New Align 800 cameraship - Needs some work!

[DennyR]

Ah, looks like you can control everything and watch the preview on your i-phone or tablet in realtime. I'm gona have to get one of these. Wonders of WiFi.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Looking at the monitor this does not look good. Yet another stand alone gimbal controller. It is nowhere near locked in.:apathy:
The penny has not dropped.

Yeah, looks like more Align crap. They should just stick to running the CNC machines which they are good at, and leave the electronics to people who know how to do that.

Cmon George you know what I mean, change the 2000 deg./sec. to 250 in the registry on a 6050 and tweak the accls. and you will be on the right track?

The problem with that is the vibration noise can be much more than 250 so you go into gimbal lock basically. Maybe if the damping on the gimbal is good enough you could do it. But realistically, the problem with the picture there probably isn't the controller at all. You simply can't hang 2kg of mass 12" down on a 1/4" shaft and expect things to be stable.

It is NOT vibration, it is a balance issue and a poor IMU. the web site shows a good mounting system.

Well, he's right though. I can't see ANY vibration isolation anywhere in the system. Bet you it has horrible jello if you can find some actual footage.

I stand corrected, but I noticed the picture bouncing...just like my old trex600 used to do, I had to use 4 car suspension units to cure that...the 2 they have on this 800 aren't up to the job if you ask me!

You know, I've never really understood what the boom/damper system is for. I've rigid mounted a camera on my copter, and it does not have any pitching motion, or vertical oscillation which needs to be damped. IMO, it's a band-aid fix for another problem. Again, that 1/4" pan shaft everybody is hanging the camera from. Any forces on that shaft and you get the the camera platform rocking and rolling. So you try to solve that by isolating any and all forces from the system, using these booms and dampers. But then the camera ends up bouncing up and down on the booms... I've seen guys with terrible opposing oscillation going on.

If a rigidly mounted camera doesn't show any pitching motion or vertical oscillation that needs to be damped, why use this elaborate system? What am I missing?

and the tail rotor has the super fast HKS 878.

Which servo is this? I can't find it. Just curious on the specs. I'm planning on trying the Lontair HV Mag Encoder servo soon, 0.03 sec/60, so very fast.

Much Dev. going on at the moment with blade design. The asymmetric Spin blades are far from perfect for this kind of application.

How so? Just the "ballooning" problem? Hope there's not another problem, because I just received about $400 worth of these blades! I ordered 95 and 105 semi-sym tail blades, and 325, 600 and 700 asym main rotors. I think we'll have the ballooning problem fixed because Arducopter recently got an exceptional z-accel controller working. I have a crappy little 450-heli holding altitude +/- 3" in a 40-60km gale. In more reasonable 20 km/h winds it's less than 1cm. It's very very good.

Who knows what/who is behind the design of that gimbal

Well, much of it is a total rip-off of Photoship One's designs. The boom is nice, and well done (for what it is, I still don't see the point). I like that it's a parallelogram and vertical motion will not result in swing/tilt of the pan axis.

The DMC-TZ40 shoots 50P HD (AVCHD) plus a fancy HDR mode 18 mp. stills and has a great 20x lens that stabilises in 5 axis with auto leveling.

Ooh, very nice looking! I was wanting to get an RX100, but maybe I'll wait. Seems the more I wait, the better things get. But then I guess that's always true with these things right?

 

[steph280]

That video was shot a year ago at the Align funfly with a prototype, it even says "test" in the video title, of course it will not be perfect. I was at that funfly and saw this unit up-close, and realized the potential it has. So I ordered the production copy and it just arrived yesterday. The gimbal is of very high quality construction, clean CNC carbon and metal alloy throughout. The servos are 360 degrees and controlled by the included gimbal stabilization system. The system require the use of Align APS auto pilot system, which provides hold/return home/waypoint capabilities. I've been testing the APS system on my 600 heli for a few months now and it has been rock solid. Theoretically you can put the heli into position hold and operate the gimbal, but Align has really designed this to be a two operators setup.

A prominent aerial photo company in Taiwan has been testing the prototype for a while, and used a variety of camera equipment and different shooting environment. I've included some photos from their facebook page.

Now I just need time to put this together. Will provide a thorough review once I have some flights with it.

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[GeorgeM]

Hmmm... I'd be interested to see what (might) happen if one tilts the RED down a bit..... Seems awfully out of CG in that tilt tray.
Publicity shot for web cred ??

gm>>

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Good eye. Yeah, those shocks don't look like they have much travel left either. I'm trying to see if they've got a chain holding the tail down... :highly_amused:

 

[GeorgeM]

Batteries need to be at the tail ?? or beyond ??

 

[MombasaFlash]

.....

Hmm, I wonder if the performance is as ... erm ... 'compelling' as the setup movie.

Sorry Align but the GS800 rather has 'rubbish' written all over it.

 

[steph280]

That's a lot of negativity for a product which nobody has seen but some photos and videos.

Good or bad I will find out, and post my findings.

 

[MombasaFlash]

... Looking at the monitor this does not look good...

Ah, but he does have a sodding great empty peli case with a 'pro' carbon-look plate to mount his teeny-weeny screen and there is soooo much space to lay down the video receiver that someone forgot about when designing the installation.

 

[MombasaFlash]

That's a lot of negativity for a product which nobody has seen but some photos and videos.

Good or bad I will find out, and post my findings.

Have you dealt with single-rotor camera ships before? Sometimes a series of photos is sufficient. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about this rig. Align is belatedly jumping on the AP wagon with a customarily neatly CNC'd concoction of tired old ideas that will provide endless rubbish to average footage to the hapless that buy it. Mounting a RED camera is presumably supposed to lend it some sort of credibility but it is really just an insult to the RED.

And don't forget, if you really want to look like a professional you must have a sodding great peli case for your downlink monitor.

 

[GeorgeM]

Steph....please take the above with 'copious amounts' of 'pinches of salt':

We're just enjoying this thread..... Thanks DennyR ))))))

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Ah, but he does have a sodding great empty peli case with a 'pro' carbon-look plate to mount his teeny-weeny screen and there is soooo much space to lay down the video receiver that someone forgot about when designing the installation.

I didn't pay enough attention to that, another good point. What is the point of that case? There doesn't appear to be anything in it. They have to bolt the monitor on top of the deck. And the receiver just sitting there?

I wonder if they have another Peli case to transport the monitor. So they open the big one and set it up, open the little one, take out the monitor and bolt it to the big one? :highly_amused:

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Have you dealt with single-rotor camera ships before? Sometimes a series of photos is sufficient. There is absolutely nothing revolutionary about this rig. Align is belatedly jumping on the AP wagon with a customarily neatly CNC'd concoction of tired old ideas that will provide endless rubbish to average footage to the hapless that buy it.

Which gimbal is it you're using on the big heli of your website? It doesn't look fully custom, but I've never seen it before.

 

[MombasaFlash]

Which gimbal is it you're using on the big heli ...

Copterworks. It has been subjected to all sorts of mods - mostly around the suspension and vibration elimination - and is a pretty solid and basic design, but it is not fully compatible with many 'all-in-one box' stabilisation systems due to the Pan>Tilt>Roll hierarchy. The majority of 3-axis gimbals that folks around here will be familiar with are Pan>Roll>Tilt.

Being all metal it weighs about 3 kg but it does carry serious cameras without issue - unlike the amusing photos of RED's crammed into flimsy, light weight PS One's and AV200's and impossibly out of of balance.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Ah yes, OK. Do you know if the roll axis ring is just a commercial/industrial turntable bearing? http://www.mcmaster.com/#turntables/=l7ahfs

I've been looking for something like that but smaller.

3Kg by itself eh? Wow, that is pretty heavy, but if that's what it takes... I notice they don't bother with the boom shock absorbers, the boom is rigidly mounted. What's your opinion on pros/cons of that?

 

[R_Lefebvre]

An Align Rep posted this video on HeliFreak:

I'm totally unimpressed. I assume that is with an experienced crew, and lots of post-stab, and there's still significant shake.

Meh.

 

[Macsgrafs]

Meh, I agree but you must understand that the target audience are not like us...they don't notice things like composure, exposure & vibration. Many times I have been commissioned for portrait work & the people say "My mate could do the same with his point & shoot"....maybe if his mate had a studio setup with 4 flash heads & backgrounds
they really don't see things like us...they are left brain dominant, we are right brain dominant.

Ross

 

[R_Lefebvre]

I'm totally left brain dominant. I'm only looking at the technical aspects. Way too much shake going on there. They only used a few short clips, and probably post stabilized it heavily, and they couldn't get any that weren't shaking? Geez.

 

[DucktileMedia]

They probably spent most of their efforts making the sky look blue. With all that smog I doubt the camera operator could even see the screen.

 

[R_Lefebvre]

Somebody on Heli Freak just pointed out that video was uploaded in 2010! Probably not even shot from the Align gimbal prototype unless they took a LONG time to develop it. Yikes, this could get ugly! :highly_amused: