The 3-axis gimbal (camera stabilizer) on my large hexacopter was tuned and configured fairly well a month or two ago.  As winter came, those settings become useless.  Cold temperatures muck up the accelerometer and gyroscope and the footage is unusable with the vibrations and big horizon shift.

In the last post I devised a way to counteract the horizon shift, or what is called “roll” in the gimbal.  When the gimbal started up a few degrees off, I had a knob on my remote to trim it to level it out.  Great.  That worked, until the copter turned or banked.  Then the horizon would be off again.  I can work around it if I’m doing separate “runs” of a target, or shooting stills.  That may be the only option in the cold.  Or perhaps I need to do a full calibration with my computer and copter out in the cold.

Since the roll fix, and subsequent other issues appeared, I’m now in the pandora’s box scenario.  I’ve been in gimbal tuning hell.  I’m learning more though, and hopefully the end result (which is hard to envision right now), will be the highest quality aerial photos and video possible.

It is winter now here in my neck of the woods.  I’ve had some problems with my gimbal on my hexacopter regarding horizon shift.  When I calibrate and power up the 3-axis Arris Zhaoyun gimbal indoors in my shop, it powers up perfectly level.  When I power up outside recently, in colder temperatures, the roll axis is off by about 10-15 degrees, making all the shots tilted as if they were part of the original Batman movie.

As it turns out the sensors in the gimbal are prone to issues when in colder temperatures, causing the gimbal to “think” it is level but it is not.  The problem has been getting worse as the temps drop more and more.

I decided I’d try to set up a knob on my Taranis transmitter, similar to a trim knob might be setup for the motors.  That way if the roll axis was off, meaning the gimbal was not level, I could turn the knob a bit and level it off.  I setup the SimpleBGC software which configures the gimbal, to receive roll commands and hooked up the gimbal’s roll servo cable to channel 12 on my Taranis receiver.  Amazingly, it worked on the first shot. That’s power geek for you.

Below is a video describing the process:

The roll control knob is working well and I’m looking forward to flying in the cold and capturing some great, LEVEL, aerial video and photos.

Below is a screencap of the SimpleBGC settings.

I’ve repositioned my FPV (first person view) antenna on my hexacopter. Previously the antenna was located to the under-back of the bird and whenever the copter was facing me the video signal would be lost. After some consideration, I decided to try one of the side arms of the copter.

New FPV Antenna Placement

You can see the antenna on the right, hanging from the arm.

This has been a much better solution and my FPV video signal drops have been greatly reduced, if not eliminated. When turning around I can make sure to turn counter-clockwise and I’ll never lose the signal due to parts of the copter blocking it.