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 just got in the new Arris CM3000 Pro gimbal for GoPro cameras. I actually won this in a Facebook contest many thanks to Hobby-Wing! Here are a few photos of the gimbal. As an owner of the CM3000, this one is built much better and has better features for sure. It powered up great and I’ll do a test flight soon. Stay tuned for my full review.

Arris CM3000 Pro Gimbal

Arris CM3000 Pro Gimbal

Arris CM3000 Pro Gimbal

Arris CM3000 Pro Gimbal

Arris CM3000 Pro Gimbal