power on your goggles and the Motion 3 controller or FPV 3 controller, depending on what you’re using, and it will just go ahead and automatically connect.

However, every time you will get a message because the aircraft has to be bound to a controller, and that’s to do with DJI Care Refresh and Fly Away Coverage. So you do have to change the bound device every time, which can be kind of a pain when you’re out in the field because in order to do that, you do have to have internet connectivity.

It’s important to note this before you go out and fly, because you may end up in an area without internet connectivity or cellular service. You want to make sure you have it bound to the appropriate device before you head out. If you do have internet service, you can always connect your controller or the goggles to a smartphone to get its internet service and then change the bound device out in the field.

Wrapping Up

That’s basically it for this video. That’s how you pair the Avata 360 to goggles and the Motion 3 controller or the RC 2. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and found it had value. Thanks a lot for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one.

This article is based on a video from our YouTube partner Shawn from Air Photography. You can find more of his work on his YouTube channel and on his DroneXL author page.