Here is the only solution I'm aware of and its fairly rough around the edges. With more research there may be a more elegant solution to be found.

All the buttons on the gopro are of the basic mechanical contact type. So if you open up your gopro and are confident in your soldering skills you can do a relatively cheap mod.

There are plenty of good tutorials on youtube about opening up your Gopro so you can start with that and see if its something you want to undertake. If you are up the challenge then you will need some very small gauge wire, a couple micro rc switches from Hansen Hobby and as an option(not necessary and requires opening your TX) two position momentary TX switches from Aloft Hobbies.

Basically you open up your gopro and solder a wire to the ground on the usb port and wire to each of the positive terminals of the any of the three buttons you want to control. I used some IMU wire from burnt up IMU. Its really small and very flexible. I only do the power and shutter buttons but you can do bluetooth as well.


You can trigger any button by taking that wire to ground. Add the micro rc switches inline to your button wires and any spare channel on your RX you can control from your TX.

For everyone that missed the original media conference call this morning the FAA/DOt has uploaded a recording to youtube.

To hear it straight form the source proposing an amazingly realistic approach is a very welcomed development!!!

FAA/DOT Conference call regarding 2/15/15 proposed regulations for commercial sUAS Operations (23 min 29 sec)

Here are some links to all the new information that recently became available today:

Audio only from FAA/DOT conference call


NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULEMAKING REGULATORY EVALUATION
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems
14 CFR Part 107
OFFICE OF AVIATION POLICY AND PLANS
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS DIVISION


Overview of Small UAS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking

Operation and Certification of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Fact Sheet – UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS (UAS)

Peace Park aired in full yesterday on ABC. Blown away by how many aerial shots made the final cut...but then again the CK800 was at the masterful hands of Trent and the CopterKids!!!

Danny Davis: Full Video | Peace Park 2014 | Mountain Dew (46 min 52 sec)

The copter made more cameo shots. Here is my favorite.


Here is the CK800 with Ronin. This was a trial on the way to designing V3 of the airframe and gimbal. With V3 the gimbal and airframe are integrated so gone are the front tube mounts. Really excited about the new custom wire rope isolators I've designed with the idea to create a system that behaves and reacts more as one single mass rather than two masses with a loose connection point The new gimbal will be brushless of course but with encoders!
Exciting times ahead for sure in the workshop!!

Recently produced a mount for the Ronin to fly on the CK800.

Pretty sure there are not many Ronins flying and being on a single rotor has to be rare.

Will post results as they come in from the field.

At work in the Snow

Yesterday the DHL man made my day with the delivery of the new 80mm class gimbal motor from Iflight!

There is a lot of interest in these new larger motors to power gimbals capable of flying RED and FS700 cameras so I'll be doing a review here reporting my findings.

Initial impressions are good from a construction standpoint. The hub is robust with larger 17mm ID bearings that are well spaced. Securing the motor/can/shaft assembly to the hub is a solid alloy plate with (2) 3mm bolts. This provides a solid connection and hopefully proves up to the task of supporting the loads associated with larger cameras.

Pieces for a totally new gimbal are starting to come of the cnc machine and the motors will have a new home for testing this weekend. I'll report back with photos of the complete gimbal and flight reports after the weekend.
However, to start things off here are some pictures of the motors dissembled.

Specs:

Model NO.:GBM8017-120T

Weight:318grams

Copper wire thickness: 0.29mm

Configuration:24N28P

Pre-wound turns : 120 turns

DC resistance (ohms): 18.8

Motor dimension: 90*13mm

Mounting hole (Top/ bottom ) : 52,33mm

http://www.funtobuyonline.com/ipower...ra-gimbal.html...Continue Reading

Working on another fun brushless gimbal project in the cnc lab.

Here is a fairly standard direct drive unit for pan axis of a brushless gimbal.

Appearance wise it does not stray far from many of the styles available on ebay or alixpress(hey, no need to reinvent the wheel here). However, one very important feature has been upgraded. Rather than using a standard prop adapter like many or just hanging the gimbal off an extended motor shaft, this unit hangs the entire weight of the gimbal on a flanged delrin hub. Prop adapter and motor shafts were never designed to deal with the potential side loads they see as a gimbal shaft. The hub passes through a 1" ID bearing and is attached to the motor can with (3) 3mm bolts. Plenty of bearing surface area to deal with side loads and the delrin is fairly resilient when it comes to fatigue and vibration dampening....Continue Reading

Custom built these for heavy cameras on tilt axis.

T-Motor U8...what a beautiful motor...and here I am ripping it apart!

I'll admit I definitely had second thoughts about attempting a rewind once i got this in my hands. The quality of craftsmanship shows and is everything I would expect from a motor in this top price range.

The rewind was not as easy as I had hoped with such a large motor. I envisioned having a lot of room to wide each stator. WRONG! The stators are close together and there are 36 of them!

The cnc work is amazing and in some areas it is incredibly fine. This presented the first major challenge/decision. The design of the hub prevents you from leaving everything intact and winding...the hub blocks half of your winding path. The stator is glued to the hub as you would expect to find. However, to save weight they machined away as much alloy as possible leaving not much to hold the stator. After looking at it for a while I wasn't sure about heating it up and trying to manually remove the stator for winding...worried that even with heat the force needed may bend the hub and or stator itself. The other option was to cut away part of the hub with a dremel. cut up a brand new $280 motor

I ended up going the dremel route and removing the piece of the hub rather than using heat and pulling the stator off. This path even though destructive had the least chance of destroying the motor. It also turns out that by removing the outer portion of the hub I'll be able to neatly recess the motor into...Continue Reading

Just got word straight from the source that the brushless gimbal test rig works...works well enough in fact to go on location for a Toyota commercial !

Finally have had time to dedicate to the gimbal project to complement the Goblin 800 AP.

First run shows a lot of promise with a heavy FS700!

More tuning required and flight testing.

Brushless gimbal test - FS700 (0 min 19 sec)

First test of using brushless gimbal controller on tilt axis with Canon 7D and a long heavy weight lens.

The first run results are very promising considering the motors are not tuned to max power, the pole count has not been changed to account for belt drive ratio, balance is still way off. This controller was last tuned for a Gopro3 gimbal!!!! Consider the weight difference between a gopro and 7d with a long lens!!!!!!

Brushless Tilt Test Canon 7D with long lens (0 min 21 sec)

GEAR UP!

Given the intensity of forum chatter these days surrounding brushless gimbals, our gimbal development will stay under wraps for the time being.

However, major changes have been implemented on the CK800 since the last update. The airframe has been optimized to carry the molded carbon boom(Goblin) and house full retract landing gear. The retract system quickly releases for easy transport. With the new frame design the CK800 is capable of swinging 830 mains with room to spare. I haven't put it on the scales yet but it is arguably the lightest 800 class AP ship out there with no sacrifice in strength and flight performance....this heli could do 3D without the camera! All electronics are neatly contained within the frames and all batteries are easily accessible for fast turn around on the ground. All mass has been concentrated as close to the CG point as possible along all 3 axis(swing weight reduction) to insure the best flight characteristics. 3K carbon all around makes it a sharp looking and high performance bird.

Here it is with it's fully retractable landing gear, PS1 gimbal, RED Scarlet and one very stoked owner of CopterKidsLLC.



...Continue Reading

Second phase of the CK770 development continues. This weeks fun will be creating a new airframe to accommodate a new brushless gimbal built around the camera in the picture and the custom rewound motor in hand. The retract landing gear will take a back seat for a while...

Another fun project for my friends over at CopterKidsllc.

These guys push the limits of AP when it comes to high speed & high agility flying while getting the shots.

Here is the first proto of the CK2 airframe now based on a goblin770. This configuration allows the absolute closest you can locate the cg of the gimbal to the CG of the airframe...even closer than an underslung!

Up next is to design and fit retractable landing gear and a brushless direct drive gimbal.