Tau Labs OP CC for camera mount stabilization
- Thread starter Bartman
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Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Mat
Nice to see you posting here from time to time. What is being discussed though is the use of the CC board solely as the camera stabilization system while riding along on the camera plate. I don't believe the post you linked to is applicable.
I'm not sure why the OpenPilot group is reluctant to post here anymore but I'm growing impatient with the tendency to just post links to the OP forums while not really participating in discussions.
Bart
Nice to see you posting here from time to time. What is being discussed though is the use of the CC board solely as the camera stabilization system while riding along on the camera plate. I don't believe the post you linked to is applicable.
I'm not sure why the OpenPilot group is reluctant to post here anymore but I'm growing impatient with the tendency to just post links to the OP forums while not really participating in discussions.
Bart
matwelli
Member
Hi Bart, yes my posting everywhere has droped off, work chews up alot of time. in my earlier post I said how i used the copter control as a stand alone on a camera mount. and the link above is to the software i used, i posted it as reading thru this thread i realised when i originally posted, that particular branch of the software was unreleased.
I didnt use it mounted to the cameraplate, have not been sucessfull at all with that, but the board was bolted to the top of the mount(the part that moves with the multi)
Check the southerncross threads, have posted up the latest builds, including a full house ardupilot with sonar and telemetry
Have a multiwii froomJakub that has his own version of camera stab, adjustable with pots, will post up my results from that and from the minsoo kim navi board if i ever get a chance to play with both of those on a camera mount
I didnt use it mounted to the cameraplate, have not been sucessfull at all with that, but the board was bolted to the top of the mount(the part that moves with the multi)
Check the southerncross threads, have posted up the latest builds, including a full house ardupilot with sonar and telemetry
Have a multiwii froomJakub that has his own version of camera stab, adjustable with pots, will post up my results from that and from the minsoo kim navi board if i ever get a chance to play with both of those on a camera mount
I had two CC boards one was virtually dead on arrival direct from Dankers and the other one never reached the level of my current imu stuff which now includes Wookong M which is understandably far better. I just think that it is a shame that there is no after sales service for this product. If it doesn't work it seems that you just throw it away.
I checked out a few vids of the latest Xaircraft X8 with camera mount. Looks to be a pretty good value for money product and versatile enough to have in the back of the car ready to go at a moments notice.
I checked out a few vids of the latest Xaircraft X8 with camera mount. Looks to be a pretty good value for money product and versatile enough to have in the back of the car ready to go at a moments notice.
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Denny -
Admittedly I haven't tracked back over every post you've made in the last few months but I'm puzzled: I recall reading a very enthusiastic post from you, reporting that CC had "great" potential as a dedicated IMU. What changed?
Also, every report I recall of CC board "natural death" concluded with Dankers sending a free replacement to the user concerned.
Admittedly I haven't tracked back over every post you've made in the last few months but I'm puzzled: I recall reading a very enthusiastic post from you, reporting that CC had "great" potential as a dedicated IMU. What changed?
Also, every report I recall of CC board "natural death" concluded with Dankers sending a free replacement to the user concerned.
Emowillcox
Member
HI Mat good to see you back on here miss reading your interesting posts.. hope your work will slow down a bit so you can have more tim to play :nevreness:
I got one of the CC boards in the last order just have not had time to work with it yet but do try and follow the post when I hear about them. I think RTryder has been using his on a camera mount.
Denny... where did you see the new Xair stuff... I have been trying to follow that stuff too. Does seem like a good value. Also like how it folds up. I heard rumors they were coming out with a new control board so been trying to keep an eye out for that.
I got one of the CC boards in the last order just have not had time to work with it yet but do try and follow the post when I hear about them. I think RTryder has been using his on a camera mount.
Denny... where did you see the new Xair stuff... I have been trying to follow that stuff too. Does seem like a good value. Also like how it folds up. I heard rumors they were coming out with a new control board so been trying to keep an eye out for that.
SeismicCWave
Member
Gentlemen,
Let me jump in with some information concerning the CC board and camera stabilization. I have been testing it since it has been available on various quads. The reason was that quad was the only machine that I could use the camera stabilization. Now it has changed. The CC board can handle up to an Octo and still has camera stabilization. In another word it can handle 10 output. I don't think the firmware is public yet but it is available for testing.
That was the good news. Now the more practical news about camera stabilization. As a whole camera stabilization does not create a perfectly smooth video without any jitters. Camera stabilization will damp out some of the really jerky movements. However in windy situation where the multi rotor has a lot of oscillation and movement you will see a lot of motion in the video footage.
A couple of words about camera stabilization hardware. Most camera gimbals on the market except for the high end and heavy gimbals have the roll pivot very high on the gimbal. So it creates a pendulum motion in the roll axis. The issue associated with that is you will induce a pendulum effect with both the roll movement and the yaw movement of the machine.
So in order to get a more pure roll compensation the pivot point should be as close to the camera lens as possible. On the larger gimbals the designers generally use a rolling ring riding on ball bearings. That can be fairly heavy for a multi rotor to haul along with the weight of the camera.
A couple of companies have designed smaller gimbals for multi rotor use that has the roll pivot place very well. Unfortunately most of the gimbals are made for the GoPro camera. So you have large gimbals for DSLR and small gimbals for GoPros. Nothing in between for the multi rotor that wants to take up a nice small but high quality camera. Cameras like the Sony NEX 5N.
So I decided to make my own out of plywood. So far I have completed my first gimbal and it is working fine. However it is still a bit too large for my liking so I shrank it. Now I am building the smaller version but I am waiting for some parts to complete it.
In the meantime here are some videos for you to look at when I was testing the Copter Control camera stabilization feature. You have to realize some of them were flown in very calm condition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTA8zd4s8s0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO49-z4YETI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpddkALD5Fw
Let me jump in with some information concerning the CC board and camera stabilization. I have been testing it since it has been available on various quads. The reason was that quad was the only machine that I could use the camera stabilization. Now it has changed. The CC board can handle up to an Octo and still has camera stabilization. In another word it can handle 10 output. I don't think the firmware is public yet but it is available for testing.
That was the good news. Now the more practical news about camera stabilization. As a whole camera stabilization does not create a perfectly smooth video without any jitters. Camera stabilization will damp out some of the really jerky movements. However in windy situation where the multi rotor has a lot of oscillation and movement you will see a lot of motion in the video footage.
A couple of words about camera stabilization hardware. Most camera gimbals on the market except for the high end and heavy gimbals have the roll pivot very high on the gimbal. So it creates a pendulum motion in the roll axis. The issue associated with that is you will induce a pendulum effect with both the roll movement and the yaw movement of the machine.
So in order to get a more pure roll compensation the pivot point should be as close to the camera lens as possible. On the larger gimbals the designers generally use a rolling ring riding on ball bearings. That can be fairly heavy for a multi rotor to haul along with the weight of the camera.
A couple of companies have designed smaller gimbals for multi rotor use that has the roll pivot place very well. Unfortunately most of the gimbals are made for the GoPro camera. So you have large gimbals for DSLR and small gimbals for GoPros. Nothing in between for the multi rotor that wants to take up a nice small but high quality camera. Cameras like the Sony NEX 5N.
So I decided to make my own out of plywood. So far I have completed my first gimbal and it is working fine. However it is still a bit too large for my liking so I shrank it. Now I am building the smaller version but I am waiting for some parts to complete it.
In the meantime here are some videos for you to look at when I was testing the Copter Control camera stabilization feature. You have to realize some of them were flown in very calm condition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTA8zd4s8s0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO49-z4YETI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpddkALD5Fw
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Jes Well actually quite a lot changed. As a general rule I try to avoid any form of unpleasantness and simply keep away from it. I did report the fault and the only thing I heard from Dankers was a personal character assassination because I accepted a free board from someone who I have only met once in my life who Dankers fell out with. (Seemingly amongst many others as well). Apart from that I was a paying customer who tried to offer some input to the general cause. I will send you the private post if you like. But I don't take that **** from anyone. Shame as I like what james has been doing. Crash very kindly offered to repair the boards for me, so I have not entirely given up with CC as it does have some potential. I do recall dankers saying something along the lines that he would have people (possibly you) watching my comments in case I had nothing better to do than spend all day long running him down. Is he not his own worst enemy!
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That was an unfortunate episode/situation, best forgotten. Dankers is frazzled, for sure - who wouldn't be in his situation?
You obviously have a great deal of valuable experience and I hope you'll continue to share it here, on the OP forums, wherever. I'm still looking forward to the next video
Right now my own project is focussing on the mechanical aspects of gimbal design - backlash, stiffness, vibration, etc. - once I've got that sorted I'll be playing with the control.
P.S. Remember that CC is just the first output of the OP project - what's coming down the pipeline is seriously exciting! :strawberry:
You obviously have a great deal of valuable experience and I hope you'll continue to share it here, on the OP forums, wherever. I'm still looking forward to the next video
Right now my own project is focussing on the mechanical aspects of gimbal design - backlash, stiffness, vibration, etc. - once I've got that sorted I'll be playing with the control.
P.S. Remember that CC is just the first output of the OP project - what's coming down the pipeline is seriously exciting! :strawberry:
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Yeah I think a lot of good stuff is on the way. I think Jason Short has also taken the bull by the horns with AC which is starting to look very good. I am working on hollow shaft direct drive PCB motors for small camera mounts with sensors built in to the board. Currently building an autoclave for the prepreg carbon stuff. wet layup sucks.That was an unfortunate episode/situation, best forgotten. Dankers is frazzled, for sure - who wouldn't be in his situation?
You obviously have a great deal of valuable experience and I hope you'll continue to share it here, on the OP forums, wherever. I'm still looking forward to the next video
Right now my own project is focussing on the mechanical aspects of gimbal design - backlash, stiffness, vibration, etc. - once I've got that sorted I'll be playing with the control.
P.S. Remember that CC is just the first output of the OP project - what's coming down the pipeline is seriously exciting! :strawberry:
BorisS
Drone Enthusiast
Sorry guys for the basic question but i am just getting into the whole CC boards configs and i would like to use the CC boards for stabilizing my AV 130.
Is my approach in the diagram possible or does the CC board need a RX hooked up to it or anything else that it would provide the servos signals for stabilization ?
Thanks
Boris
View attachment 1704
Is my approach in the diagram possible or does the CC board need a RX hooked up to it or anything else that it would provide the servos signals for stabilization ?
Thanks
Boris
View attachment 1704
Attachments
Emowillcox
Member
HI Boris you planing to use the CC board to operate your camera board on you WooKong machine? I have been thinking about trying the same thing one day since the WooKong doesn't have so many outputs. Hope you will keep us posted on what you figure out.
Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
depending on what you want to do, if you want the ability to control camera tilt then you'll need a receiver. the roll servo can be controlled solely by the CC board since it's got one job which is to remain level.
i tried this myself and couldn't get it to work. i was distracted by other things so i didn't get as deep into it as other have tried but it would be nice if someone could get it to work.
unfortunately the OP guys have all but disappeared from this site (except the rare appearance of Matwelli). i can offer commentary on that situation but i won't.
i tried this myself and couldn't get it to work. i was distracted by other things so i didn't get as deep into it as other have tried but it would be nice if someone could get it to work.
unfortunately the OP guys have all but disappeared from this site (except the rare appearance of Matwelli). i can offer commentary on that situation but i won't.
peabody124
Member
Sorry man, but since there's only maybe one OP related post here a month it's hard to keep up. And since you don't like us cross-linking to the OP-forums it's extra hard to point out places where things have been discussed before.
Yeah this should be easy to achieve. You could either put CC on the main frame and use the camera stabilization as normal. Alternatively you could put it on the camera itself and then use rate or attitude mode. You'll have to fake a few things to make it happy since it's an unusual configuration. I assume you'd plug a receiver in so you'd just want to identify all five channel (throttle, roll, pitch, yaw, flight mode).
I would start with mounting it on the main frame myself, I'm not convinced being on the camera would give more precision.
matwelli
Member
That will work, but you neeed to give it at least 5 dummy signals (roll/pitch/yaw/throttle/mode so best bet is to join all 6 RC wires together and plug into a spare channel on the rx, and use that channel to control tilt
Bartman
Welcome to MultiRotorForums.com!!
Here's the problem (IMHO, as I see it), with the MK camera stabilization the FC seems to lose track of what would be horizontal for the camera and during periods of prolonged sideways flying one must accept that the horizon won't be level. Also, with a three axis mount, pitch and roll stability are lost once you pan the camera left or right from straight ahead. So, having the camera stabilizer resident on the camera plate itself would make the stabilized camera independent of the stabilized helicopter. If the camera stabilizer were effective enough, in theory, the helicopter could be flown sideways, backwards, however and the camera mount would be seeking level in roll and stabilized at whatever tilt has been input by the camera operator and it would all be based on the movement of the camera and not the heli.
Unless flight controls are issuing stabilization commands based on where the helicopter is going to be in a fraction of a second into the future in an attempt to preempt what the gyros may sense, i can't see how stabilizing the camera itself could be bad, or impossible for the CC to figure out.