Anyone want a Storm32 gimbal adapter cable?

[k4kfh]

UPDATE: This is the current cable design. It provides power to the gimbal and MAVlink (making the gimbal controlled from the Solo transmitter). It does NOT provide access to GoPro controls like the stock gimbal.

I just successfully installed a Storm32 gimbal (the cheap aluminum BangGood kind) on my Solo. Still have a little more tuning and long-term testing to do, but everything works and the bird didn't explode upon takeoff, so I'm calling it a success.

Obviously mounting a third party gimbal is a little difficult, but I know a guy with a milling machine so we used some aluminum and made a nice little plate for it. You could easily make it out of plywood, I just wanted to play with the milling machine.

Here is my question: if I produced a small batch of adapter cables to use the OEM gimbal connector with other stuff, would anybody be interested? I figure the most universal way is to have each wire terminate in a female Dupont connector (fits over GPIO pins like on Arduinos/Raspberry Pis/etc).

I already know I can fabricate these, and I think I could sell them for between $10 and $15 (haven't worked out exact pricing just yet, that's a ballpark guesstimate). If enough people would buy them I'll probably put together a small batch. If you want one, please fill out the poll below.

Happy to answer any questions or take suggestions!

 

[davemh]

I'd be interested in one.
Not ready to convert to a Storm 32 gimbal yet but is bound to happen before long. Keep us informed and a photo of your cable would help promote.

 

[k4kfh]

Photos:

Below are prototype photos, the finished cable would be slightly different in a couple ways (please read so you know what to expect!):

• The wires would match the colors of the wires on the internal 3DR gimbal cable (so the wiring diagram on the Solo Dev Guide will be valid for this cable). I just used all red wire here because I happen to have a ton of that on hand and it's fine for making a proof of concept.
• The cable would terminate in 8 female 1x1 DuPont connectors. These photos show 4 female 1x1 DuPont connectors that have been spliced to the red wires. This is just because I have a limited supply of those connectors handy, so I sacrificed some cheap premade breadboard cables for these photos. The production version of the cable would have the connectors crimped directly on the wires, so there would be no ugly splices or anything.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I am happy to entertain ideas for tweaking the cable to fit certain needs (such as a single 2x4 Dupont connector housing, or making a cable specifically for the cheap BangGood 3 Axis SToRM32 that requires zero soldering and has all the right connectors already.)

If I can get 5-10 people on board with this I can probably make a batch, but any fewer than that and pricing of components doesn't really work out.

 

[Mike Holfield]

I"m a complete noob to some of this, but it seems like a great idea if I'm understanding it correctly. This would be a plug and play solution to attach a 3rd party gimbal to the solo and still have full functions (pan/tilt/smartshots)?

 

[k4kfh]

I"m a complete noob to some of this, but it seems like a great idea if I'm understanding it correctly. This would be a plug and play solution to attach a 3rd party gimbal to the solo and still have full functions (pan/tilt/smartshots)?

Basically that is the idea. This doesn't solve the problem of mounting the aftermarket gimbal to the Solo, but if you've got a drill and some plywood or some acrylic then you could fab something pretty easily. Controlling the gimbal from the controller works as expected, but I have not tested smartshots. If they don't work, it is purely a software thing that should be fixed eventually, as Olliw42's BetaCopter adaptation of the ArduCopter software supports smart shots with this wiring.

So in short, everything except smart shots are confirmed to be working. Smart shots may or may not work, I have not tried yet as I've been busy tuning the gimbal the last couple days.

Edit: If we can all agree on a good gimbal to center this around (I used the typical $75 3 axis chinese one) then I am not opposed to making a kit that includes a 3D printed plate and screws or something where it's completely plug and play. But the first time around I will probably just sell cables and see how that goes.

 

[Mike Holfield]

I was gonna suggest a 3d printed plate cold probably be made. I don't know much about any of this, but am always looking to learn. Even without smart shots, it opens up a bunch of different cameras, especially at $75 for a gimbal instead of the outrageous $2-300 some people are asking for solo.

Which gimbal is it you are talking about?

 

[k4kfh]

I was gonna suggest a 3d printed plate cold probably be made. I don't know much about any of this, but am always looking to learn. Even without smart shots, it opens up a bunch of different cameras, especially at $75 for a gimbal instead of the outrageous $2-300 some people are asking for solo.

Which gimbal is it you are talking about?

This is the gimbal I have. The gimbal itself is fairly well made although the PCB solder quality is a little questionable...but for the price not too bad. On mine the USB port popped off (taking solder mask with it) so I am hoping they will warranty replace the board, but in the future I guess I'll know just to be really careful with the USB connector. If anyone knows how I can use the gimbal tool without using USB I am open to suggestions, really only need USB to tune the gimbal.

As for the 3d printed plate, my only concern is the rigidity of a thin sheet of plastic compared to a thin sheet of aluminum. I don't know much about manufacturing but it might not cost much more to have a shop machine a whole bunch of the aluminum plates on a CNC mill. There is also the option of acrylic sheets in a laser engraver although that worries me that it might crack under stress. We could probably figure something out, but for the first batch I'll probably just do cables so I can gauge interest and make any improvements needed to the cable before we make it a whole kit.

Edit: It would be a total piece of cake to make a complete kit if we settled for a two axis gimbal. There are already 3d printed mounts designed for those. Personally I like the 3 axis gimbal but I'm not opposed to making a kit for two axis gimbals.

 

[Mike Holfield]

I thought 3dr had published a printable gimbal plate on the open source documentation

 

[k4kfh]

They have published the gimbal "beauty plate" that they used, but the center-to-center spacing of the grommet holes is pretty different for the Solo gimbal vs a SToRM32. The SToRM32 is actually slightly too large (45mm center to center) to make a plate for unless you make one that extends just a little outside the Solo's normal dimensions. This is due to the size of the SToRM32 control board so you'd have to make pretty significant modifications to the upper mounting plate of the SToRM32 gimbal as well as the mounting for the control board if you wanted to make it work with the Solo rubber grommets. So IMO it's easiest just to make a simple flat plate (either plastic or aluminum) that bolts on to the existing plate that comes with the Solo. The only caveat to that is that it requires leg extensions to keep the gimbal from dragging the ground just a tiny bit.

 

[Crewdawg56]

I am definitely interested please send pm when they go on sale

 

[wlyons]

Photos:

Below are prototype photos, the finished cable would be slightly different in a couple ways (please read so you know what to expect!):

• The wires would match the colors of the wires on the internal 3DR gimbal cable (so the wiring diagram on the Solo Dev Guide will be valid for this cable). I just used all red wire here because I happen to have a ton of that on hand and it's fine for making a proof of concept.
• The cable would terminate in 8 female 1x1 DuPont connectors. These photos show 4 female 1x1 DuPont connectors that have been spliced to the red wires. This is just because I have a limited supply of those connectors handy, so I sacrificed some cheap premade breadboard cables for these photos. The production version of the cable would have the connectors crimped directly on the wires, so there would be no ugly splices or anything.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I am happy to entertain ideas for tweaking the cable to fit certain needs (such as a single 2x4 Dupont connector housing, or making a cable specifically for the cheap BangGood 3 Axis SToRM32 that requires zero soldering and has all the right connectors already.)

If I can get 5-10 people on board with this I can probably make a batch, but any fewer than that and pricing of components doesn't really work out.

I would be interested in one of those.

 

[olliw42]

if you would ship to EU and shipping wouldn't be more than let's say 5$ I would be interested in one too

 

[TurboGhost]

If i had a day or 2 to get into fusion 360 and play with a couple designs im sure i could come up with a " Solo to Universal" gimbal plate that should help solve our little problem here. And by the looks of it im gonna be stuck inside for the next 2 days anyways so i may jump on it and see if i can print a prototype of 2 for us to try out... When im done ill post the STL files up on thingiverse and a link here, but i guess if anyone needs em made i can help with that too.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[TurboGhost]

if you would ship to EU and shipping wouldn't be more than let's say 5$ I would be interested in one too

You didnt hack your original wires up in the testing olli?

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[olliw42]

You didnt hack your original wires up in the testing olli?

I did the connection by cutting the original wires and soldering extensions to them ... and not by building a nice extension cord with the correct plug on one side and convenient connectors on the other side

 

[TurboGhost]

I did the connection by cutting the original wires and soldering extensions to them ... and not by building a nice extension cord with the correct plug on one side and convenient connectors on the other side

Ahh, okay. Hey if it works, it works. Im happy to see youve started playin with a solo and working on integrating it into your storm32 system! Cant wait to see more on it.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

 

[k4kfh]

UPDATE: If you are interested please read this!

I have been doing some math on parts cost and I realized that it is a lot more sensible not to include every wire of the cable. I could include all 8 wires, but all you need to make a SToRM32 gimbal work is battery power (2 wires) and MAVlink from the PixHawk (2 more wires). Nobody has any information on the proprietary GoPro USB bus so we can leave those three wires off, and we don't need the little 5v rail that's meant for powering the GoPro.

So the resulting cable would be 4 wires, and include everything you need to connect a SToRM32 gimbal like mine to the Solo. The only soldering would be if your gimbal doesn't have power headers, in which case you could solder 2 male breakaway headers to your SToRM32 board's power headers. Here is a crude mockup of the cable, it would be 4-5 inches long:

If you want to buy one of these cables, please visit this poll. I need to know how many people are interested before I can move forward.

Would you buy the gimbal cable mocked up in the forum thread?

 

[Bchap9]

Missed the poll but deffinaitely am interested. Pm when they are available or I can just check back later.

Cool idea

 

[Anndybo]

I'm testing same gimbal and tried to power GoPro by USB port but if HDMI cable is connected same time, GoPro stop recording. It would be nice to have option to charge camera while on gimbal. Will test with other cameras (Xiaomi and SJCam). I'm interested even I already cut my gimbal wires

To mount Storm gimbal I used four short srews with nuts to mount it to regular Solo gimbal plate.

 

[Craig L. Johnson - USMC]

what is this used for? or what can I use this for?