RotorPixel Gimbal Technical Discussion

[WeaponsHot]

Im starting this topic in hopes of dedicating it to Help and Be Helped for owners and potential owners of the Rotorpixel Gimbal.
This is not a an area where I want ***** and moan sessions about the company, lets keep it as technical as possible. If you do have helpful information for the company that important also, it will make all of our gimbals and photos better.

I would like to start off by asking anyone out there that has a gimbal, if they have a pre installation checklist, being prior USAF I live and die by the checklist

For instance
1. This plug goes here,
2. That plug goes there
3. This wire color goes to that etc.

 

[Scottrod]

WTF is taking Keri so long! Not the way to do business.





Totally kidding. I am patiently and anxiously awaiting my gimbal. Good idea starting this thread.

 

[RCRookie]

I'm waiting on my Gimbal....But would like to contribute to your thread...When I get my Gimbal.

Seriously,...Good Idea, I feel your pain in the other thread.

 

[xgeek]

Technically how many gimbals can Keri ship per week? :lol:

 

[Pull_Up]

The written instructions are good. The only thing I got wrong was inserting the thumbscrews into the dampers incorrectly (hence doing a little addendum video to my unbox and installation one).

There are only two wires to connect from the Vision, and one from gimbal to camera. The only caveat is make sure the jack plug from Vision to gimbal (ex to the camera) and the jack plug from gimbal to camera are inserted fully and firmly. There should be a distinct click as they seat home.

I'm pretty non-technical and found the installation straightforward, hence why my install video didn't show the whole process - there's no need.

 

[pyrophantom]

From my perspective as a user down the line by a month or two I will be interested to read peoples take on :

* the balancing setup for the dji filter mount
* peoples experience of the number of turns they are using on the dampers to stop the slight jello
* how people are altering their setting for yaw inputs now that they have reduced the effects of the other 2 axis

fire away users.....

 

[Xcopter]

I'd like to know if the gimbal gives you options to adjust the amount that the camera will roll or pitch to control the roll or pitch with a sort of "spongey" effect. I guess similar to what the 3rd axis would give you. What I'd like to achieve is to simulate a smooth flying video where the the gimbal will allow the camera to roll or pitch but softly and smoothly.

 

[pyrophantom]

The camera should stay pretty still where its pointing at thro roll and pitch, the 3rd axis should remove most of the yaw jerkiness (hope that's what you meant), so yes. Good example of that was Keri's video showing the boat rocking about on the water with a lovely still horizon !

Apologies if that's not what you were asking.

 

[Pull_Up]

From my perspective as a user down the line by a month or two I will be interested to read peoples take on :

* the balancing setup for the dji filter mount
* peoples experience of the number of turns they are using on the dampers to stop the slight jello
* how people are altering their setting for yaw inputs now that they have reduced the effects of the other 2 axis

fire away users.....

* I chose to balance for filter kit + circ pol. With the filter off the camera will sit slightly nose high with the power off. Power on, it makes no difference, other than the motor having to work a little harder and pull a little more current to keep things on the balance point.

* I had no jello, but some vibration. Then I realised I'd put the thumbscrews on wrong! I marked the screws and turned them all 6 full revolutions - minor vibration. Then turned them to 7. You've seen the results on my flight videos - no jello I can see, no vibrations. This was with almost 5 month old dampers

* This is going to be my next project. Hopefully some flyable conditions on Friday/weekend (ironically a bit of wind would be good, but not too much) and I'll play with basic and atti gains and see what I can come up with.

 

[Xcopter]

The camera should stay pretty still where its pointing at thro roll and pitch, the 3rd axis should remove most of the yaw jerkiness (hope that's what you meant), so yes. Good example of that was Keri's video showing the boat rocking about on the water with a lovely still horizon !

Apologies if that's not what you were asking.

Hi Pyrophantom,
Although I am buying the RP gimbal because it stabilises the image by keeping the camera perfectly horizontal, I am also curious if the gimbal has the ability to fix the roll axis so that the camera will roll with the quadcopter (no longer horizontal) to experience the quad banking as it takes turns but with a smoother controlled operation than what you'd experience from the standard p2v servo setup. What I find frustrating with the standard p2v setup is that the camera cannot tilt the camera to point fully straight ahead and when you fly forward with the camera tilts downwards.

This video by Eirik Solheim I found on Vimeo gives you a sense of what I am talking about - http://vimeo.com/60119479 (Goto about 40 seconds into the video). Perhaps this banking can be done even smoother with a gimbal I wonder?!

As the gimbal uses motors to control the camera's steadiness it makes me wonder if the gimbal has settings that will allow the camera to roll with the quad but respond with an almost delayed roll to iron out any jitteriness, just as the 3rd axis (not the full 360 deg version) would offer the yaw movement?

Hopefully I've explained this a bit better.

Thanks

Cheers.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[WeaponsHot]

I'm pretty non-technical and found the installation straightforward, hence why my install video didn't show the whole process - there's no need.

Thanks Pull_up by the time I get mine at 533 Your and pyros inputs will be assimilated and put to good use when I get it.

 

[pyrophantom]

Credit where its due really I dont have a gimbal or much flying experience which is why like you, I am on here, so I look and learn from pull up and the rest of the experienced flyers and benefit from their feedback which is very useful particularly for us relative newbies who can get good habits before we start developing bad ones !

Simon, I noticed you said you had balanced it for the filter AND the circular polarising antenna....you have fitted the aircraft set now and not just the tx ??

Cheers Xcopter I sort of guessed you knew that already and not sure how you could achieve that, its almost flying like an aircraft would, but have no idea how that works lol.

 

[mra1228]

As to balancing gimbal here's my experience:

When I installed gimbal roll balance was way off towards pitch motor (motor to left side of camera facing forward). I attempted to balance but discovered the "stops" were already close to max -- so I couldn't move the pitch motor closer to the camera to achieve balance.

But, I believe this is because I installed 2.4GHZ pinwheel mods to camera wifi and removed the internal antennas (they are heavy -- I was reducing weight). After I reinstalled the right side antenna (opposite side from the pitch motor) as ballast only, I could come very close to a good balance.

So ROTORPIXEL has set up gimbal for stock camera which, of course, they should. However, for the growing number of users modding the antennas hopefully they will consider allowing more leeway in the balance adjustment (the pitch motor arm machined with more leeway) in the future so the internal antennas can be removed to save weight when external antennas are used.

I also have a DRONEXPERT on another P2V with no internal camera antennas and it balances well with no adjustments.

 

[pyrophantom]

Yes I think pull up has said that even with the DJI filter kit the gimbal will balance straight out of the box but it might work the motors a little more but maybe Keri will shed some light on that a little more and say the motors will cope fine without too much trouble, and im guessing he will say yes as they are quite beefy motors. As for extra antennas etc then again another balancing act for thosee modding the aircraft.

 

[Pull_Up]

Simon, I noticed you said you had balanced it for the filter AND the circular polarising antenna....you have fitted the aircraft set now and not just the tx ??

No, I've balanced my gimbal for the lens filter kit and a circular polarising lens filter. I haven't done (and probably don't intend to do) any aircraft-side antenna mods. As long as I can get a solid 2000ft in any direction then I'm more than happy for my purposes. I'm going to keep the antennas, though, because they are well made and I never know what I might get up to in the future...

 

[pyrophantom]

Ah thats what I was wondering if you were going to bother doing the aircraft end or not.

Ta

 

[Scottrod]

Ah thats what I was wondering if you were going to bother doing the aircraft end or not.

Ta

I agree with Pull_Up. I didn't see a need to modify the aircraft side antenna. I don't have the RP gimbal yet but 3,300+ft with just one external antenna on the range extender. I would imagine I could still get that distance even with the 'motor' side of the gimbal facing me as long as i have the external antenna connected. I can get some absurd distance with it as long as I'm above around 250'. I just don't really have a need to go any further than that. Back to RP discussion.

 

[pyrophantom]

Doubt I will do mine either as I get a little twitchy when its out of sight, and I don't have a use for flying off into the distance, I just wanted to improve the quality of the signal......and the Horizon antennas come in sexy white also

 

[Flighttime]

Just moving this bit of technical info to this thread as it's getting pretty noisy on the other one where I originally posted it.

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 DJI phantom 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.

 

[Pull_Up]

I'll be interested to see Rotorpixel's 3rd axis upgrade. I'm assuming it will use a different style of motor at the top to keep the height of the unit down, but looking at how the gimbal arm attaches to the mounting bracket it has potential to be a straightforward bolt on, plug in job...