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 had 10-15 successful flights now with the big hexacopter following the flip over crash issue described in the previous post.  I have not come to a solid conclusion as to the cause of the flip on takeoff.  The only difference was my gains on the SuperX flight controller, which I had changed from 1.2 to 1.1.  I suspect the flip was pilot error, in hitting the throttle too fast.

The bird is flying and I’m improving my FPV skills as well as getting the hang of using my newly implemented pitch (tilt) control on the camera gimbal.

Speaking of new, I’m also evaluating a Sigma 19mm prime lens for the Sony NEX-5T E-Mount system.  The above photo demonstrates the tilt and the new lens.