I have also rewired the gimbal data cable in 32AWG silicon wire with a loop. so there is no force being conveyed into the gimbal from wiring at all..

Any issues with gimbal performance? 32 gauge is pretty thin, I picked some super flexible 26 gauge to do the same thing. I have some 30, but was worried they might not handle the current requirements of the gimbal motors. I also bought some 36 gauge wire and some micro HDMI connectors to solder up a cable. Just haven't gotten around to it, and the scenery is pretty ugly in the north easy now that the trees are all bare.
 
Roland, you have explored every aspect of the mechanical elements of SOLO and have done a Master's job not only of experimentation but quantifying and documenting your efforts to the benefit of all of us here. Thank you. You exemplify what this forum is all about and through your efforts advance the SOLO experience for many of us. I'm sure 3DR engineers are taking notes as well. Not wanting to take anything away from your incredible documentary, I think you will agree that for most of us here your skill and capabilities and far beyond ours. But, there are some basic (?) mods which are within the skills of many which you and Rich have commented on that can provide an enormous increase in video quality without a lot of effort. Here are my top three: 1. Balance props 2. HDMI Ribbon cable mod 3. Motor bearing replacement. With those 3 items I believe I have achieved a very high quotient of video stability with a minimum of effort and $$$. Again, your work is absolutely brilliant!
 
Roland,
This is excellent work. Thank you! I'm wanting to add bigger motors and a 6S system possibly and wondering what it will take. Do you know what amperage the esc's are rated for? I may be able to get away with the stock 4S system without having to re-engineer the battery system also.
 
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Roland,
This is excellent work. Thank you! I'm wanting to add bigger motors and a 6S system possibly and wondering what it will take. Do you know what amperage the esc's are rated for? I may be able to get away with the stock 4S system without having to re-engineer the battery system also.
@SoloMio start a new thread for 6S conversion, and I'll jump in. I have a few tips to add.
 
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This work is amazing Roland, thanks for your efforts.
I'm in Perth as well - do you reckon I could hire your services and test-rig one evening in the near future please? I've all but given up on my Solo at the moment and I don't have the time nor skills to get rid of the vibrations. I'd be keen to either balance the stock kit or attempt to get some Axi motors onto the Solo. Even if we could just get an Axi on your test rig that'd be great to see how a $100 motor stacks up with the cheaper options.
@JoelNewman check your PMs, (or private conversations) Im interested, keen actually, to get you sorted. Left 2 messages, no reply. Ball is in your court.
 
Roland, you have explored every aspect of the mechanical elements of SOLO and have done a Master's job not only of experimentation but quantifying and documenting your efforts to the benefit of all of us here. Thank you. You exemplify what this forum is all about and through your efforts advance the SOLO experience for many of us. I'm sure 3DR engineers are taking notes as well. Not wanting to take anything away from your incredible documentary, I think you will agree that for most of us here your skill and capabilities and far beyond ours. But, there are some basic (?) mods which are within the skills of many which you and Rich have commented on that can provide an enormous increase in video quality without a lot of effort. Here are my top three: 1. Balance props 2. HDMI Ribbon cable mod 3. Motor bearing replacement. With those 3 items I believe I have achieved a very high quotient of video stability with a minimum of effort and $$$. Again, your work is absolutely brilliant!

@David Weston, thanks for the kind words, flattering, although I think little over the top. Its just a bit of fun, shared for those who are interested to know.
Im with you all the way on the balancing, hdmi cable replacement, and bearing change.
I am going to do the same thing eventually. I want to change the bearings in a set of stock motor pods ready for change over so I can compare back and forth every so often.
The stock recipe is a good one, it just needs a few tweaks and a good result can be obtained without too much cost or difficulty.
 
Id just like to mention a few other things that need to be considered with this mod.

Modding this equipment is not for everyone, it is technical and can be difficult if you are new or not entirely familiar with this type of equipment.
I want to show what can be done with some of the hardware, and I have acheived results that I am happy with, but there are so many variables and your results may be different.
The motor and prop change on the test bench shows better runtiume is expected as the modified drivetrain is slightly more efficient.
In reality other factors come into play as well. The bought T-motors with the prop adapters installed are slightly heavier than the stock motors, and the APC props are heavier too. This weight addition ( x 4) will likely negate any runtime extension that a minor efficiency increase will produce.
As I have said earlier, my two main reasons for doing this are percieved reliability and noise/vibe reduction, and I have shown what I was able to acheive.

Another factor is balancing. Balance everything that spins, if you can. This is crucial. If you do nothing else, learn how to balance props, and then look at your motors.

The reason I like the APC props is that they can be balanced very accurately, and show the same reults on different balancers (rolling and magnetic)
The self tightening props, whilst they are convenient, are a pain to balance. You are forced to use a screw in shaft on a balancer and when the thread bottoms out in the hub, it goes off center slightly, altering perfect balance.
When balancing a prop you need to be able to turn the shaft 1/4 turn inside the prop to re-check balance (and to check that the balancer shaft is not bent), you cant do this with the screw in shafts as they presently are. I have them all, and even the ones that say they are 'precisely machined' bottom out in the hub and go slightly off center. The shaft at least needs to have a shoulder that contacts the prop hub before the thread bottoms out, thus staying square when it is tightened..
What may appear to be a perfectly balanced self tightening prop will not be, and will still cause vibes under power in the air, and you will wonder where the vibes are coming from.
BUT, the bottom line is, any balancing efforts will be beneficial, if you have a prop that used to tip over on the balancer and you added some tape and now it doesnt tip, then you will have reduced the vibes in your craft, and probably in your video as well.
I see the light in the dark 3Dr tunnel. Your massive testing and sharing is so great that I can t find words for it. Unbelievable fantastic - thank you.
 
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I was lucky enough to meet up with Roland (the OP) a couple of weeks ago so that he could take a look at my Solo, which has been providing terrible footage since I got it.

For what it's worth, now that I have seen his setup and his methodology in practice I can totally backup the work that he's presented in this discussion. If you've got the time and the patience to follow the workflow he has outlined then you will have some success in reducing the vibrations on your Solo.

As well as balancing the motors and props, he also identified that the Relish3D HDMI (v3) cable that I had installed was actually making my footage worse. The back of the plug coming out of the gimbal was coming into contact with other internal parts (the Pixhawk 2 if I remember rightly?) restricting the play towards the back. So now my HDMI ribbon cable has a straight connector into the HDMI board, then a right angle connector going into the gimbal, with some of the black rubber padding on the bottom of the main board (above the gimbal plug) cut away to give it room to move.

So these two fixes stopped the jello, and the sharp jitters whenever the Solo moved.

However there was still a lot of lower frequency vibration coming through in the footage, but it's different from 'normal' jello. My guess is that it's more to do with a combination of airflow/propwash and the fact that the gimbal dampening rubber is very soft at the moment because it's 35 degrees celsius (95F) here in Perth. So I did the earplug fix - stuffing some expanding foam earplugs into the dampening balls to stiffen them up. This has got the footage usable, but still not great.

For comparison I fly an Inspire 1 (X3 and X5) and a couple of Zenmuse GH4 gimbals at work, and I have a Zenmuse H3D and a GH4 gimbal at home, and the Solo footage is nowhere near as smooth as any of those. Before I start getting hatemail, yes I do know that that the GH4 gimbal itself costs more than the Solo, but I'm just using benchmarks that people might be familiar with!
The Solo gimbal motors don't feel anywhere near as tight or strong as the DJI gimbals when you touch the camera or try to knock it out of line. Even though the Inspire 1 gimbals flop around on the bottom of the aircraft the motors are strong enough that you'd never notice from the footage. I hope that the next Solo update will increase the power available to the gimbal motors again, which should stop it from being affected by the wind.

So in summary, the balancing of motors and props will reduce jello from vibrations coming from the aircraft.
Your choice of HDMI cable is important. The latest Relish3D product may be making your footage worse. I don't know how they get their promo footage so good?!
The gimbal doesn't seem strong enough to really handle the wind and propwash flowing across it. Hopefully this will be fixed in a firmware udpate.

I have footage from each step along my testing of different cable, and some stuff Roland got while he was tinkering with mine, so hopefully I'll get a comparison video together in the next few weeks.

Once again thanks so much for your help Roland. There's a lot of well-intentioned advice floating around the interweb, but it's great to find someone you can trust!
 
These are the Boca Bearing P/N's for SEALED bearings: SR2-LL/C3C and SR2-5UU3. I apologize for the previous P/N/s but these are correct for sealed bearings. They will run you about $16 per pair,,but to me they were worth it as a bearing failure in flight,,well, guess I don't need to elaborate.

Boca Bearing Company :: Ceramic Bearing Specialists

I am considering ordering the bearings to fix No4 motor pod that went bad which 3DR replaced for me at no charge. (Great service on their part by the way.) Which model bearing bearing goes on the top of the motor (where the shaft comes out) and which one goes on the bottom side?

Thanks for all the great tips!
 
I am considering ordering the bearings to fix No4 motor pod that went bad which 3DR replaced for me at no charge. (Great service on their part by the way.) Which model bearing bearing goes on the top of the motor (where the shaft comes out) and which one goes on the bottom side?

Thanks for all the great tips!
As soon as you have it apart it will all become clear.
The smaller bearing is at the top and the larger at the bottom.
Be careful installing them, and let us know your result.
 
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because T-MOTORS are specialized in motor and props i buy once before the anti-gravity props very stable and very sharp
 
Just finished some preliminary testing with the newly installed 800kV T-Motors. They appear to be much smoother in operation. I tried both the stock Solo props and the APC props. I couldn't distinguish which had better performance or less noise at this time. Will now rebalance both sets of propellers and test more through the week.

Appling the T-Motor prop adapters did add vibration over the naked motor. Still very low however.

@RolandS888 mentioned in another thread the Solo motors lacked power at 100% throttle. I was messing around last night with one of the converted T-Motors pods and even in idle had more power against finger friction than the stock pod.

Reasons for change...

Bearings
Low cogging torque
Balance
Power?
 
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And you can probably add reliability to the list as well, given the amount of pod failures lately.

@RichWest , and others who may be interested, I have found the prop adapter that suits the stock Solo props perfectly, they are shorter than the T-Motor PA29/30 combo (that are made for the DJI props) and are made for the T-motor, the props sit down squarely like they do on the stock motors.
This means that you cant use the APC props on them, so if you want to use APC(ST) you need to leave the PA29/30s on. (Or wait until the new APC Solo props are available.)
These short PAs make for a very neat installation and work perfectly.

Team BlackSheep Online Store - 900kV2 Motor Self Tightening Prop Adapter (CCW)
Team BlackSheep Online Store - 900kV2 Motor Self Tightening Prop Adapter (CW)

Short thread T-motor prop adapters for Solo props
DSC07151zz.jpg
DSC07152zz.jpg
 
And you can probably add reliability to the list as well, given the amount of pod failures lately.

@RichWest , and others who may be interested, I have found the prop adapter that suits the stock Solo props perfectly, they are shorter than the T-Motor PA29/30 combo (that are made for the DJI props) and are made for the T-motor, the props sit down squarely like they do on the stock motors.
This means that you cant use the APC props on them, so if you want to use APC(ST) you need to leave the PA29/30s on. (Or wait until the new APC Solo props are available.)
These short PAs make for a very neat installation and work perfectly.

Team BlackSheep Online Store - 900kV2 Motor Self Tightening Prop Adapter (CCW)
Team BlackSheep Online Store - 900kV2 Motor Self Tightening Prop Adapter (CW)

Short thread T-motor prop adapters for Solo props
DSC07151zz.jpg
DSC07152zz.jpg
Thanks for the links Roland, got a set ordered. Got my Tigers put on this weekend but have not had a chance to fly them yet. Definitely quieter though.
 
@RolandS888 are they any better balanced then the PA29/30 combo?
I think they may be, they are shorter which keeps the mass lower. I got lower vibe readings with these PAs on, but my already balanced motor readings were very low to begin with.
2 motors were at imperceptible levels (< 0.05mm/s displacement), and of the others one was 0.35mm/s and the other was 0.75mm/s.
With the short PAs, 2 of them are still < 0.05mm/s, and the others are 0.19 and 0.33mm/s, but the vibration characteristics did change with the new PAs so I went through the rebalancing process once again, and got fussy with them this time doing a 12 point check.
Stock motors are typically around 3.0 to 7.0 and I have seen them at >15.
 

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