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Gimbal suggestions?

Discussion in 'Cinestar 8' started by Dan Coplan, Jun 20, 2015.

  1. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    I've been flying a CS8 for a couple years now with a 2-axis gimbal from brushlessgimbals.com. Time to upgrade!

    My 'perfect world' goals are: minimum fuss (i.e. auto tune for different cameras), inexpensive as possible while maintaining quality (cheap breaks the first goal if I spend half my time just trying to get the thing to work), lightweight as possible. I'm targeting the DSLR range so let's say Sony A7 to 5D Mark III.

    My current awareness:

    - Zenmuse awesome but one camera/one lens = too limiting
    - Movi M5 = too damn expensive
    - Ronin M = maybe but on the heavy side
    - Defy? CAME? Something else I don't know about that is a great solution (and why I'm posting this)?

    Ideally I want never to have to program PID values again! And need easy mating to the octo.

    Dan
     
  2. Gary Haynes

    Gary Haynes Administrator
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    Dan that's simple. MoVI M5. You ruled out the other three. Toad in the Hole quick release and you are all set. Ask Josh Lambeth about his experience going from Alexmos to the MoVI. Better yet ask his camera operator. Add in the bundle price, the MIMIC and your won't be limiting your operations.
     
  3. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
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    +1 for what Gary says!
    Andy.
     
  4. Gary McCready

    Gary McCready Active Member

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    If you plan on a heavier camera like the Mark III or the A7 I think I'd just get a M5, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
    If you are planning on only flying a 4/3 ....I've had pretty good results from my RCtimer Legacy, and a Phobotic CP. Less than $1000, and Auto tune works pretty well. If I was buying a gimbal for a 4/3 mirrorless now I'd get the Famous Hobby BG001-Pro, and use the CP. It is not an M5, but it 1/3 the price.
    The Ronin-M might do, but it is too new to have seen much aerial footage? I've heard of some horizontal drift problems.
    I would sure not get a gimbal with the Alexmos...forever tuning...a lot of trouble when you switch cameras.
     
  5. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    Thanks for your feedback everyone. The M5 is too costly at $4,000. I own a full size Ronin and it's fantastic so I'd be game to try the Ronin-M at less than half the cost of the M5. I thought it was heavier but apparently they both come in right around 5 pounds.

    Have not heard of the RCtimer Legacy or Phobotic CP but will look into those - thanks. Really, anything that's better than my Alexmos-based 2-axis gimbal is a win for me. What I have now works fine except the pan axis is a little twitchy (that's the axis without the brushless) and after countless hours (days) it's dialed in perfectly for the GH4 so I dread putting anything different on there.

    Anyone have any experience with the CAME gimbal?

    Dan
     
  6. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    Here's a follow up question: what are you guys doing as far as landing gear? Are you finding a way to attach the landing gear to the gimbal or replacing the existing legs with retracts?
     
  7. Gary McCready

    Gary McCready Active Member

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    FYI: I've heard the CP does not work well with Land gear on the gimbal (from Billy C.). I've just extended the Arm Land gear on both my S900 and Cinestar.
     
  8. Jason Herring

    Jason Herring Member

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    The question you have to ask your self, do you want to spend all your time tuning or filming and flying?
     
  9. Shaun Stanton

    Shaun Stanton Active Member

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    As you can see from my picture I have successfully flown a full sized ronin. It is bulky as hell. It requires extended retractable landing gear. I bought a set of terot gears but had to modify the legs with cinestar 450 booms. I can fly on an x8 for 7 min max carrying a Blackmagic 4k. Being that you are looking for an easy tunable solution. I dusted off my 32 bit alexmos 3 axis gimbal which worked better than the belt driven but know where near the Ronin. I needed to fly more weight recent which the Ronin was going to make it impossible. Long story short after dusting off the alexmos gimbal and updating the firmware, I found that it has an auto calibration mode uses spectrum satellite or futaba. Much to my surprise the 32 bit dual sensor alexmos is on par with the ronin now. I did one flight test prior to set where I racked the hell out of it and I was expecting crap footage. It was spot on.

    I am flying a 3 axis system with 8017 T120 motors and a 6S battery setup.
     
  10. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    I'm borrowing a 3-axis Alexmos gimbal from a friend and was just about to return it in favor of a Ronin-M until I read your post, Shaun. So now maybe I'll give that a shot first. But if I move forward with the Ronin-M (same question applies to the MoVI I imagine), how do you ('you' being anyone reading this) mount it, deal with landing gear, and what do you use for vibration isolation? I'm guessing that with the heavier gimbal, my existing stock o-rings aren't strong enough. Or are they? For mounting it I'm wondering if the universal plate from Cinemilled.com would work. That way I could also quick release the Ronin for handheld use.

    Details and photos much appreciated!
     
  11. Shaun Stanton

    Shaun Stanton Active Member

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    For the Ronin I had to do a couple things. First I had to make a mounting plate that had the 45 degree dovetail. I did that a maker space that had a mill. I had a guy who knew what he was doing help me with it. This is not neccessary now because famoushobby.com has a cheese plate designed for Ronin for 70 dolars. At the time the closest thing cost $250 from a specialty shop that was making them for steady cam rigs.
    So there is this one.

    http://www.aliexpress.com/store/pro...the-DJI-Ronin-for-1pc/109347_32326250971.html

    Then I mated it to kind of chinsy damper plate that accepted a bunch of those round ball dampers here in this link. http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Glas...-Balls-suit-for-4-6Kg-Gimbal/32345826296.html

    On the inside of the plate I used Hobby Wood and a few washers to mount the dove tail to. It looked kind of ghetto if you will, but it worked.

    That was mounted to the Cinestar Star Plate using the some more hobby wood and the alexmos motor mount. You could use a Cinestar 8 motor mount they are the similar dimensions. Then I screwed in the 4 Star plate to the Cinestar dampers. I elected to use the hard black O-rings to make it as stiff as possible. I thought I was going to stiffen it up even more on those cinstar mounts but the first trials they did not prove to be problematic at all. Than I sandwiched the two plates together with the ball dampers. Then I snapped the Ronin on. Flew it the next day and it was perfect. All the years of messing with the original belt driven gimbal were finally gone.

    I was nervous about the sandwich plate that all the dampers could rip off so I added some zip ties to 4 dampers and kept them loose enough not to disturb damping but tight enough to prevent the plates from popping apart.

    After flying the ronin I went back to alexmos for the weight savings because I was asked to fly a heavier lens. I connected that straight the cinestar 4 star plate just like the old days with the Radian Gimbal. I kept the the black O-ring dampers and had no issues with jello footage or any BS like that.

    I am currently upgrading my system to accept an 8 Star plate for added safety. Having 15 pounds of camera and gimbal on 8 tiny screws made me a bit nervous so I got this guy here:

    http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/6741367126.html?orderId=67923288402210

    I bought four more dampers. Tabb was nice nice enough to give us holes in the frame to add four more dampers with the O-rings. Just need to add some press nuts which is easy to do with a M2 BHCS screw to tighten them in.

    As for landing gear. I bought a Retractable Landing gear set that was originally designed for a Terot Frame from hellipal It is Knock Off of the landing gears used on DJI S900/1000. The thing I found out was two. One was the landing gear I bought was too short for the full Ronin. They used 25 mm by 330 mm booms. Lucky me the cinestar booms just happen to be 25 mm. I just happened to spare boom arms. So I had to drill out the rivets and put Cinestar 450 booms for additional hight. Two I had to make a mount that would sandwich in between two cinestar boom arms. of the actual aircraft. It works fairly well. Last the Terot landing gear bottom feet are 2 300 mm by 20 mm booms attached with plastic 90 degree clamps. The weight of aircraft eventually starts cracking them. So I bought two metal 25 mm 90 degree T joints to affix 25 mm booms. So now my landing gear has both legs and feet which are Cinestar 8 Boom arms more more rigidity.

    I no longer live with my drones in the house. So I will have to go and get some pictures of what I did and post them on a later date. Hopefully the links will get you started.
     
  12. Duane Bradley

    Duane Bradley Active Member

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    I fly a Defy G2x on my Cinestar and have had great results. I'm mostly doing single operator stuff so having full pan hasn't been a need, therefor I just went to landing gear on the booms of the copter. I do plan on adding retracts to my set-up to give me back full 360 viewing, just haven't gotten around to it yet.
     
  13. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    Shaun - thanks for your great reply! No rush, but when you get a chance I'd love to see some pics.

    As far as dampening goes, with the Ronin-M and a camera like the GH4 do you think I can safely get away with the stock o-rings or do I need to look into a beefier 3rd party solution like the plate with the damping balls in the link you sent?
     
  14. Shaun Stanton

    Shaun Stanton Active Member

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    I think that using the stock system will work in terms damping. I Flew a GH4 recently on an alexmos using the standard four star plate. Having said that you may need to devise a plate that will mate the cinestar plate to the Ronin adapter plate that you decide on. There might not be enough surface area on the four pointed plate. That was the main reason I did my contraption. As for damping the standard cinestar donuts work without issues. I am using the black rings that qudro sells. I imagine the blue ones work just as well. Although i have not tried them but they seem to work for the Movi users.

    Here are some pics of the contraption I built for the Ronin. Its not very elegant at all, but it was a workable solution due to the limited time I had to be able fly a Ronin with a Black Magic. Of course I did all before the Ronin-M came out with the adapter plates. The pics are of the sandwich plate with my homemade dovetail adapter. The adapter came out real nice, my only regret is that I could not find anyone to anodize it without being in a huge batch in time for the shoot. That problem is now that I have the other plate. I have a pic of the new ronin plate from famous hobby with 8 star plate. As you see that plat just barely has the real estate to mount it wihtout going too hodgepodge. Th wood was not visible from the outside. I used the alexmos yaw motor mount that directly attaches to the star plate in the same as a Movi. I added it in just to have little more load distribution and rigidity. As crappy as it looks it did the job very well and never flinched at a large Ronin hanging from it with a Black Magic 4K honker on it. Now I am trying to decide course action with the plate on the right. Trying to decide if I want to drill holes in it or come with a more elegant version on the left. I am thinking of using Cinestar 6 6 star plate that Famous Hobby accidentally sent me.

    This is off topic when I notified them about the error, no questions asked they immediately sent the new one global express DHL it came in three days. They did not request the old one to be back. So I might have some use for it possibly.

    Currently I dissembled this contraption to put the Yaw adapter back on the Alexmos gimbal which affixed on the aircraft right now. My goal is to have some sort dove tail on that gimbal so I can quick release it and hot swap it with the Ronin. That is the future project. More fun with industrial tools at the maker space most likely.


    IMG_0737.JPG IMG_0738.JPG IMG_0740.JPG IMG_0741.JPG
     
  15. Dan Coplan

    Dan Coplan Member

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    Shaun - I sent you a private message. Did you get it?
     

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