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Camera gimbal tilt with APM

Installed a Beholder-Lite Gimbal on my Hex this weekend.   The Beholder is a simple AlexMoss based gimbal that’s self sustaining.  All you need to is give it +5v (or in my case hook it up to power distribution and you’re set).

Once I had it mounted I thought, wow I’d like to be able to control the tilt so I ventured off to search the internets, but my google-fu failed me.   Mission planner and what I read said that APM was set up to control servo-based gimbals.  This is a brushless gimbal, and I don’t want APM to control it.   Only allow me to control the tilt of it so that when I’m filming I can tilt the camera down.

So after a little experimentation here is what I’ve got.

The Gimbal came with a cable and the weak documentation simply showed this:

board_connector

 

So I poked around some more and found where I could plug those into the APM and in fact did so on the top. In A10 and A11, now I really don’t care about Roll, but I plugged it in anyway.

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And Finally, a good hex video flight.

This is what I’ve been after, albeit an abbreviated flight plan.

This is just a GoPro Camera attached to the hex, with a pretty weak anti-vibration mount and it’s OK.  Someday I’ll add a gimbal.

This flight is void of:

  • Crashing
  • Mission Planner Meters: Written as Feet, causing contact with trees.
  • Manually piloting into trees.

So yeah, take off, film, land.   Goodness.

Finally a good hex flight.

There was one scary moment, which is shown at then end as an out-take.

While the auto-flight path was happening, I set the controller down to do something.  When I did that, I bumped a switch ‘RTL’ I think, and it about fell out of the sky.   I was able to grab the controller, gain control and restart the mission.

Happy Multi-Rotoring.

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Hex Crash II (Feet or Meters?)

So fresh off my last crash flight, I rebuilt the HEX, made up some ghetto landing gear from the other broken landing gear and had flown it successfully (manually) a few times.

Time to try another autonomous flight.

So the plan was pretty simple, a nice routine flight around our perimeter.

theMission

Batteries charged, I headed out to basically waypoint (1), or home.   Where I launched it manually, hovered it, the flipped it into Auto-mode to execute the flight plan.

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Blade 350QX Transplant, It Lives, and Flies!

Blade 350QX

So a little while back I picked up a Blade 350QX, which is a ‘retail’, shade above ‘toy grade’ drone, or multi-rotor.   Out of the box this thing is pretty sweet for what it is.  Basically, it’s an out of the box, get you in the air and flying quad rotor, VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) device (or Drone).   Though drone is such a nasty word at the moment.

I’m not going to review it here, there are plenty of reviews on the net.  If you’re interested just search.

Basically, out of the box the blade 350qz has 3 modes.

GREEN Mode, or ‘Simple’, which means it’s really easy to fly, maximum flight controller assistance, in fact you don’t even have to worry about orientation. (aka Beginner mode)

BLUE Mode, or ‘Stabilized’, which keeps it level if you let off the sticks but you still have to ‘fly it’ (aka medium mode).   If you pitch it 45 degrees, and left off the flight controller will bring it back level.

RED mode, or  ‘Acro’ short for acrobatic mode, which means you really have to fly it, keep it level, etc.  This is advanced or  pro mode, in this mode you can do flips, you can get this thing upside-down, which if you’re not ready for that, well it’s gonna crash.   In this mode if you pitch it 45 degrees and left off the stick it will still be at 45 degrees and likely falling out of the sky unless you counteract that pitch.

It has 3-axis stabilization in stabilized mode, gps assist in simple mode, no assistance in Expert mode.

If I’m not reviewing it why am I telling you all of this?  Here’s why.

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Multirotors and Trees Oh My.

Having already smashed my Blade QX350 you’d a thought I’d be a little more careful.  But no.  On Matthew’s 6th birthday I thought I’d take the Hex out for a spin and document the White Death that had come down upon us the previous day.   If it’s going to be cold, might as well have snow.

So I strapped the legacy Contour HD camera to the Hex and took it out for a spin.

photo 1

Changes since the most recent flight included, the landing gear, and the weight of the camera.   Should have probably re-tuned it but I didn’t.

The plan was simple.   Start it up in the driveway, and execute an Auto-Flight that would circle the property filming the spectacular views.   Best laid plans.

Continue reading “Multirotors and Trees Oh My.”