DJI Zenmuse has no value anymore.

[Teco]

I am building a CC octo 1000, i think i am gonna try this HF and support usa, if i Buy one which should i Buy? I know when we get o DJI wk we get the complet package , i loocked at HF website and noteced that there's a few unit, gos is separete from the controler, Does is worth the money? Fly better than WK?

Any one?

thanks

 

[Stacky]

Denny, what has happened?. I was under the impression you had 3 zenmuse gimbals. I was under the impression you fewlt there was nothing close to the zenmuse.

The DJI Zenmuse may have set the bar higher in terms of stability last year but that has now changed. Several brushless gimbals have shown that they can achieve the same level of stability without all of the stupid quirks like not being able to turn the camera ON and OFF in the field without the use of some kind of implement to reach the obscured switch. These new devices once set do not drift all over the place. Zenmuse has another draw back in that it is overcomplicated, overweight and overpriced. Horizon drifts continuously and HDMI is troublesome. But worse is yet to come. iF THIS POS GOES WRONG FOR ANY REASON THERE IS NO WAY TO HAVE IT SERVICED OR GET ANY SPARE PARTS FOR IT. yes thats right folks. no matter how small the problem is, your investment is now scrap value. In Europe nobody, even the European HQ, has any facility to fix it or wants to send it back to China. If the customer sends it back it will not be accepted.

The S800 was and still is a disaster area. I can think of at least six carbon Hexa's that are better and the WKM has for sure been surpassed by at least 4 other controllers that are better by far and more reliable.

About the only item that I still use is the Naza-H but as my guys don't like flying Helis in anything but manual mode, I guess I will be using the tried tested and approved V-Stabi instead.

DJI has gone a long way to piss off all of their customers around the world. It would be hard to imaging a company with a worse PR record. So if you are a dealer then how do you feel about shouldering the blame for what they alone create. As time goes on DJI will become less and less contactable and they will become just another Chinese crap supplier with no regard for warranties or service issues. :upset:

 

[Stacky]

First question is what do you want to do with your multi?. Are you using it for work or for fun?.

I am building a CC octo 1000, i think i am gonna try this HF and support usa, if i Buy one which should i Buy? I know when we get o DJI wk we get the complet package , i loocked at HF website and noteced that there's a few unit, gos is separete from the controler, Does is worth the money? Fly better than WK?

Any one?

thanks

 

[Teco]

Sorry about that, for filming and photographing , plaing to get Cinestar gimbal,

thanks

 

[hjls3]

Denny - sorry to hear your troubles. Thought I would share some news I got. I have had a ZEN for a couple months now. And I know this sounds crazy but anytime it gets anywhere near some cold temps - (like well below freezing) my horizon will never even get close to level. Warm temps and it works fine. I tend to want to film skiers so it has been an issue. My work around has been to plug the pan into the roll and at least then I can manually deal with the roll in FREE mode. BUT of course I cant pan any shots.

I have documented this issue as best I can and shared with my USA dealer. Aerial Media Pros. I spoke with Patrick last week and he stated that this was due to a poorly calibrated motor according to DJI and I need to send it in. Of course I prefer not to send to China. Patrick, who has been great to deal with, informs me that DJI USA is about to start handling these types of problems. DJI USA is in Austin Texas. Patrick also informed me that the DJI Rep from Austin, is currently at DJI doing some training on how to work on the ZEN. SO HOPEFULLY soon there will be some support coming out of the USA. I understand you are in Greece, but maybe this will be of some help to you. I hope so. I will certainly let you know how my experience with DJI USA goes...

The DJI Zenmuse may have set the bar higher in terms of stability last year but that has now changed. Several brushless gimbals have shown that they can achieve the same level of stability without all of the stupid quirks like not being able to turn the camera ON and OFF in the field without the use of some kind of implement to reach the obscured switch. These new devices once set do not drift all over the place. Zenmuse has another draw back in that it is overcomplicated, overweight and overpriced. Horizon drifts continuously and HDMI is troublesome. But worse is yet to come. iF THIS POS GOES WRONG FOR ANY REASON THERE IS NO WAY TO HAVE IT SERVICED OR GET ANY SPARE PARTS FOR IT. yes thats right folks. no matter how small the problem is, your investment is now scrap value. In Europe nobody, even the European HQ, has any facility to fix it or wants to send it back to China. If the customer sends it back it will not be accepted.

The S800 was and still is a disaster area. I can think of at least six carbon Hexa's that are better and the WKM has for sure been surpassed by at least 4 other controllers that are better by far and more reliable.

About the only item that I still use is the Naza-H but as my guys don't like flying Helis in anything but manual mode, I guess I will be using the tried tested and approved V-Stabi instead.

DJI has gone a long way to piss off all of their customers around the world. It would be hard to imaging a company with a worse PR record. So if you are a dealer then how do you feel about shouldering the blame for what they alone create. As time goes on DJI will become less and less contactable and they will become just another Chinese crap supplier with no regard for warranties or service issues. :upset:

 

[Kari]

I agree with the roll not keeping the level in cold with zen, but imo working with zen is also a two man job and i have set roll adjustment to stick of tx, so adjusting it for every flight is fast and just a normal procedure and no big deal. Zen still does a great job with gh2.

 

[Benjamin Rowland]

I've looked at the AQ-6 and really the only thing stopping me from picking one up is the somewhat weird and lengthy setup process you have to go through to get one flying properly. Lately I've been having fun with the new generation of Multiwii boards, the 2.2 firmware release is light years beyond the 1.7 that I started with on a Quadrino board a year or more ago. The fact that new sensors have also made the boards far better at leveling and position/altitude hold help tremendously as well. I currently have one of the Mega boards on an F450 frame with a Ublox6 GPS and this thing flys better than a Naza in Manual, just as good or better in autolevel, and GPS position hold is pretty darn close too. All that for around $85 inclusive of the GPS, how can you not like that deal? Yeah you do have to tinker with the tuning a bit to get it dialed in but the new firmware and sensors really do minimize that, I'm not that far off default settings and it flys beautifully, it's become my second favorite FPV quad behind my heavily tweaked TBS Discovery.

I've got a brand new "real" APM 2.5 that I'm considering mounting on the Cinestar frame to see how well it handles that. First I think it's going to spend some time on the Droidworx AD-6 until I get a feel for how it wants to be tuned on a large hex hauling some weight. I have spares for the AD6 and though I'd be PO'd if I crashed it, not nearly as much as I would if I crashed the Cinestar and did substantial damage.

One of these days I'll get around to updating the firmware on the YS-X6 and give that one a go again too. I parked it mainly because the gimbal stabilization sucked badly and that was pre-RSGS days when the only alternative was an unobtanium Picloc so there really was no alternative for APV + YS-X6 at the time. Now that I have the brushless gimbal I don't need the built in stabilization so suddenly the YS has become a viable alternative again.

Ken

What are you flying on your Cinestar currently? WKM? Just curious.

 

[RTRyder]

What are you flying on your Cinestar currently? WKM? Just curious.

Yes, Wookong-M from day 1. I've also had the YS-X6 on it and have a complete MK stack that has been on there too. Of all the various combos I've used on it I keep coming back to the WKM, it flys better than anything else I've used for APV and that includes H/F. Thing I like most about the WKM is all the advanced functions work as I expect them to 100% of the time, allowing me to focus more on what the camera is capturing than on having to concentrate on everything the multi is doing. If I were working as a 2 person setup I'd likely use the MK stack, takes more effort on the part of the pilot but is useable over a much wider range of weather than the WKM although the brushless gimbal may make the wind problems on WKM a non-issue.

Here in the northeast USA weather can change wildly in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes. You can't rely on there being optimum conditions for any extended period of time so you have to be prepared to adapt to whatever mother nature throws at you which usually is fairly calm air turning into gusty wind in the 10 to 15 mph range and the ambient temperature potentially changing by 20 to 30 degrees in either direction from early morning to mid-afternoon. So far the WKM is the only flight controller I've found that handles those variable conditions with the highest degree of consistency so its the one I stay with.


Ken

 

[Str8 Up]

What really has no value now is the horribly overpriced Cineron gimbal at $75K. Perhaps Colin will be a little less arrogant now.

 

[PapaRomeo]

Don't worry about it Denny. Just put some handlebars on it and slap a Wookong to it and sell it to Film people. They'll think it is a bargain even if you double the price

 

[mitypsilon]

Sorry, RTRyder, I didn't really get you:
Is the WKM good for changing weather conditions and wind or not?

 

[DennyR]

Don't worry about it Denny. Just put some handlebars on it and slap a Wookong to it and sell it to Film people. They'll think it is a bargain even if you double the price

Now there's a thought, Come to think of it, it's been mounted on just about everything else. IT'S LEAST IMPRESSIVE PERFORMANCE WAS ON A S800

 

[RTRyder]

Sorry, RTRyder, I didn't really get you:
Is the WKM good for changing weather conditions and wind or not?

I guess it depends on how you define good. It is NOT the best for high wind unless you have a gimbal that can operate indepedently of the WKM and what the frame is doing, currently only the Zenmuse and brushless gimbals are capable of that with any high degree of accuracy. What it does do is produce exactly the same flight characteristics flight to flight which is why I like it. Flying as a single person operation it's much easier to let the WKM do its thing and focus less on the piloting so I can focus a bit more on where the camera is pointing, in order to make that workable I've recently converted to brushless gimbals on both my WKM hex and my MK hexa.

I recently flew the WKM in crazy wind conditons with the brushless gimbal and came away with this...

Two things the gimbal can't compensate for flexing of the isolation mounts due to wind hitting the camera and gimbal, and yawing motion caused by the wind pushing the frame around. The WKM compensates for the yaw as best it can but there's only so much it can do given a strong enough wind, in this case blowing upwards of 20 mph. I NEVER would have even taken the Cinestar off the bench in that much wind with a conventional gimbal, believe me I tried many times and never got close to this kind of result. One of thye guys that was there flying when I recorded this said this after watching the video... "I recall at one point looking up and seeing your rig at nearly 20-25deg off level fighting the wind but no signs of that in the video."

So really what it comes down to is not so much the flight controller by itself but the combination of a flight controller that you know well and has repeatable performance in varied conditons along with a gimbal that can compensate for any shortcomings of said flight controller.

Ken

 

[hjls3]

Ken - JUST MY THOUGHTS - Being setup as 1 person rig - I have had a bit of luck in the wind just lining up the shot and flying it in free mode. meaning the camera is locked on too a heading. not near as versatile as panning the camera around but it makes for good looking shots in the big wind and where subject matter might come in and out of frame or straight on shots. So in big wind - the ZEN WKM do a good job of pointing the camera the same direction - no matter what the nose of the bird does. all of that said - the other day it was super windy and i had to cut a bunch of footage where the LG got in the shot.

 

[RTRyder]

Ken - JUST MY THOUGHTS - Being setup as 1 person rig - I have had a bit of luck in the wind just lining up the shot and flying it in free mode. meaning the camera is locked on too a heading. not near as versatile as panning the camera around but it makes for good looking shots in the big wind and where subject matter might come in and out of frame or straight on shots. So in big wind - the ZEN WKM do a good job of pointing the camera the same direction - no matter what the nose of the bird does. all of that said - the other day it was super windy and i had to cut a bunch of footage where the LG got in the shot.

That's the one thing the brushless are lacking at the moment is the third axis. I think once the demand can be met for the two axis there will be boards coming out with the third axis either as an add-on or integrated onto a single board. Since most of the current ones are Atmel based it wouldn't be hard to rig it up using I2C connections to remote sensors, just a matter of doing the coding and if it all fits into the limited memory space of the Atmel processor. A logical extension of that is to incorporate GPS on I2C and use the data for horizon leveling rather than position hold, not that much different than what they're doing with the Multiwii flight controller GPS functions now so it's already out there. GPS can also be used in conjunction with the compass to add things like POI focus and solid directional focus, from what Ive read the Freefly system already has GPS capability in it, one of the ways they keep things 100% steady.

One thing for certain, this is shaping up to be a game changing year for low end aerial camera gimbals and high end as well, all it took was one really bright guy in Russia to prove the concept works and its off to the races!

Ken