Solo Shakes after Gimbal Installation & FW Upgrade

Sampson · Oct 15, 2015

Yeah sorry for the noise and long clip. This came straight off the GoPro. I didn't have much time last night. There is always the volume control on your speakers.
Its just generally not as stable as before 1.2. I will keep tinkering and I have a dialogue going with 3dr. They seemed particularly interested in gimbal SN, but we will see. So far I've done all calibrations and a cable reroute.

RotoFan · Oct 15, 2015

Sampson,
I can see the shaky behavior in the video around the buildings in the background. My shaky video is more pronounced but similar. For me, when I view the bird from the side, and I give it throttle, the whole gimbal shakes. I am starting to wounder if this is a prop wash effect around the fuselage hitting the gimbal. I discount this theory because everyone should be experiencing this if there was a fuselage interaction. Still a mystery to be solved.

JonW · Oct 27, 2015

Have you figured out a fix for this? I have the same problem with shaky video. I think mine is actually worse than yours. I also can't figure out if it is the bird or the gimbal. Props are balanced.Shakes badly even with almost no wind and whether moving or hovering. I don't have a pre-FW update to compare to because I got this solo the day that the update came out.

RotoFan · Oct 27, 2015

JonW said:
Have you figured out a fix for this? I have the same problem with shaky video. I think mine is actually worse than yours. I also can't figure out if it is the bird or the gimbal. Props are balanced.Shakes badly even with almost no wind and whether moving or hovering. I don't have a pre-FW update to compare to because I got this solo the day that the update came out.

Sorry to hear you are having the same issue. Still waiting for my replacement gimbal unfortunately. I will bug them again tomorrow. Once I get the replacement I will post my results.

RotoFan · Nov 15, 2015

I finally received my replacement gimbal and at least the gimbal flop is gone. The video is slightly better as well. Bought two replacement motor pods (CCW, CW) and replaced the right rear as it had the most vibration/noise when I tested it with mission planner. I think my next step is to balance the motors.

brunoferreiro · Nov 17, 2015

i have a similar problem but more notorius i think, look

I used a gopro hero 4 black with peau production lens 5.4 in 1080 W with peau production lens holder and glass circular polarizer. Do i need to use gimbal weigths?

Sampson · Nov 17, 2015

A 5.4mm lens will increase the visibility of vibrations due to a narrower fov. It looks like you have some horizon tilt? Maybe doing a compass and level calibration will help with that.

RotoFan · Jan 1, 2016

To update this thread, I have itemized below what I have done to improve and fix the AP issues I was having. Hopefully this will help others who have been having the same set of issues.

1. Gimbal Flop: The new gimbal I received as a RMA did fix this issue. Just a heads up, it took three weeks to get a replacement gimbal as it came from China.

2. Excessive wobble (shaking of the gimbal which caused unusable video): Replaced noisy rear right motor. There is a thread on this forum on how to measure motor vibration and balance motors with mission planner. To be honest, just listening to the motor at different RPMs and feeling the vibration was enough to figure out which motor was bad.

3. “Micro-vibrations” as described by several members of this forum. For this issue I have done several things:

a. Adjusted the gimbal cables paying not only attention to the HDMI cable, but also the gimbal control wire harness. I used small tie-wraps to insure the cables were away from gimbal mount. Also spent time insuring the bend radius was correct on both cables. My measurement of success was the gimbal staying centered in the mount (not being pushed by the cables to one side). Also having free movement.

b. I also found that balancing the gimbal helped as I have a filter on my Hero 4 black. Just search on balancing gimbal.

c. Lastly I balanced my props.

Overall I am very happy with my progress. I might spend time balancing the motors to see if that tweaks out some additional vibration. However, post processing seems to take out any remaining micro-vibrations so I don’t feel this is absolutely necessary to have decent video quality. Of course this is coming from someone that is an amateur at AP. Here is a link to a video where I was flying out to an oil-drilling rig (not too close) to use as a “micro-vibration’ point of reference. The gimbal was at 90 degrees, which is the hardest to stabilize in my experience. Please ignore the props as I was pushing the solo at several points to see if I could bring out speed vibration.

Cheers

RichWest · Jan 1, 2016

RotoFan said:
I might spend time balancing the motors to see if that tweaks out some additional vibration.

Balancing your motors will prove to be worth the effort.... The video looks great considering the level of light available, dang this winter gloom...

RotoFan · Jan 2, 2016

Rich,

Thanks for the feedback! This video was taken a week ago when it was around 9 degrees so not so conducive for testing. I am hoping when things warm up, the gimbal suspension will be more pliable.

I greatly appreciate your posts and have learned a lot from them. I agree that the motors and the gimbal suspension are areas where you can make significant improvement in minimizing vibration. I actually ordered two additional motor pods to get closer to a matched set. I will then try to balance them further. I do not feel comfortable with a bearing swap out although that might be an option I will pursue.

Also I think you are spot on that the gimbal suspension can be improved. I probably will not mess around to much with that until an after market product comes out that is not too difficult to install.

All in all I am happy with my purchase because I like the way this quad handles in the air (feels more like a plane), simple to fly, easy to see and the return to home has worked flawlessly for me.