Any gimbal builders on here?

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Getting ready to start mine.
and I think I am going to spend the extra money on an alexmos controller versus Storm.
Looks like people are making progress on an alternative gimbal front slowly.
Should we start a discussion here
 
Looks promising especially since the stock gimbal supplies are going to dry up soon.
 
I think we need a Q&A session on gimbals, or a fact sheet even.

1: Is it possible to use another gimbal with a solo?
Answer seems to be yes!

2: Can we get everyone to agree on what gimbal to use?
Probably not since everyone has their own favorites or spares they are using.

3: Why does the above question matter?
Because we'd then be able to come up with a common gimbal solution with common install packages (mounting plates, wiring instructions, even a package deal for people to sell).

4: What do we lose by using a 3rd party gimbal?
Smart shots apparently???. Camera control (ev comp control, adjusting resolution, turning on and off protune etc).

5: So what do we actually want from a different gimbal at the very least?
Tilt control, the ability to use different camera's (apparently once it has a HDMI out, we might be sorted there).

I'm not sure if all the smart shot functions are tied into the gimbal/camera. For instance an orbit shot would seem to rely on GPS, as would "follow me". Optical follow me seems to be software driven by Solex? However smart shots that need direct camera control (pano, HDR, etc) are what would be affected.

So that's my understanding of the issues, pro's and cons with other gimbals. Am I right, wrong? And are there other considerations that people have to add? It's all about edumication here!
 
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My first solo has this 3D gimbal mounted, its screwed to the gimbal bay "door" and I compressed the dampers with zip ties It works great very steady I custom made a flat HDMI cable for less vibration on gimbal.IMG_20170125_152511.jpg
IMG_20170125_152607.jpg

Its based off of a Storm32 controller 76 dollars shipped!

I really have never tried smart shots per se but I do have Tilt control on channel 6 (The Paddle) I'm going to try out some smart shots and report back. The PID's were really simple to setup for my Sony AS100V using OlliW's program for PC. This Gimbal is a Gopro style variant so I clocked it 90 degrees the tilt is actually the roll...
 
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Pretty groovy, can you let us know if you had to do anything in particular to get this working? Any adjustments or mods to either the bird of the controller? If this works well, it's a great step forward for those of us who want to try out different gimbals and camera's. Looks pretty sweet!
 
This Gimbal can and should work receiving heartbeat messages (Data) via Mavlink for some reason mine would not get a heartbeat.

So I used Power pin 1 the PWM pin 14 and ground Pin 3 right on top of the mainboard beneath the battery tray, it's the breakout for the accessory bay connector here is a drawing i did for another member here using a Tarot gimbal
You would also need to alter a parameter in mission planner for PWM its "RC6_FUNCTION" change from a 0 to a 1 and write parameters

tarot.jpg

pinout3.jpg

And a Storm32 controller with Mavlink...

storm321.jpg
 
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I really wanted to go alexmos because soldering that Storm board looks intimidating.
If I could buy that new Storm NT and encoders pre-soldered I would pay someone for the work.
But it looks like alexmos is not supported as well as Storm, though Randy seems to be hinting he may work on alexmos
 
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From Randy
Just FYI - I'm planning to put some work into improving our support for the AlexMos/SimpleBGC support.
It's great what @lekston did - i'm still struggling a bit to get working hardware and then I'll review it properly.
I had a chat with the man behind AlexMos/SimpleBGC and I think neither of us minds too much whether we use the serial or MAVLink protocol going forward.​

SimpleBGC, MavLink control, Yaw
 
your video not working is a bit off topic, might want to start a new thread.
This thread is about folks building custom gimbals for solo or DIY birds
 
Are smart shot functions are tied into the gimbal/camera. For instance an orbit shot would seem to rely on GPS, as would "follow me". Optical follow me seems to be software driven by Solex? However smart shots that need direct camera control (pano, HDR, etc) are what would be affected.

So that's my understanding of the issues, pro's and cons with other gimbals. Am I right, wrong? And are there other considerations that people have to add? It's all about edumication here!


From what I can gather from reading code, disassembling gimbals, and the dissection of MAVLink chatter @hackbard23 and I undertook a while back, the smart shots only work because the gimbal is feeding a significant amount of information back. The smart shot scripts use this data as input for calculations they make on the fly.

So, if someone can get their STorM32 to spit lots and lots of positional data out over MAVLink, I'd bet I can beat at least one smart shot script into making use of it.
 
And I think the tilt control could be enabled from smart shots by a little judicious code editing as well.
 
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I suspect you are correct in that the solo gimbal used encoders for that additional data
sadly the Storm32 NT board don't support encoders yet, and it is the most compatible with Mavlink
The alexmos which is well developed along the encoder line is not well supported by Mavlink

So for now I suppose I will get a Storm NT board and wait for their encoder version
I see they are trying to get a Solo into the hands of Oli the main man on Storm

T-STorM32: The best STorM32 ever !? - RC Groups
 
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The thing is, the gimbal stabilization need not use those encoders at all as far as Solo is concerned. It could simply pass thru the data if the encoders were high enough resolution. But I guess most people don't wanna spend 25 bucks each on their encoders on an already expensive piece like a gimbal. So they use cheaper ones and tax the microcontroller on the gimbal board to do sensor fusion.

Sigh.
 
yes you would not believe the amount of reading I have done on this
it appears the "encoders" on the solo gimbal are not true encoders but potentiometers being tasked to provide encoder like data.
But that does seem to be at least an ingredient in the solo gimbal secret sauce
 
Yeah that is a great discussion
was a bit thrown when Olli said he no longer supports mavlink
 

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