Gimbal battery suggestions

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Hey, I'm a newbie here, read several threads but didn't find my answer so if this has been covered I apologize for the redundancy. I have a Phantom 1 and just purchased a Walkera G2-D Gimbal and I'm curious if I should try going with a small external battery since the Gimbal sort of has a shelf that sticks out behind it....kinda seems ideal for mounting a small battery on top of OR if I should do some rigging and tap into the internal power of the Phantom from the main battery. Just not sure if the trade off of the extra weight of the external battery to run the Gimbal vs trying to save flight time on the main flight battery is worth it or not. I'm already lucky if I get more than 7-9 minutes of flight time before I get a low voltage LED warning, so I'm afraid if the Gimbal is pulling power from the main battery I will see a 3-5 minute flight....which even with 5 batteries will kinda stink! ALSO, if anyone thinks going with a separate battery is a better idea, please give me your suggestions on how big of a battery to go with....I'm toying with the idea of about 1000mah at around 75-85grams....??? ANY thoughts or suggestions are welcome!
 
I'd like to know about this as well, currently running a metal cnc gimbal which only gives me 5-5.5 min with a stock battery. Just got my Multistar 4000 yesterday and my Walkera will be coming in today. Would really like to know if the trade off is worth it.
 
Well, since I didn't have another battery with a JST plug to use as an external battery I went ahead and rigged it up to my AUX power wire that comes factory on the Phantom and took it for a test flight. I honestly didn't notice much if any difference in my flight time but I was disappointed with the shakiness of my video....the Gimbal performed well as far as keeping the camera in a stable point, but my video was noticeably more shaky than when I just had a cheap Carbon Fiber Anti Vibration mount with my Go Pro and no gimbal.....odd. Only thing I can figure, after racking my brain is that the rubber vibration dampers on the Walkera are to soft...I've noticed, after a simple squishing test, that mine on my Carbon fiber mount were a little stiffer. I actually did something totally CRAZY (attatched pic) and mounted both of them to my drone, but that seem to have more shake than a bowl of jello, seems like if you just tap the drone it shakes the camera....didn't do a test flight, but I'm pretty convinced from just moving the drone around and tapping on it that it has way more shake than with just the Gimbal alone. So I think I'm going to try today to pull the dampers off my carbon fiber mount and put them on the Walkera mount (pretty sure they will fit) and see if that helps eliminate the shakiness.
 

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The gimbal needs 200 - 500mah, 7 to 30v. Not a lot but will reduce your life by 10% to 20%, worse when you consider the weight penalty.

A 3s 12v tiny battery would be a solution or maybe convert your P1 to twin batteries?
 
I wouldn't search for a separate power source for the gimbal. There really isn't any reason for it. The weight of another battery will probably offset any time gained. The gimbals don't seem to draw too much power. The problem with gimbals, in my opinion, is the added weight.

As far as Jello, and CRAZY remedies, that's a funny picture, it seems as though balls which are too soft contribute quite a bit to the jello.
I also believe the added weight of the gimbal makes the motors work harder which exaggerates any vibration due to prop imbalance.
Try a balance test to see if your props may be out of balance.

Welcome to the party Drumnut.
 
I wouldn't search for a separate power source for the gimbal. There really isn't any reason for it. The weight of another battery will probably offset any time gained. The gimbals don't seem to draw too much power. The problem with gimbals, in my opinion, is the added weight.

As far as Jello, and CRAZY remedies, that's a funny picture, it seems as though balls which are too soft contribute quite a bit to the jello.
I also believe the added weight of the gimbal makes the motors work harder which exaggerates any vibration due to prop imbalance.
Try a balance test to see if your props may be out of balance.

Welcome to the party Drumnut.

Hey, thanks for your reply, yea I went ahead and nixed the idea of the external battery...after a a few test flights I didn't see a real noticeable difference in flight time with the gimbal pulling from the main battery, so I was pleased with that for now. As far as the shaking issue, concerning the props, I just purchased a brand new set of DJI props that claim to be "pre balanced" so I haven't really thought that was the issue, but that did pass through my mind this past weekend so I pulled one of the props off and did balance test the best I could without having a proper test kit and didn't notice any imbalance in that one so I just assumed since it was good, that the DJI claim was correct, and didn't test any of the other 3 props. Today I found something that seemed a little nuts BUT I went ahead and tried it since it was so cheap. It was to take some ear plugs and insert them up into the anti vibe cones......whatever you call those....I will try to upload a pic later, but I did a short test flight but unfortunately it was to dark to get a great idea of how well it worked, but it seemed to help from what I could tell.
 
Cool, let us know how the jello turned out. The earplug thing seems to stiffen up soft balls a bit. I've had darn good luck with DJI props, no complaints from me.
 
Well, I finally got a chance to go out and do a decent test flight, it was a bit windy but it gave me a pretty good indication of the video quality.....still fairly shaky at pretty high altitudes. Not to bad at low altitudes when I'm hovering and moving the quad around really slowly and carefully. I still feel like the gimbal should be producing a better quality image, but the ear plugs shoved up into the anti vibe balls definitely seemed to help some, if someone else is looking for a extra trick for anti shake/vibration, you might want to give this little trick a try. It's simple, takes less than 30 seconds to install and it cost less than $5....U.S. You just need a 4 memory Foam earplugs.
 
I'm glad to hear you are making some progress. Got a couple questions for ya.
Are you using 8" props? 9443 and 9450 props might be better for you as your bird puts on weight.
Have you weighed your bird with battery, camera, gimbal and whatever else you have on it when it's flying?
If the problem continues, I would not take anyone's word for the props being balanced. Something is causing the jello.
 
Just curious., I'm sure this has been discussed before but I'm new here. Is there another option for a higher mah battery? I mean like a 4000 mah turnagy battery that will fit in a p1?
 
Wow! Thanks man! You just saved me hours! Lol. I don't even have a phantom yet. It's supposed to be here tomorrow. I'm already looking for solutions to problems others have encountered. Will be using this for filming short film clips. Anything else you recommend?
 
Wow! Thanks man! You just saved me hours! Lol. I don't even have a phantom yet. It's supposed to be here tomorrow. I'm already looking for solutions to problems others have encountered. Will be using this for filming short film clips. Anything else you recommend?

Stay up all night and read the manual 3 or 4 times tonight.
Don't drain your batteries too much.
Take your time learning and always plan ahead.

Don't throw away the extra bag of screws that come in the box. They look like a bag of silica.

The link in my signature is full of other pages to.

Have fun

Oh yea, and don't hijack folks threads. Start your own. :D
 
I'm glad to hear you are making some progress. Got a couple questions for ya.
Are you using 8" props? 9443 and 9450 props might be better for you as your bird puts on weight.
Have you weighed your bird with battery, camera, gimbal and whatever else you have on it when it's flying?
If the problem continues, I would not take anyone's word for the props being balanced. Something is causing the jello.

Yes, I'm using the 8" props, I had purchased some 9" carbon fiber props BEFORE I ever purchased my gimbal along with some prop guards and they were junk, they caused an awful wobble on decent that freaked me out and made me think my bird was going down....and caused so much unstableness that I had an extremely low altitude, low speed crash that ruined one of the prop guards so I sent them back.....also noticed a huge difference in my battery life, even after I took the prop guards off. So PROBABLY the wrong thought, but I just resorted to the thought that the 9" props were killing my battery life and went back to the 8" props. But maybe I need to try the 9" Dji brand props. No, I haven't weighed my setup, don't really have a way to. But, yea I need to get a prop balancer and check those properly, I did a test on one....the best I could without having a balancer and it seemed balanced, but I just need to buy a prop balancer and check it to make sure.
 
OH, one more thought....well kinda more of a curiosity question I guess. But, have y'all ever noticed, I seemed to notice this on my last flight, that it seems like my image was way more stable at a lower altitude, say under 50 ft, but once I got up over say 200 is when my image seem to get pretty shaky. I'm assuming it's probably just a wind issue. Any thoughts?
 

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