Phobotic Centerpiece Brushless Gimbal Controller

fpmurphy

Member
HD and oled monitor,,, big ones in the 26" range just like they do it on all the rest of the platforms like boom, jib, crane, etc.

we have been playing with two hd systems and one follow focus setup. We tried the arri but it's too big and cumbersome


Have you tried the Heden Carat? It worked well on the M10 with an Epic, Arri Master Primes, and Paralinx video. We were pushing the weight limits of the M10 with the Master Primes, but it seemed to handle everything pretty well.
 


SleepyC

www.AirHeadMedia.com
Anyone get the new phobotic controller up in the air yet?
"
Right now I'm a bit bummed. It seems that although it works great in handheld config, or suspended off rails, it will not work with "Cinestar style" tri-pod landing gear.
You will need retracts.
:(
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
"
Right now I'm a bit bummed. It seems that although it works great in handheld config, or suspended off rails, it will not work with "Cinestar style" tri-pod landing gear.
You will need retracts.
:(

What do you mean???? What's the hangup?

are you talking about the landing gear that moves with the yaw axis?
 
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jfro

Aerial Fun
Anyone get the new phobotic controller up in the air yet?

I got one yesterday. Started working on it today. Little slow going, but finally got it up and running. I'm breaking it in on a new gimbal and having to reconfigure a few things as I'm going from 2 axis to 3.

Hoping to get it in the air tomorrow, but wondering if I might be disappointed for no other reason than many people got there's 5-7 days ago and so far I've only seen 2 flights posted.

Probably would have helped for them to have had more boards out in beta testing, but it's here now and in a way, we are doing the beta testing. Looks like they (not sure it that's 2,3, or more peeps) are scrambling and working hard to resolve issues that are popping up.

One thing that has surfaced is there hasn't been any real testing on heavier systems yet. Mostly theory that needs to be worked out and proven.

Am a little concerned on keeping the board and IMU safe. It's populated on both sides and has a bit more chips than most of the their competitors.

Keeping my fingers crossed that this live up to it's potential.
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Jfro, what gimbal are you trying it on. I have a new gimbal on the way that uses the rotating legs - so sleepy's post has me a bit concerned. I may have enough time to change the order, but not sure at this point.

I was under the impression that the testing was done with mid-level to heavier stuff. Did I read that wrong?

Good luck.
 

jfro

Aerial Fun
Just reading the threads on their forum gives me the feeling they haven't tested on anything (or at least very little) above 50mm or maybe 60mm motors. It's more a gut 'oh no" feeling than anything else. I think they are working hard and maybe a bit overwhelmed with launch Stuff is all over the place on their web site as they are dealing with problems and not having a very good user guide/manual. Guess it's sort of par for the course in this industry, but was expecting more for some odd reason.

I bought a DYS Eagle Eye 3 Axis with 60mm motors on the roll and yaw, 50mm on the pitch. It's set up for retracts or a retro cage fit on the yaw if go to 3 legs. It's not much different than the one I have been flying other than it is better looking and has the 3rd axis. I bought some 80mm motors, but decided didn't need to put it on the yaw axis as they were touting the new Phobotic to have more holding power so I thought I'd give it a try. With my auto tune tonight, I was surprised as the movements were small and controlled. Did it two times cause I thought it wasn't working right. For some reason, I thought their auto tune took just 1-2 minutes. It was way longer than that. Hope they speed that up.

I'm going to build a 3rd axis for my DIY at some point, so one of these will become a handheld. I have more support on the roll axis than most of the gimbals I see on the market, including my new DYS. I may mod the DYS as I like stability. I'm still nervous about hanging all the weight off of 2 set screws on the yaw.....

For now, my legs will be in the way if this works and I want to do a 360 or even a 45 degree turn. I'm not unhappy right now yawing with the copter. I'm really looking for just the yaw stabilization in backward and forward flight like I get on my 3 axis Gopro. I'll have to figure out how to tighten up or restrict the follow mode which I assume is in their software.

I'm struggling to figure out the 3 leg or retract landing gear thing. With Snow 60 -80 days out, I figure I'll sit tight the rest of the year.
[h=1][/h]
 

jfro

Aerial Fun
Jfro,
I was under the impression that the testing was done with mid-level to heavier stuff. Did I read that wrong?

Good luck.

I'd do a little more reading and maybe hold off if you have a gimbal you can test this out on. I see you are in the North country too. My feeling is, get this going ASAP as it will be snowing soon and the fall colors will be here in weeks. Time to fly, build and test when the cold weather sets in.
 

MadMonkey

Bane of G10
If somebody puts together a PC controller with a cheaper off-the-shelf gimbal and gets good in-flight results, let me know. I'm extremely interested in something lighter than the Ronin I'm currently flying (GH4 use).
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
I'd do a little more reading and maybe hold off if you have a gimbal you can test this out on. I see you are in the North country too. My feeling is, get this going ASAP as it will be snowing soon and the fall colors will be here in weeks. Time to fly, build and test when the cold weather sets in.

I am planning on getting some fall foliage come hell or high water - so this better be good :)

i have high hopes for this controller (like most of us), and currently have the vx5n with added 3rd axis. This will be the first test and I should have some feedback on the newer Jakub (quadframe) 3-axis unit soon as well. I can't think of why the rotating legs would be an issue - need sleepy back here ASAP with an explanation!
 


SleepyC

www.AirHeadMedia.com
What do you mean???? What's the hangup?

are you talking about the landing gear that moves with the yaw axis?


Yes, if your gimbal has landing gear that moves with the Yaw axis the board will not work. It's so sensitive that any touch/vibration of the landing gear breaks the yaw free.
My friend Andrew has my board and has been testing it with the Hexacrafter G2 gimbal. If you put the gimbal on mounting rods (no landing gear attached) he says it's spot on, if you attach the gear it breaks free with no effort at all. And he is using the largest 80 series motors made on the Yaw axis.

I'm going today or tomorrow to mess around.. more info coming.
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Yes, if your gimbal has landing gear that moves with the Yaw axis the board will not work. It's so sensitive that any touch/vibration of the landing gear breaks the yaw free.

I'm going today or tomorrow to mess around.. more info coming.

this is not good, are you talking about touching the LG and kicking it into the recovery mode??? That may be so etching they could fix Ina revision.

please keep up updated....
 

jfro

Aerial Fun
I am planning on getting some fall foliage come hell or high water - so this better be good :)

i have high hopes for this controller (like most of us), and currently have the vx5n with added 3rd axis. This will be the first test and I should have some feedback on the newer Jakub (quadframe) 3-axis unit soon as well. I can't think of why the rotating legs would be an issue - need sleepy back here ASAP with an explanation!

Jakub's 3rd axis looks great. On paper, it looks to be maybe the most solid that I've seen. I think he uses the RCTimer motors, so I'm not sure it would take the iPower motors of which I have lots of, for experimenting and building.

Going to be around 10mph wind today which is a good test bed. Going to put the beta software on, re-tune 1 more time and try some test flights. Since they temporary want 3s batteries, I only have 1, so don't know what that will do to my testing. No idea how long the battery will last.

I hoping for decent weather, as I'd like to try 3-4 different cameras to see if 1 gimbal and the Centerpiece can be used while changing cameras and lens. Right now I suspect the auto tune time is going to be too long.

Still have some figuring out to do as to where to put battery, tx for the video, and the hdmi converter... Might just fly with out the last two to get it started. I just built a temporary landing gear (4 legs) so don't want to put too much effort into this. Waiting to hear what shakes out between the retracts and 3 legged Cinestar type landing gear.
 

Hexacrafter

Manufacturer
Yes, if your gimbal has landing gear that moves with the Yaw axis the board will not work. It's so sensitive that any touch/vibration of the landing gear breaks the yaw free.
My friend Andrew has my board and has been testing it with the Hexacrafter G2 gimbal. If you put the gimbal on mounting rods (no landing gear attached) he says it's spot on, if you attach the gear it breaks free with no effort at all. And he is using the largest 80 series motors made on the Yaw axis.

I'm going today or tomorrow to mess around.. more info coming.

I need to chime in and clarify what we are experiencing with Gimbal Mounted landing gear that rotate with the Yaw/ Pan. We have done considerable testing with the Centerpiece and the G2-V2 gimbal. As a "base" model without any gimbal mounted landing gear, (much like Zenmuse) it is amazing. When we shifted our testing to a G2-V2 with Tri-Pod style legs mounted to the gimbal, we instantly noticed problems. Centerpiece performed some tuning tests on this configuration and was not able to get it to perform as desired. The gimbal was not "breaking Free" on yaw, But rather going into recovery mode. After some tuning testing by Phobotic, Roee was able to eliminate this problem, but the motors were then buzzing. After several hours with Phobotic testing, we both decided that Gimbal Mounted Landing Gear are not going to work at this time. Phobotic is aware that many users are wanting to use a "fixed" gimbal mounted gear and have told me that they intend to work toward a solution. This may involve a second IMU on the aircraft frame. Like many, we are disappointed that a gimbal mounted gear is not currently possible, and have advised our clients of such. However, his does not mean that it will not be possible in the future.
Also, I wish to explain that the power behind the motors is many times that of AlexMOS. It took hours of actually talking with Phobotic to understand that what I thought was an axis (yaw) breaking away, was actually the controller going into rcovery mode as it could not properly resolve the yaw with landing gear. To really understand the "power" behind the driven motor, you must get out of "follow me" mode into "locked" or 2 man mode......then apply force to an axis and you we see the motor torque. An 80mm series motor can lift a truck! (exaggeration)
We have advised our clients to transition to retracts as we do not wish to make promises about a gimbal mounted gear that may be months off or not come at all. Phobotic has advised me that they are dedicated to making it work with gimbal mounted gear and also intend to supoort indirect drives which also currently do not funtion with the current CP firmware.
I expect to have test gimbals to Kloner & return SleepyC's converted G2-V2 by the end of this week. They will be able to provide their experiences by next week.
I hope this clarifies things...
For those of us that have been around from the beginning of the Multicopter/ Brushless gimbal technology, This is new technology from a very dedicated company....not some open source experiment....solutions will come... just be patient a bit and give them a chance to understand all of the issues.
 
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Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Hexa. Thanks so much for the insight. Not welcome news, but better to know now. Wish this had been disclosed before I purchased the gimbal. I'll scramble to find a solution now.

Please keep is updated.
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Jfro: seems like keeping complications to a minimum would be the way to go. Once you are happy with the tuning etc, then you can slap the HDMI/VTX gear on there. Looking forward to your results.
 

fltundra

Member
Anyone know what happened to the post regarding plastic cases being made other then the one's by shapeways and tppacks? Can't figure out for the life of me which member posted that he was going to offer these for sale cheaper.
 

Motopreserve

Drone Enthusiast
Anyone know what happened to the post regarding plastic cases being made other then the one's by shapeways and tppacks? Can't figure out for the life of me which member posted that he was going to offer these for sale cheaper.

RTRyder posted that - but I have not heard back yet.
 


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