It began life as a Cinestar 2-axis gimbal. I converted it using a couple of 5208 motors, and eventually added a 8017 for pan. The carbon fiber tubes are all different now, as well as most of the clamps. There’s basically nothing left of the original gimbal!
Steve assume that the Gopro cam was attach to one of the booms but on the panning we only see the camera right side if so the panning was done with the copter rather than the actual gimbal turning is this right ?
Here is a photo I took just after it landed. You can see where I stuck the GoPro. It’s on the copter, not the gimbal. The gimbal is in “follow” mode, BTW.
Thanks Steve I see... you know i never though of putting the gimbal in follow mode for flight, on a solo operation makes sense..in solo I was just tying a velcro from a boom to the gimbal forcing the gimbal to be a 2 axis and desabiling the pan motor, that in my case is still FF servo with a Radian, soon Im going DD on the pan, I have the center cage for that, with a TM GB-85 motor. on the 2 axis or on follow mode like you have it the copter yaw has to be very very slow so that the camera pan looks smooth. hmmm you got me thinking if on solo flight the delay of the follow mode is increase a little more to damp the copter yaw reaction more thanks Steve
Steve Does Panasonic have IS bult in? I"m seeing the gimbal and camera moving around a little bit but the picture is dead stable. What's most impressive about this video to me is the heavy wind gusts don't affect the picture at all and the gimbal is really doing an outstanding job. Great job man! I don't know how you can improve on this to be honest.
Thank you, Dave. Yes that lens has image stabilization. And remember, I was flying it with the lens zoomed in to effectively 50 mm. The stabilization does good. I have to say, I am thrilled at the first results.
I was curious how well the gimbal would hold the horizon on a 360° pan, plus I wanted to burn a pair of batteries and see what the flight time is with the gimbal. The answer is I got about 14 minutes with 15% reserve in the batteries. Flew primarily in GPS position hold (which is rock solid now). The BL temps are ridiculous, not even reaching body temperature! Flight date: 2/17/2014 7:53:13 AM Flight time: 7:53:13 AM - 8:07:05 AM (832 secs, 00:13:52) Batt. time : 831 secs, 00:13:51 Elevation(GPS) : 0 23.43 52.61 ft (min/avg/max) Altitude(Barom.): -6.56 27.06 51.02 ft Vertical speed : -3.64 -0.05 8.01 ft/s Max speed : 10.3 mph Max target dist.: 2.0997312 ft Sats : 12 12 14 Voltage : min. 20.5, max. 23.8 V Current : 0.5 58 78.7 A Wattage : 11 1291 1670.13 W Capacity: 13498 mAh Motor1: 0.0 7.9 11.1 A Temp: 50 66 75 °F Motor2: 0.0 8.5 11.8 A Temp: 54 72 82 °F Motor3: 0.0 7.1 9.7 A Temp: 52 68 77 °F Motor4: 0.0 6.1 8.9 A Temp: 54 72 79 °F Motor5: 0.1 6.4 8.7 A Temp: 50 63 70 °F Motor6: 0.0 6.1 9.3 A Temp: 50 66 77 °F Motor7: 0.0 6.2 9.7 A Temp: 54 66 72 °F Motor8: 0.0 8.2 11.9 A Temp: 50 70 79 °F
Thanks, man. Hoping to get the rest of the electronics going this week, so I can actually see what I’m shooting and move the gimbal around. And now that I have the GH3 sort of dialed in, I want to try the 5D Mark III, too. But not only does that require a whole separate balancing, the Alexmos gains will likely be very different, too.
So smooooooooth. Good ol' Alexmos doing an amazing job! Looking amazing Steve! What's even more amazing is you converted your gimbal yourself without any complaints or issues about getting it to work properly.
They were very well charged. I’m finding the voltage sags pretty dramatically lifting these big boys off the ground. Do you not see that on yours? The batteries performed quite well, actually. Perfectly to spec. I wasn’t pushing them very much, though. Mostly hovering around. I’m still getting used to the big copter. It handles differently than my older setup (flat 8, much lighter).