I've had it where my yaw gyro had to be reversed. and it will spin and spin

Originally Posted by Adidas4275

great let me know, maybe ill finally get rid of my vibrations

you mean droidworx version? I can probably cut a set tomorrow

Originally Posted by GGoodrum

Because of the WK-M's slower output rate, small movements are going to appear a bit "rougher".

********SNIP!***********

As I said, everything is interrelated, so to get the "best" performance, the controller's gimbal ouput rate needs to be higher than the 100Hz limit on the WK-M. I'm hopeful that I will be able to convince DJI to add a faster rate, maybe as a setting, like XA does in there configuration software.

-- Gary

Gary,
As I am getting closer and closer to ordering a gimbal, could you please price/part out a few different options for us? Maybe a Good setup and a Great setup, Good being controlled by Naza/WKM and a Great being independent of the FC. Doesn't have to be long, just something thats in list form and in english for gimbal newbies such as myself. Thanks!

Hi.
This mount looks nice.
Where should i look for pricing-ordering?
Thanks

Gary's website is almost ready to go online. it will be www.tppacks.com you can contact him here via pm or email him at ggoodrum@tppacks.com I am updating my website at www.AskmanProducts.com as well, but multicopter product will be available through gary.

Originally Posted by tigar

Hi.
This mount looks nice.
Where should i look for pricing-ordering?
Thanks

Andrey is right. These will be available, starting later today, at my tppacks.com site. I finally got the basic store up and running and now I have to go in and replace all the place holders with descriptions of the various gimbal options. Initially, there will be the following options:

TP450-GP-2 2-axis GoPro gimbal with F450 quad front mount. $375

TP550-GP-2 2-axis GoPro gimbal with F550 hex landing gear mount. $475

TP550-NX-2 2-axis NEX/GH2 Gimbal with F550 hex LG mount $500

TP550-NX/GP 2-axis F550 gimbal with both NEX and GP yokes $700


Coming soon will be some adapter kits for mounting the LG/mount/gimbals on a variety of other platforms, including the mk hex and octa setups, as well as DroidWorx and Cinestar platforms. There will also be some other variants, such as tilt-only options for both platforms, and a simple GoPro mount for the F330 and F450 that provides vibration isolation-only (see attached pics of prototype...). This mount attaches to one of the F330 or F450 "tabs" in a clever dual compression mounting scheme.

More later...

-- Gary

some prototype work being done here.

seismicwave wanted a panorama picture, and I figured what better to test my pan setup . but he wanted a portrait mode gimbal. he specified 3.5x5.5 box, but in hindsight, we can reduce it to 3x4,75 for nex5, in fact, I can share the yoke with the gopro design. it is mounted in tilt only configuration for doing stills. (in fact, this is how all the tilt only gimbal will mount) with stills, vibration is less important, so noodle works ok.

anyway, just wanted to show how the pano addon works, and how it is easy to change gimbals or gimbal assembly.

glad you are getting up and ready gary.

Originally Posted by GGoodrum

There will also be some other variants, such as tilt-only options for both platforms, and a simple GoPro mount for the F330 and F450 that provides vibration isolation-only (see attached pics of prototype...). This mount attaches to one of the F330 or F450 "tabs" in a clever dual compression mounting scheme.

More later...

-- Gary

cool little mount. I like the idea for sure.

Originally Posted by askman

some prototype work being done here.

seismicwave wanted a panorama picture, and I figured what better to test my pan setup . but he wanted a portrait mode gimbal. he specified 3.5x5.5 box, but in hindsight, we can reduce it to 3x4,75 for nex5, in fact, I can share the yoke with the gopro design. it is mounted in tilt only configuration for doing stills. (in fact, this is how all the tilt only gimbal will mount) with stills, vibration is less important, so noodle works ok.

anyway, just wanted to show how the pano addon works, and how it is easy to change gimbals or gimbal assembly.

glad you are getting up and ready gary.

Love the pano mount. looks great.... 360 panos are really cool, especially with a pan axis mount.

love to see the results.

More confusing results...

I had a hunch that something wasn't quite right with the WK-M's outputs being so rough, when compared to the XA FC/AHRS combo. In the tests I did a few months ago, there were clear differences, but not as big a difference as I'm seeing now. What I did today was switch to the F450/GoPro setup, which uses a Naza. As I suspected, it was much smoother than the WK-M's outputs. The XA setup is definitely a tad bit smoother, but not a lot. This is clearly the difference I was seeing before, due to the difference in speed. Here's a quick ground test vieo:

F450 GoPro Gimbal Test-15.mp4 (0 min 23 sec)

I have a theory about why the WK-M's outputs are so much rougher, and it has to do with the "fix" that was part of the v5.02 update. I noticed today, when I was checking things that the gimbal drift/wander problem was back, although not continuously, just once in awhile. I think what they did to "fix" the problem was more of a band-aid, where they simply put in an artificial "deadband" on the outputs. This raises a threshold of when the drift movements are strong enough to come through, but by doing that, they've basically reduced the effective resolution of the outputs. To check this, I reconnected the XA setup, but programmed in a deadband timing of 4ms, and it has the same sort of "roughness".

This tells me a couple things. First of all, DJI has only made a weak attempt at fixing the drift problem, and in doing so has introduced yet another issue. I actually seriously doubt that they will do anything about this, as they are now consumed with trying to get people to fork over a ridiculous amount of cash for a "hobby gimbal".

What I am hopeful of, however, is that maybe they can be convinced to up the output rate on the Naza's gimbal outputs, because that would make using a Naza as a standalone gimbal controller a very viable option.

-- Gary

Originally Posted by GGoodrum

Sorry, I missed this. Anyway, yes, this was with the XA v1 FC/AHRS acting as a standalone gimbal controller. I've done the same tests, using the WK-M's gimbal outputs, with similar results. With the XA's output rate set at 2ms/500Hz, the outputs are a bit smoother for small movements. If I set the rate to 10ms/100Hz, I can't tell the difference between the XA and WK-M outputs.

Here's the video with the WK-M driving the gimbal:

http://youtu.be/5WsQQfYcEv8

The gains are off just slightly, but all-in-all, the resulting video is quite usable. You can see in the video from the hard-mounted GoPro that there's quite a bit of jello, so the vibration isolation is working well.

One other thing I like about using a separate gimbal controller is that it frees up a WK-M channel so that I can use v3 to control the Attitude gains. I've also assigned another pot to fine-tune the roll axis center point.

-- Gary

Hi Gary,

Nice video. You have made lots of progress. I am impressed with the tilt performance with the XA controller and your gimbal. The controller has some weird roll hiccups that didn't seem to track with the same magnitude roll on the copter itself. Oh, by the way, the 3 cam implementation is a fantastic way to analyze the footage. Very clever. Back to the XA, the speed of responsiveness is impressive at 2ms. What do you think the roll hiccups are from? By the way, I don't think the roll hiccups are a big problem because they don't look like the <33ms twitchiness the WKM's gimbal controller on tilt sometimes had, so I think they can be fixed in post stabilization.

I have learned a lot from watching your progress with the great documenation. Well done Gary. And also Askman. I wasn't in the market for a new camera gimbal, but I am starting to think about it.<G>

Tim

Originally Posted by TimIndy

Hi Gary,

Nice video. You have made lots of progress. I am impressed with the tilt performance with the XA controller and your gimbal. The controller has some weird roll hiccups that didn't seem to track with the same magnitude roll on the copter itself. Oh, by the way, the 3 cam implementation is a fantastic way to analyze the footage. Very clever. Back to the XA, the speed of responsiveness is impressive at 2ms. What do you think the roll hiccups are from? By the way, I don't think the roll hiccups are a big problem because they don't look like the <33ms twitchiness the WKM's gimbal controller on tilt sometimes had, so I think they can be fixed in post stabilization.

I have learned a lot from watching your progress with the great documenation. Well done Gary. And also Askman. I wasn't in the market for a new camera gimbal, but I am starting to think about it.<G>

Tim

Thanks.

The roll "hiccups", I think, are a result of not having the roll gains exactly spot on. The GoPro, with it's uber-wide FOV is particularly sensitive in the roll axis. I will try tweaking them again, to see if I can get it "perfect". You are right, though, even with them set they way they are now, it comes out perfect, running it through SmoothCam, in FCP.

Today I will do a test flight with F450/Naza, to see if small movements are smooth enough.

-- Gary

i noticed that running my videos, with a lot of vibrations, through a deshaker makes them perfect. I have not had good success with deshakers when using them on a hard mounted camera.

with isolation mount, the frequency rate of the shake is much lower with lower amplitude than hard mount, so the deshaker has a good chance to fix the image. the Goal is to get useful image and video. get it close to perfect and let the software take care of the last little bit.

Originally Posted by GGoodrum

More confusing results...

This tells me a couple things. First of all, DJI has only made a weak attempt at fixing the drift problem, and in doing so has introduced yet another issue. I actually seriously doubt that they will do anything about this, as they are now consumed with trying to get people to fork over a ridiculous amount of cash for a "hobby gimbal".

What I am hopeful of, however, is that maybe they can be convinced to up the output rate on the Naza's gimbal outputs, because that would make using a Naza as a standalone gimbal controller a very viable option.

-- Gary

That totally sucks. So now we have to buy and carry another DJI product. Do you have the ability to test the previous version of firmware and see if it is as good as the NAZA?

Gimbal's first flight at an airplane show last weekend.