Relative newcomer here. Built my CS8, and it flies beautifully (thank you Andy). Held off buying the radians when the brushless gimbals started appearing. Now have a Sony Nex5 mounted under the CS8 with the Martinez board. Camera works great. Downlink works great. But I can't figure out how to tilt the camera. The Martinez board has a pin (A1) and ground that can connect to a receiver channel for tilt control. Using the Graupner Mx20 and GR24 receiver and MK stack. Tried connecting the A1 pin and ground to the GR24's channel 7's signal pin and ground which is controlled by my rotary switch 6, but no luck. Is there a way to connect it to the Flt Control board on the stack where the Martinez board will control it, but you can still tweak it with the rotary switch 6? Or another way I'm not thinking of? Any help will greatly reduce the amount of grey hair I'm getting. Thanks Marty
Hi Marty: Glad that the DVDs were helpful. Sorry I can't be of any help on the Martinez controller, though. There are quite a few search hits for "Martinez" if you use "Search Forums." Not sure if they'll answer your question, but it's worth having a quick look. Andy.
G'Day Marty, Just been down that route with an alexmos controller, I tried to use the servo output from the MK board for tilt control on the gimbal unsuccessfully. It should be possible especially on the newer firmware that has options under the camera tab, to disable compensation which I believe would then just pass through the rc channel signal enabling the tilt control ..... However as I said that was the theory, but I did not get that two work. What I did in the end was to use a separate receiver attached to the gimbal for the tilt control. So a GR24 receiver on board the copter, and a GR12 receiver dedicated to the brushless gimbal. To get this to work, make sure you bind the GR12 to the base model in the transmitter FIRST, and then bind the GR24 for the copter second, this way you will still have the telemetry from the GR24 being delivered to your transmitter. (I know it seems a bit backwards to bind the auxiliary receiver before the primary receiver, but that is the way it works) after that just map the rotary to an output on the GR12 and you should be good to go. The other one to double check is the cables are the right way round. On the controller I had the ground and signal wires were all around the wrong way, so nothing worked to start with, I had to disassemble the supplied servo connectors to get them around the right way. Hope that makes sense. Cheers Chris
G'day Chris: Can you just clarify what you wrote: "On the controller I had the ground and signal wires were all around the wrong way, so nothing worked to start with, I had to disassemble the supplied servo connectors to get them around the right way." Was this a wiring error by Alexmos? As in, it came to you with that error in the wiring for the servos? That seems a bit munted, doesn't it? On the other hand, I could see meself doing that after a schooner of Chateau Chunder..... Andy.
G'day Andy That was it a wiring error by alexmos. Wires with the servo connectors on one end, and molex connector on the other was all wrong. The connection colours didn't match the wiring diagram at all. Good thing what each one was supposed to be doing was printed in the board. The i2c sensor wire was very dodgy as well, the wires would not seat correctly into the connector and would give intermittent connection errors, each time you thought you were getting somewhere with setting it up, it drop out, I ended up giving up on the connector and soldered the four wires directly to the miniature pads on the back of the board. It is in no way as user friendly as the MoVI to set up and use, just wish there was a two axis variant of the MoVI for single person operations, but its setup now.... MoVI on one copter for two person ops and the alexmos on the other copter for the times when a cam op is not available. Cheers Chris