Rotorpixel gimbal for Phantom Vision

[EricT]

Most gimbal adjustment software I've used has not only gain/power adjustments but also many other adjustments for advanced users to optimize. In most cases there's no need to tweak them as their default settings usually work fine out-of-box. But no worries, when you get your gimbal and tune its servo (if even necessary) you'll get the hang of it right away once you see what the adjustments do right in front of you.
iDrone :ugeek:

iDrone, thank you very much for the clarification. Your post makes sense to me. Hopefully when I do get my RP (621) I will not have to worry about using SimpleBCG.....if I do have to use it, hopefully I can glean enough from this forum or Keri directly to adjust the P2V. Thanks again.

 

[eric.andelin]

Previous quote from Keri: "By mid week next week, we're hoping to be at around #410-420", so I'd think Wed or Thu we might see some shipping notices, especially my #410

#409 and waiting in the great State of Texas patiently. Good thing I occupied myself the last two days lobbying our Senators and Congressmen and meeting with the Transportation and Infrastructure committee about the failure of the FAA to act on sUAS rulemaking.

 

[F6Rider]

So... #436... With any luck next week sometime. I have antenna and tracker mod's just waiting on this gimbal install. Waiting, Waiting....

 

[Elginet]

so the suspense is killing me, did you ever get it or no?

 

[BManCan]

Update from last Thursday March 27th

We have a very nice looking pile of gimbals here which have now been tested for shorts, and are just going through the last couple of stages of programming before they'll be ready to ship. We should start rolling them out tomorrow.

Keri

Keri,
It is now almost a week later and still no indication that any new gimbals have shipped out. Are there new issues that have cropped up since this update?

 

[brushlesheaven]

Geert, did you use the latest ver. 2.4... ?
Thanks

SimpleBGC GUI http://www.basecamelectronics.com/downloads/8bit/
Take your time to do this and don't try to do it between main dish and dessert like I did.
I messed up a bit with this software but fortunately Keri was there to help me out.
The results are much better than before.[/quote]

 

[sbooneaz]

I've been lurking for a couple months and have to say I've enjoyed it. I learned about the Rotorpixel here and ordered on day 2 of "pre-orders", #499. Since then I've just been reading, laughing and learning.

I'm posting tonight to thank you all. I've learned so much. See without knowing it, while complaining, been patient, complaining and carrying on, you have given me and anyone else paying attention all of your knowledge. It has been invaluable!!

I learned about Flytrex and installed it. I learned about the v2 release. Worked great. I learned about the 7th channel hack. Did it. How cool! I am better prepared to do some antenna upgrades. And when my Rotorpixel finally shows up, I'm ready for that too.

You all did that.

So thank you!!

***Back to lurking, waiting and learning***

 

[DKDarkness]

Terje, some of us are not electrical engineers hence the noob questions. Considering the P2V is a turnkey fly out of the box solution, when it comes to SimpleBGC, I am sure most of the forum readers do not really understand the details of tinkering with the guts of the Phantom's programming. I suspect most of us are trying to learn and make our RP purchase pleasant and fulfilling and not have crashes or a poor performing RP.

Eric

Sorry if my reply could be misunderstood. My point was, you should be able to find exactly the information you need on the RotorPixel website, along with link to the correct software and way to set it up. But you are not able to, because the information simply isn't there! It is all guessing and assuming. It would be too easy for RotorPixel to provide the information you need, but they don't.

 

[hqcariello]

Update from last Thursday March 27th

We have a very nice looking pile of gimbals here which have now been tested for shorts, and are just going through the last couple of stages of programming before they'll be ready to ship. We should start rolling them out tomorrow.

Keri

Keri,
It is now almost a week later and still no indication that any new gimbals have shipped out. Are there new issues that have cropped up since this update?

Obviously some unpredictable setback caused a delay. I don't see a reason RP would deliberately break a promise if they didn't believe they could fulfill it. I trust we shall soon get an update.

 

[pyrophantom]

Someone earlier hit the nail on the head about this whole power thing - Rotorpixel have to set the power levels at some point, they cant please everyone. Many have lens filters fitted to their cameras, all different types which will have a bearing on the power requirement. Different people would tune different power settings depending on what weight they have added to the camera lens, to get it to balance properly. Reading what Keri said about their motor selection they went for beefy motors, presumably because they know exactly that some have additional weight on the camera which requires enough grunt to do the work without straining the motors.

Would make sense to me anyway, but they have to set a stock value for the motors somewhere, and if jello or vibration is an issue after the balancing and damper settings, then they can resort to the power settings if they need to.

 

[browntw79]

I can confirm the last gimbal shipped was #364 on March 14th. I am #365.

Have you received any shipping confirmation yet for your Rotorpixel gimbal?

Not yet.

I was really hoping we'd see movement this week. Any notice since your post the other day?

I'm #384.

 

[RCRookie]

I'm expecting to see a large batch of shipping notifications to go out this week... Now that Keri is back from his other job.

Gimbaless in E. Texas... #463

 

[Flighttime]

Hi all. Just dropping by to share some knowledge.

- I had two gimbals (order 35X) that came with the short circuits and both were fixed with replacement parts sent quickly by RP
- RP now have "professional grade" electronics testers to ensure that the above problems were a thing of the past
- I had jerking motors at a specific angle of tilt. Fixed that by re-balancing it and turned the whole thing 360 through its tilt axis with the camera off the mount (dont know howthis helped). Lucky not to have needed to mess around with the basecam software
- fixed intermittent jello by sanding down the diameter of the plastic thumbscrew so that it doesnt fit too snug against the internal diameter of the rubber vibration dampers
- if you're on firmware 2.0, 7th channel hack still works. However, you'll need to change it back to "Vision" on the Phantom 2 Tool to get Advanced>Gimbal setting to show up in the Assistant software. If you plan to continue using the 7th Channel Hack, you may want to change the settings to 1000/0/-450 instead of the 1000/-450/1000 prescribed by RP. Once that's done you can re-enable 7th channel hack by changing back to H3-2D in phantom 2 tool

All in all the RP gimbal is amazing....my next project would be to figure out how to install a 3rd axis on this.

 

[XCcoach]

I was really hoping we'd see movement this week. Any notice since your post the other day?

I'm #384.

No, unfortunately.

 

[brushlesheaven]

Great news, thanks and enjoy....

Hi all. Just dropping by to share some knowledge.

- I had two gimbals (order 35X) that came with the short circuits and both were fixed with replacement parts sent quickly by RP
- RP now have "professional grade" electronics testers to ensure that the above problems were a thing of the past
- I had jerking motors at a specific angle of tilt. Fixed that by re-balancing it and turned the whole thing 360 through its tilt axis with the camera off the mount (dont know howthis helped). Lucky not to have needed to mess around with the basecam software
- fixed intermittent jello by sanding down the diameter of the plastic thumbscrew so that it doesnt fit too snug against the internal diameter of the rubber vibration dampers
- if you're on firmware 2.0, 7th channel hack still works. However, you'll need to change it back to "Vision" on the Phantom 2 Tool to get Advanced>Gimbal setting to show up in the Assistant software. If you plan to continue using the 7th Channel Hack, you may want to change the settings to 1000/0/-450 instead of the 1000/-450/1000 prescribed by RP. Once that's done you can re-enable 7th channel hack by changing back to H3-2D in phantom 2 tool

All in all the RP gimbal is amazing....my next project would be to figure out how to install a 3rd axis on this.

 

[hqcariello]

Hi all. Just dropping by to share some knowledge.

- I had two gimbals (order 35X) that came with the short circuits and both were fixed with replacement parts sent quickly by RP
- RP now have "professional grade" electronics testers to ensure that the above problems were a thing of the past
- I had jerking motors at a specific angle of tilt. Fixed that by re-balancing it and turned the whole thing 360 through its tilt axis with the camera off the mount (dont know howthis helped). Lucky not to have needed to mess around with the basecam software
- fixed intermittent jello by sanding down the diameter of the plastic thumbscrew so that it doesnt fit too snug against the internal diameter of the rubber vibration dampers
- if you're on firmware 2.0, 7th channel hack still works. However, you'll need to change it back to "Vision" on the Phantom 2 Tool to get Advanced>Gimbal setting to show up in the Assistant software. If you plan to continue using the 7th Channel Hack, you may want to change the settings to 1000/0/-450 instead of the 1000/-450/1000 prescribed by RP. Once that's done you can re-enable 7th channel hack by changing back to H3-2D in phantom 2 tool

All in all the RP gimbal is amazing....my next project would be to figure out how to install a 3rd axis on this.

Great info. Thanks to dedicated users like you, there's no mystery now. RP, like other alternatives, do still need a few tweaks to work properly. Very helpful to learn of it sooner than later.

 

[MattOlieman]

No, I used the version 2.2b2
I did download version 2.4 as well but to use it you also have to update the firmware and I did not want to take the risk to update this firmware.
Version 2.2b2 worked fine with the firmware which came with the gimbal.

Geert.

I noticed the connection on the board is not what I'm familiar with. Geert or anyone else, what cable did you use? USB to ???? Perhaps a link to a description?

 

[RCRookie]

I cant wait to go out and do some TESTS with my new Rotorpixel Gimabal!!!

Come on Keri....We're all pulling for you...Rotorpixel...Rotorpixel...Rotorpixel...Rotorpixel...!

lol

The Rookie

 

[F6Rider]

Well heck, I didn't think to just use the Phantom tool to switch the 7th channel off to get the 'gimbal' option back in the assistant. I deleted and re-installed the assistant software......

 

[Pull_Up]

Great info. Thanks to dedicated users like you, there's no mystery now. RP, like other alternatives, do still need a few tweaks to work properly. Very helpful to learn of it sooner than later.

All setups are slightly different, different damper ages, different add-ones, etc. Mine worked out of the box once I installed the thumbscrews properly and adjusted them for tightness. It seems like there is a lot of variation in how much "spring" the stock dampers have from user to user.