Lightbridge and 2 man set up
- Thread starter jimska
- Start date
maxwelltub
Member
I dont think so, unless you are using something other then 2.4 to control your aircraft. Other wise you have a powerful TX next to your control RX. The math equation is P(TX2.4) + C(RX2.4) = All bad, bird in the dirt.
Carapau
Tek care, lambs ont road, MRF Moderator
There are two options I guess:
First is to move to a 5.8GHz control system for the pilot. Not sure what options you have here but in theory this would work nicely. You could use other frequencies too but 5.8 might be the easier one to source
Second is to accept that both the pilot and the camera operator are joined by cables and use the LB to its full extent.
First is to move to a 5.8GHz control system for the pilot. Not sure what options you have here but in theory this would work nicely. You could use other frequencies too but 5.8 might be the easier one to source
Second is to accept that both the pilot and the camera operator are joined by cables and use the LB to its full extent.
I was thinking going UHF for pilot but was wondering how frequency hopping would work at 459 mHz i.e. not sure it can, can it? Or get a ham licence to use 433 mHz and above? Not many 8 plus channel options at 5.8 and I worry about range?
Shawn Herold
Member
What is your reason for wanting to run the gimbal alone on lightbridge?
I Have a similar problem for a 2 person operation. We use a LB to pilot the craft and to view the pilot FPV camera. The gimbal is set up to be controlled by a 2.4 TX and to be viewed with a 5.8 fpv system. It worked when the pilot camera was being viewed with the HDMi port on the LB. Well, the HDMi port eventually broke and now we are attempting to use the usb port for a tablet to be viewed by the pilot and we get really bad results. Anyone have ideas why?
Only hours after I posted this I had a very scary lightbridge experience:
While setting up the camera for the first flight of the day the feed froze and vertical lines appeared, then my monitor showed 'no signal'. It came back after a while so we figured its probably the HDMI cable and switched to a spare one. It seemed to work fine, up until I was 20 feet up in the air ... luckily I still had full control so I quickly landed and tried to troubleshoot further (loosing the shot in the process
).
As it turned out, lightbridge ground station would freeze 5mins or so after powering it up. And it was doing that even when the s1000 was powered off, exactly the same on both monitor and goggles! Weather was cold (around 1-2 deg C), could that be it ? Note that this has never happened before (more than 50 flights on this rig), and it's not doing it anymore either.
Any simiral experiences, or feedback, ideas etc ? I'd like to get to the bottom of this.
While setting up the camera for the first flight of the day the feed froze and vertical lines appeared, then my monitor showed 'no signal'. It came back after a while so we figured its probably the HDMI cable and switched to a spare one. It seemed to work fine, up until I was 20 feet up in the air ... luckily I still had full control so I quickly landed and tried to troubleshoot further (loosing the shot in the process
).As it turned out, lightbridge ground station would freeze 5mins or so after powering it up. And it was doing that even when the s1000 was powered off, exactly the same on both monitor and goggles! Weather was cold (around 1-2 deg C), could that be it ? Note that this has never happened before (more than 50 flights on this rig), and it's not doing it anymore either.
Any simiral experiences, or feedback, ideas etc ? I'd like to get to the bottom of this.
The GS is lipo powered and in cold weather they can have short lives. It sounds like a brown out that periodically shuts down the system. You could try to add an additional lipo through the charging port. The one I got had the cable included in the box. You my have to source one.
Thanks for reply Tahoe Ed! Found a plug (old laptop donor) and added an external lipo. Hopefully it should do the trick, I'll post my findings.
By the way, is the Inspire 1 transmitter working with LB ? I read that in dual operator mode the slave tx controls the gimbal, so if it does work with LB doesn't that means we can finally skip the cable ?
By the way, is the Inspire 1 transmitter working with LB ? I read that in dual operator mode the slave tx controls the gimbal, so if it does work with LB doesn't that means we can finally skip the cable ?
Shawn Herold
Member
Unfortunately you currently cannot have the slave device transmitting also. I wish you could so you wouldn't have to be tethered to the other op. We just use the second LB for either client monitor or so the pilot has a screen along with the cam op to do better tracking.
The Inspire Tx and the Lightbridge are not compatible.
I am not promoting this but its a good look at what other have done for exactly what you are asking about, note toward the end of the video he talks a little about channel hopping in each of the devices
The other way is this but it will leave you both tethered to the LB groundstation,
you can get a sbus to pwm decoder. The thing I am not a fan of with lightbridge they do not let you to have access out of the signal data path unless you totally a DJI set up. The only thing they let you do on the DJI side is if your are lucky you can get a signal out of the gimbal pitch port, I was able to do this and it works fine for a one man op, allowing the camera to have tilt capabilities, but if I want to set up a shutter switch for my camera, good luck. Or a switch for my retractable gear, again there are not any options other then you have to be in bed with DJI.
With this solution you will be able to utilize all the channels your transmitter can put out.
what you do is y cable to sbus lead from the lightbridge to the Flight Controller, take the data cable only (in my experience) and connect into the sbus decoder board. You will then have up to a 19 channels available for your use.
What this does that is real nice it now allows you add many options out of the light bridge. Options like Gimbal control to a non dji product, Retractable Gear, Lights, etc...
here's a video of a guy who did it.
I am in the testing stage and as I have been moving forward with it, It is working fine, the only difference I am having, in the video he was able to tie power for the board to the FC, I have not tried that yet but in my case, I supply power from a 5v BEC and did not remove the power and ground pins in the sbus connector, when doing it that way it let me with no control over the FC, once removed them (power and ground pin) everything was copacetic. I now have been able to successfully a operate a servos, and shutter trigger board on the assigned channel in my Lightbridge and break it out of the board.
cheers all