Phantom 2 & H3-2D gimbal tilt control would not work

[chineyrasta]

I bought a Phantom 2 with the H3-2D gimbal 3 days ago, I attached the gimbal as per instructions with a GoPro 3+ Silver camera. I turned the Tx on then the camera, then fired up the Phantom 2. After it initialized the gimbal leveled itself as it should, but then the gimbal tilted the camera straight down towards the floor and would not respond to tilt lever commands, although the gimbal compensated for any movement of the Phantom normally. I called DJI, but I was #48 in line, I held on for about 1 hour then the call timed-out just as I was #5 - typical. I also called the guy at the hobby shop who sold it to me, but he had never heard of this problem before. Determined not to be beat, and to try to quell my frustration, my curiosity got the better of me and I opened up the Tx. I found that the tilt lever spindle was not mating with the board mounted pot, somehow they assembled this thing so fast at the factory and obviously with little care, that the pot got squashed down on the board and out of reach of the X mating end of the spindle, to confirm this when I turned the pot with a screwdriver, the gimbal rotated through its arc normally. This leads to the only conclusion that nothing is tested before it leaves the factory or the distributor. This is unforgivable due to the fact that this is an expensive piece of equipment.

 

[goldfishrock]

Just for completeness and to highlight another potential cause for this problem. I recently had to replace the P2 Main Board after a crash and found that once I'd soldered the new one in the gimbal did the same sort of thing. It pointed 45 degrees down and refused to respond to the slider although it quite happily kept steady and worked as it should.

The problem was that I needed to run the update from the P2 Assistant Software for the Main Board.... once this was done it worked perfectly.