3DR Solo with Sony R10C gimbal question

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Hey everyone. Just bought 3dr solo without camera, and separately bought Sony R10C with gimbal. The question is, can this camera and gimbal be used with Side Pilot or Solex? Or it's exclusive for Site Scan? Because the QGround Control doesn't see it as a gimal, same with Mission Planner.
 
I've also been having this issue.
Hey everyone. Just bought 3dr solo without camera, and separately bought Sony R10C with gimbal. The question is, can this camera and gimbal be used with Side Pilot or Solex? Or it's exclusive for Site Scan? Because the QGround Control doesn't see it as a gimal, same with Mission Planner.
 
At present it seems limited to Site Scan birds, but I and others have them on the way for...ahem...study.

Based on the number of Open Source licenses in the UMC-R10C technical manual, I'm betting that it is a matter of finding the right bits to twiddle.

I certainly welcome anyone else who wants to contribute to the effort. This is quite a nice camera system for airborne use.
 
Oooh- 3dr solo works with site scan? With Sony RC10? (...with Solex installed?). I guess I was under impression site scan only worked with the new big 3DR drones. But I'm not sure where I got that idea...

Sorry I may not be much help with coding, but if it's a matter of spending time reading through manual for some parameters/settings (that someone tells me to look for), I could do that!!!
 
There is nothing worthwhile I've seen in the manuals, unfortunately.

The ORIGINAL Site Scan birds were 3DR Solos. Then came the Yuneec H520 [a nice bird but damned expensive]
 
I've just received my Site Scan gimbal and it looks like it's a simple USB connection back to the i.MX6. I'll be investigating in the coming weeks and months
 
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I also just received a SiteScan gimbal from eBay.

Potentially silly question: can anyone confirm that there was a video downlink in SiteScan?
 
There is.

The R10C doesn't actually compose a video stream. My understanding from the manual and some supplemental reading from Sony is that it allows a high-refresh rate preview image to be transferred.
 
So that is directly through the imx6 (not HDMI), and therefore enabled by some sort of Sitescan specific coding on the bird?
 
There is no HDMI connection on the R10C. There is a USB connection [possibly with a sony multi-connect hiding inside it] so yes, it comes thru the i.MX6
 
Trying time to time to get the combo SiteScan Mount + Sony R10C working...

Not much progress, but here is what I found out :

- with a 3DR Solo running the last official 3DR ardupilot, the camera is powered on (the led is on) and the gimbal is synchronised to the vehicle's moves (it's properly balanced when one handle it). But no way to remotely control the tilt of the gimbal (or to trigger the camera; for the record, back in time the original SiteScan bird never let the user to manually trigger the camera, the shots were always programmatically controlled during the mission). Couldn't managed to go further, the RC is stuck in the preflight message, and, anyway, and as far as I can remember, the genuine 3DR solo app don't allow to trigger a SiteScan equiped Solo (but it did fly it)... Only the SiteScan app did (or does) the full job.
- with a 3DR Solo updated to Open Solo 4, Solex, QGC, etc : the gimbal is powered on but stays stucked in the middle range of the 2 servos, whatever the vehicle tilt/roll are. The camera doesn't seem to be powered on...

Conclusion : most of the code that would allows us to control the gimbal/camera are probably already open sourced in the 3DR official repo... It's written in C++ and could probably be adapted to Python's refurbishing in Open Solo.

I am not that experienced in coding, but maybe someone more confident on that could have a look and find some hints to adapt what was already converted to python... to be continued?
 
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Trying time to time to get the combo SiteScan Mount + Sony R10C working...

Not much progress, but here is what I found out :

- with a 3DR Solo running the last official 3DR ardupilot, the camera is powered on (the led is on) and the gimbal is synchronised to the vehicle's moves (it's properly balanced when one handle it). But no way to remotely control the tilt of the gimbal (or to trigger the camera; for the record, back in time the original SiteScan bird never let the user to manually trigger the camera, the shots were always programmatically controlled during the mission). Couldn't managed to go further, the RC is stuck in the preflight message, and, anyway, and as far as I can remember, the genuine 3DR solo app don't allow to trigger a SiteScan equiped Solo (but it did fly it)... Only the SiteScan app did (or does) the full job.
- with a 3DR Solo updated to Open Solo 4, Solex, QGC, etc : the gimbal is powered on but stays stucked in the middle range of the 2 servos, whatever the vehicle tilt/roll are. The camera doesn't seem to be powered on...

Conclusion : most of the code that would allows us to control the gimbal/camera are probably already open sourced in the 3DR official repo... It's written in C++ and could probably be adapted to Python's refurbishing in Open Solo.

I am not that experienced in coding, but maybe someone more confident on that could have a look and find some hints to adapt what was already converted to python... to be continued?
Mine behaves the same. Running 'lsusb' on the drone itself also shows the USB (camera) is not connected. The camera does power on however (indicated by the green light) and when connected you can't fire a photo with the shutter button. Disconnect the USB and you can take pictures manually (with the camera out of the gimbal). This does not apply to a standard charging cable or even a PC connection, so Solo is doing something with it, I'm just not sure what yet.
 
Interesting post on FB's 3DR solo owner group, where the use of the SiteScan setup is discussed with the official and free app Site Scan for ArcGIS (Limited Edition). One has to own an iPad with iPadOS13 installed to try it, and a solo with the last genuine firmware from 3DR (not Open Solo).

the discussion :

(see Kevin Luiz contributions)

the app :

Does someone here own the both to try this ?
 
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Interesting post on FB's 3DR solo owner group, where the use of the SiteScan setup is discussed with the official and free app Site Scan for ArcGIS (Limited Edition). One has to own an iPad with iPadOS13 installed to try it, and a solo with the last genuine firmware from 3DR (not Open Solo).

the discussion :

(see Kevin Luiz contributions)

the app :

Does someone here own the both to try this ?
I read that also. Unfortunately, I am on OpenSolo4 and Android. That said, I was playing around with the camera a bit out of the gimbal and found something interesting. I knew these were "based off" the ILCE-QX1 smartphone cameras....what I didn't know is they ARE a QX1! Peel the almost invisible black stickers off and you'll see that the UMC-R10C is actually an ILCE-QX1 with different firmware. They just re-imaged them and put some stickers on... Additionally, If you have a smartphone with NFC, scan the camera you'll see the QX1 access point name for the Wi-Fi function (that isn't functional with the current firmware).
 
Hey again guys, So I've forked OpenSolo and Ardupilot and I'm going to take a stab at recompiling with support for the r10C camera and gimbal. We shall see how it goes. Any fellow developers in here working toward this also? Is there a repo I can possibly contribute to rather than starting from scratch?
 
Hey again guys, So I've forked OpenSolo and Ardupilot and I'm going to take a stab at recompiling with support for the r10C camera and gimbal. We shall see how it goes. Any fellow developers in here working toward this also? Is there a repo I can possibly contribute to rather than starting from scratch?
Can't help with development, but following with interest!
 
Interesting post on FB's 3DR solo owner group, where the use of the SiteScan setup is discussed with the official and free app Site Scan for ArcGIS (Limited Edition). One has to own an iPad with iPadOS13 installed to try it, and a solo with the last genuine firmware from 3DR (not Open Solo).

the discussion :

(see Kevin Luiz contributions)

the app :

Does someone here own the both to try this ?
I own a couple birds with the original firmware and have access to an iPad. But I'm
not on FB and don't wanna be.... so if someone can get permission from the poster there to cross-post here that'd be very nice
 
Hello,
Did you managed to make it work?
I'm still stucked since the day I received it! (from Yarr actually, no problem dude, it's a long way project ;) )

My second option is to try to connect the servos directly to the autopilot, or another gimbal PCB card, to make it work independantly...
But after disassembling, it seems that the servos are specificly driven by the gimbal PCB, no way to make them moove. I'll try to replace them with other digital/metal servos, althought you have a magic solution to connect this gimbal normally?

Thank you,
Julien
 

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