Tarot X6 crash - lesson learned

[tombrown1]

She was flying pretty well, so I put the gimbal and camera on and threw her up. A couple minutes in she comes crashing down from about 30 feet. Absolutely devastated - I have a ton of hours invested building this thing.
Gimbal is completely trashed (couldn't get the gear down in time), camera is fine (phew...), lost an arm, prop, retract brace, and motor.

So I figured out what happened - on the motor mount there are 4 screws holding it down from the top. The two on the outside had vibrated out - didn't break, they came loose - I know because there were two other loose ones on the adjacent motor mount, and the threads weren't stripped.

Lesson learned - always use Loc-tite.

Sooooo - I've gone to the dark side. Never thought I'd do this, but just ordered an S1000. These things have appeared to be bulletproof and simple. Haven't read about any consistent problems. Good flight time - difficult to mess up the build. Really need something reliable right now. Also ordered Jakub's new gimbal over at HD Air Studio. I think it's called the MR.

Ugh......

 

[SamaraMedia]

Ouch! Sorry to hear this Tom. I will keep a closer eye on my X6 motor mounts. Still fine tuning the SuperX FC and prop combinations before thinking about throwing my gimbal and camera on.

I think you're making a great choice on the MR Infinity gimbal, are you getting the AM with encoders? or CP? Encoder video looks REAL good.

 

[tombrown1]

I'm still trying to understand the whole encoder thing. Before the crash the cp was performing amazingly well, BUT I hadn't started working on tuning the horizon yet.

I've read a lot, but what does the am with encoders do for you? Does it help with horizon? I can't imagine needing better stabilization than what cp provides. Very concerned about horizon though.

 

[SamaraMedia]

I think so, if you look at some of the test footage on Jabuk's thread for the InfintyMR it is vet level, even in wind. Best I've seen non Zen or Movi

 

[tombrown1]

What I'm trying to figure out is specifically how encoders are better than stock alexmos.

 

[Pumpkinguy]

Been there bro. $3000 + damage on my second flight a while back. Not for the same reasons as you but that's a moot point.
Every screw on my machine gets loctite and is torqued with a torque screwdriver. There is too many things that can go wrong with these things as it is. Loosing fasteners in flight won't be one of them.

 

[crayfellow]

What I'm trying to figure out is specifically how encoders are better than stock alexmos.

From Basecam:

• Prevents motors from losing synchronization and skipping steps.

• Provides the information about frame angle and angle of the camera relative to frame, that can be important for some kind of applications.

• For many cases it can significantly decrease power consumption by using field-oriented control strategy to drive motors.

• Increases instant torque in the same way.

• Allows the controller to get information about the camera balance for automatic balancing (with help of extra DC servo motors and moving counterweights).

• The firmware also retains an option to adjust camera position by hands.

• Increases the precision of stabilization by applying FOC-specific compensations.

Generally, because the controller knows empirically where the motors have stepped to, it needs less energy and effort to do its work. All things being equal, you will have a more stable unit for less power.

 

[tombrown1]

Thanks for the link. I had read all that before.

I guess my question is with regards to horizon specifically. It seems as though we already have the technology without encoders to achieve good stability. Do they help with horizon though? Seems like the first person who can provide a level horizon consistently is going to make some money.

 

[Pumpkinguy]

Ya. That person is called freefly systems.

 

[tombrown1]

Ha! You're right!

Seems like it's coming soon though for those of us who don't want to fly $4k gimbals. Not sure why Samur and Alexei don't just bite the bullet and put a GPS chip on their boards. Seems like people are clamoring for an affordable horizon.

 

[Old Man]

Perhaps the reason is sales volume. It might be hard to justify investing a lot of time and money into developing a product that may not generate enough sales to recover the investment and turn a reasonable profit. Gimbals for cameras larger than a Go Pro are not big in sales quantity, and production costs for the equipment not made in China significantly reduce profits because cost to manufacture versus selling price can be disproportional.

 

[tombrown1]

I think that generally you're right, but I think Jakub over at hdairstudio is doing pretty good business with big camera gimbals. Also, I think the Tppacks guys are doing pretty well. There's definitely a market there as long as they command a decent price.