Hi All, I have been flying Alta for about four months now and one thing I do miss is having the ability to tilt the FPV camera down, or up. This function is something I have trouble living without since I had it on my other machines. So, today I made up a servo driven Tilt for the FPV camera on my Alta. I run dual Futaba R7008SB Rxs on Mode D. This gives me channel 10 available on the Rx for the servo to tilt the FPV camera. I reassigned the right slider on my Futaba 14SG for this purpose.Great ! My concern is how much current can be safely drawn out of the receiver for the servo without risking a power issue to the Synapse, Regulators ( or anything else ) and cause a "Brown Out" or worse to Alta`s systems. I wondered if anyone else tried doing something like this ? I also put a ticket to FF to get their advice on this as well.
Interesting approach, Tim. What I did (albeit on a Cinestar) was to have two FPV cameras and a video switch on an RC channel. I reasoned that this would take less power and there would be less to go wrong (purely electronic, nothing electromechanical). EDIT: one camera looked forward and slightly down, the other looked straight down so that I could position directly over objects. For anyone interested, Mode D is described on page 2, right hand column, here: http://manuals.hobbico.com/fut/r7008sb-manual.pdf Could you post an image of your FPV set-up, please? Also, did you have to modify the foam insert in the case or is the existing cavity the correct size? Andy
ReadymadeRC has a selection of camera tilt mounts that might also work. http://www.readymaderc.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=11_408
Hi Andy FF got back to me and recommend not to draw any power from the Rx, I will heed to that. So another battery pack to manage . As requested I attached a pic of what I did, it works great. I didn`t use a screw to fix the servo horn to the servo, it just sits there, the servo horn has double sided tape to attach it to the camera on one side and a 1.5mm cap screw on the other side to pivot. I bent up 1.5mm aluminium as the frame, and I didnt need to modify the foam in the case, it fits just fine.
Hey Tim, I have a very similar tilt setup on my Alta pilot cam (even using the same camera). Not sure what your using for the pilot FPV transmitter, but I'm powering my servo using the 5v camera power coming out of the 5.8ghz transmitter. Eliminates that need for an additional battery... none of us want any more of those. Would be great if the Alta had some filtered 5-12v outputs for accessories.