I've been dealing with a crooked camera for months. Not even sure when/how it became crooked. My cam was off by 25-30 degrees to the right.(With cam pointing at me) I tried many calibrations and even DJI's ridiculous "twist cam in opposite direction" bs. For the record, that "fix" should never be used as all you are doing is torquing the rubber cushions that support the cam, among other things. In fact, I don't think that "fix" can be a solution for more than one power cycle max. Anyway, I took my cam/gimbal off to see what I could do. My first attempt involved removing a screw from each side of the gimbal mount and rotating the whole mount opposite of how my cam was pointing and then supergluing the two screws so they hooked on the post thus holding the gimbal in the rotated position. Not sure if that makes sense but in the pic below where the gimbal mouint is pointing straight, the two side rails pointed to the 2 oclock position when I was done. I put it back together and fired it up and camera still pointed to the right. Bummer. One thing I noticed both when booting up and when doing the calibration was the camera looked normal right up until the end. During startup, for example, it would go through the normal dance and at the end it would jerk to the right. So, for no reason in particular I did a calibration(cal) with the drone balanced on the two back motors with cam pointed up and, when it completed, lo and behold the cam was straight. So, while it's straight, the cam is pointing what would be straight down because it's balancing on the motors. I start to lower drone onto its legs and at about halfway the cam pivots to the right like before. I tilt it back and it straightens out. So I prop the drone up at the point just before it pivots to the right and I do another cal. It finishes and the cam is still straight. I lower the drone onto it's legs and to my delight the cam stays straight. With the drone standing on its legs like normal I do another cal. All appears well. I power down and back up and the cam is still straight. I'm finally starting to feel that the problem may be solved other than the gimbal mount is still twisted inside. I pull the cam/gimbal back off the drone and mount it as designed and upon boot up the cam is still straight. I don't know what changed but it was luck that I stumbled upon whatever happened that got it pointing straight. I do know that I did many cal's trying to get it straight and maybe it's just my drone but I don't think I've seen any two cal's that executed the same. Sometimes it swings side to side, other times no, etc. Also, my yaw motor would screech every other time I flew it and that has stopped as well since fixing it. I've now flown about an hours time and cam is still straight. My conclusion is the problem is software based as I didn't mess with the motors at all. I have heard the motors are calibrated at the factory but for what purpose? To limit their rotational range? Not sure. I'm not sure how problem was resolved either. The cams perception of straight isn't written in stone but again, not sure as to how. Weird. Anyway, hope this helps somebody.
Fixed: Offset camera/gimbal
- Thread starter lencomm
- Start date
I'm sure many others are happy that you f i n a l l y got the cameras angle fixed and i hope that it will stay that way for a long time....Thank you for the very detailed info of what you did too...Now Fly with care and have a great time of flying your Drone ! !
