The gimbal poll thread

nuggetz · Sep 17, 2015

As more and more of us are getting their gimbals I feel that a poll would be useful to see what percentage of people are having problems and what percentage have working gimbals out of the box. Sometimes its easy to misjudge something based on a few posts so I'd like to try something a little more scientific. Please select one answer.

Timmytimetravel · Sep 17, 2015

Nice. Will cast my vote later tonight / tomorrow. Yay? Yay. Either way wait is over

Timmytimetravel · Sep 18, 2015

May have overcompensated hearing stories. Careful install. No battery tray removal required. Level (on super short pile outside carpet), compass and sticks calibration before first flight. Pointed to north on all takeoffs. Flew fine but gimbal tilted to one side. Redid level calibration on concrete. 2nd flight all good.
Only thing was could not hit "fly" top of android tablet to change smart shots mode (have new update released today), but if I assigned them hard buttons in settings I could work them. Follow me seemed absent, but worked in tower

al bernardino · Sep 18, 2015

fly is no longer at the top, there is an icon bottom left to get to those controls

Timmytimetravel · Sep 18, 2015

Doh! I hit that for options i think,?didn't realize it was first mode as well. Thanks

pyrate · Sep 18, 2015

for everyone who said not out of the box, check your wire routing and try booting up solo oriented to north, do a stick calibration.
these three things have fixed the majority of problems people are seeing

mcneely19 · Sep 18, 2015

Flying great. I did remove the battery tray to check routing. No stick calibration. No taking off facing north. Seems to just work.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

Mike Lanzetta · Sep 18, 2015

Great idea, anecdotal reporting can easily be misleading.

However, I would like to hear from 3DR on this. We shouldn't have to rely on this forum. We shouldn't have to point North, or take out the battery tray. Isn't this why the extra wait on the gimbal in the first place?

mcneely19 · Sep 18, 2015

Removing the battery tray is just extra insurance that no cables are touching the yaw motor. The extra wait wasn't to redesign the Gimbal bay so removing the battery tray is just a smart practice in the install process. I really have the feeling that the gimbal isn't causing people's issues.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

al bernardino · Sep 18, 2015

I had to remove my battery tray to get to hdmi cable. I replaced it to use with my tarot gimbal. It gave me video feed on tablet. So when I got the gimbal in I opened solo up. Removing the battery tray made installation a breeze and to check cable placement on gimbal. Have not had any problems with gimbal.

NYG · Sep 18, 2015

I've only had a couple of fairly quick flights but it all looks to work very well. I took the battery tray off too when routing the cables. It may not be necessary but being able to manipulate the cables from above and see how everything is seated makes me more confident with the install.

baldguy · Sep 18, 2015

I've had the gimbal a few days and have flown three times with it. It's amazing. That being said, I've never flown anything with a gimbal before. Please check out the flight from yesterday evening. It was a manual flight (with GPS). It went well, however, this evening, I was practicing and burned through the first battery just fine, then after shutting down Solo for a battery swap, it linked back up to the sats and and I got a message on the Solo App that the GoPro needed a firmware update and I had the option to dismiss. I proceeded in order to get more flight time, but the gimbal did a head flop and would not respond. I figured, "well, I guess I better go update the GoPro." Upon returning home, it seems my GoPro is already up to date because GoPro Studio, didn't say squat about it. I'll try again a little later since I've totally shut everything down and will have restarted. I'll post later on the outcome.

Well here's the scoop. I just went out and tried a fresh flight. I could control the recording capability from the Solo App but the gimbal was not controllable at all. It seemed like it wanted to respond but would just involuntarily twitch to one side. Any thoughts?...

Adimuzio513 · Sep 18, 2015

One more works out of box and I'm back in love with my solo, I'll know just how much tomorrow after some more use. So far so good though, as is now I couldn't be happier with the short time I've had it in the air.

Del · Sep 18, 2015

Adimuzio513 said:
One more works out of box and I'm back in love with my solo, I'll know just how much tomorrow after some more use. So far so good though, as is now I couldn't be happier with the short time I've had it in the air.

Gotta love that!!!
Mine is in Transit from B&H..so I'm thinking I should get it Mon or Tue...I think when I do finally get it..im just gonna sit it on my coffee table and just stair at it for about an hour!! Lol

Adimuzio513 · Sep 19, 2015

Del said:
Gotta love that!!!
Mine is in Transit from B&H..so I'm thinking I should get it Mon or Tue...I think when I do finally get it..im just gonna sit it on my coffee table and just stair at it for about an hour!! Lol

Sadly after a long week at work I kinda did since it was dark already, I past out with it uninstalled in front of me. Woke half hour later installed and put it in the air.

Only thing odd was my gps lock was slow and I took off in manual, it finally locked at about 100 feet. Hoping that was just a fluke or maybe a reset from plugging up the new wire.

Does anybody know what the button is above the gimbal, I'm assuming a reset of some kind? I'm sure it's posted somewhere but thought I'd ask before going on a hunt for it.