Zero UAV ZeroUAV aerial photography quad

[ZAxis]

Anyone else noticed this ?
View attachment 5969
http://www.zerouav.net/productmore.aspx?id=89


Might explain DJI's package deal on S800, etc.

Looks like it'll cost $2000

andy

 

[ChrisViperM]

That's some pretty smooth footage.....although the pilot could have made more out of it.

I like the self stabilizing feature...no servo jitter issues. Seems its worth to be investigated a little bit closer.

Chris

 

[kloner]

would putting the battery like that make vertical cg more even?

Guy is hauling butt, is all the skipping frames from post stab or my pc?

 

[jes1111]

Zero appear to be one of those "dumber than most" outfits - they knock off the Eclilop design and then write "Steadicam" on it! Not sure if the Ecilop guy will have the resources to defend his patent - but Tiffen should be all over their asses for using that trademarked name! And whose original, copyrighted music is that on their video? I'm willing to bet money they haven't paid royalties on it. Don't these guys ever learn?

View attachment 5976

 

[ChrisViperM]

Putting the battery like that on a "normal" Copter woud not help at all....this baby is constructed in a different way. Here you can see better:

The principle behind is similar to a steadycam - like the Flycam Nano DSLR:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWIWvoAUSBw



Chris

 

[ChrisViperM]

Zero appear to be one of those "dumber than most" outfits - they knock off the Eclilop design and then write "Steadicam" on it! Not sure if the Ecilop guy will have the resources to defend his patent - but Tiffen should be all over their asses for using that trademarked name! And whose original, copyrighted music is that on their video? I'm willing to bet money they haven't paid royalties on it. Don't these guys ever learn?

View attachment 7934

Don't wanna have an argument with you, but just out of interest...The principle of counterweight stabilization is as old as my grandgrandmother, is it even possible to patent something this ? I checked his website - http://ecilop.tv/ - many times and was exited about the whole thing...but more than this - http://ecilop.tv/shop/ecilop_easy.phtml - was never avalible for purchase. The whole apperance of the site was more like a DoItYourself pit. I guess it had the potential to be a lot more....but here goes the old story: Good product....bad marketing.

Chris

 

[DennyR]

I think I did that at least four years ahead of those guys. As a basic principle it is flawed without advanced electronics to help it. The beam disturbs the stabilization of the model if it moves more than a couple of degrees. Balanced beams are badly affected by wind as any steadicam operator will tell you. The Zen is the way to go. It uses two imu's and electronically does the essential stabilizing and vibration attenuation of a balanced beam. It is in effect a inner/outer system like cineflex only much lighter and more compact. One IMU sees the initial disturbance ahead of the second high sensitivity one that is mounted on the final axis this one sorts out the vibration and fine tunes the end result. Trying to do that with a single stand alone imu driving standard RC servos is somewhat stone age in comparison.:tennis:

The outer axis has all of the shared GPS features built into it allowing proper POI rotationals.

When HF understand this and link their FC to a high sensitivity stand alone IMU and develop a drive system for Direct Drive motors with decent encoders then it could get interesting and worth the money they charge

 

[jes1111]

Unfortunately it is possible to patent just about anything these days - the system works on "issue now, argue in court later". But that's another discussion

The Ecilop chap is an odd type, for sure - a bit of a mad scientist (with a short attention span). When I first encountered him he had videos on YouTube (they may still be there) of some pneumatically-operated vibrators/dildos that he'd designed and built. Mechanical works of art but.... why?

Denny, looks like I'm going to have to buy one of the Zenmuse thingees just to have a look. Not sure how they can attenuate vibration when their positioning resolution is 0.05º - I'm just itching to pull one apart and have a poke around inside

Latency, rigidity and backlash - that's what I'm concentrating on. I totally agree that flanged bearings glued into a hole in GF sheet and RC servos can never add up to a decent system, but I don't think that direct drive brushless is the only way to skin this particular cat

 

[estiavilla]

For me, i support both sides, i bought a original Ecilop and going to buy alot more steadicam or clone set....


For the plain reason, this hobby craft will fall out of the sky one fine day, so i need back up. Buying the original makes sense, coz the original designer need to make some money, it is the clone that let us hobbyists fly without stress, coz they are so cheap.


Thanks for the chinese to have such a low costs of living, costs employing an european engineer, can be use to employ around 8 chinese engineers with quality degree from their top university ! So luckily china opens up, if not i will have to pay USD3000 for a made in USA Ipone.

 

[DennyR]

Jeremy

The .05 is a reference to the ADX620 gyros that reside in the WKM IMU they essentially limit the stick output to that angle. At 300 deg/sec they are virtually saturation proof. That is fine for any lens that you are likely to use. If you move the WKM IMU then it will also move the Zen so it does not just use the mag but all of the sensors. However the Zen IMU is another story, it resides in that nice CNC alum box at the front of the final axis frame next to the camera trigger unit. I don't fancy pulling that IMU apart as the gyros will have had the laser treatment anyway. They are obviously much higher sensitivity. It is constructed like the main IMU which is a kind of folding box. It certainly does attenuate vibration and they now claim that in the product description. There is a vast number of high accuracy CNC machine parts that go into the structural integration to keep it very rigid throughout and yet be extremely light. It is aerospace standards throughout from a design aspect through to manufacturing. The more you study it the harder it is to see any way that it could be improved. There is a lot of aircraft grade alum. used and most of it ends up in the catch tray of the CNC machine.

They have put a lot of money into this. Yet when I ask for a CAN bus hub, that, is still in the pipe. So how can we use waypoint with a LK24 without using non standard parts?

Brushless motors.... I have a gopro mount here that is using Peizo motors from PCB. These things take time to perfect and time I don't have at the moment. The other alternative is Micro steppers but accuracy is only 5% so you need very high degree of microdrive resolution, that driver is very expensive and too big.

 

[Richk]

They both imploy the same principal used by the stedicam and glidcan and they have been around for years

 

[DennyR]

The steadicam was invented by Garrett Brown, a hollywood cameraman who created a genre known as Cinema vertire - true cinema.

he is also a folk singer and holds over 50 world patents. Tiffen and Cinema Products held a license to produce (Steadicam)

 

[Zaitsevsky]

The steadicam was invented by Garrett Brown, a hollywood cameraman who created a genre known as Cinema vertire - true cinema.
he is also a folk singer and holds over 50 world patents. Tiffen and Cinema Products held a license to produce (Steadicam)

Today, lots of camera mounts are sold under the Steadicam brand. However, the original Steadicam invention is comprised of arms and springs that transfer the weight of the camera onto the operator’s body. A multicopter has no human body and no arms with springs. That is why the use of the term Steadicam in this context is a mistake. Here is an image of the patented Steadicam element:

Garrett Brown is the author of Steadicam. Here is an image from his patent:

Garrett Brown is the author of a number of patents that have a camera with a counterweight, but it’s the additional elements that are patented, not the stabilization principle itself.
This stabilization principle had been known long before Steadicam. Here is an invention from 1931, where the patented object is a system with counterweights:

The patented feature of ECILOP drones is the method of camera rotation that uses springs on a servo gear and the use of a gyroscope for swinging prevention:

 

[Zaitsevsky]

It is possible to see a shadow of the Ecilop on the

presentation of the ZERO-Stead470 :
View attachment 6935
And there are some reasons for it:
View attachment 6936

That is why the gimbal of the zero can not be tilted in proper way.

There are more of mistakes.

Let's try an experimental explanation based on the Ecilop frame:
Take ECILOP Easy,
Connect the gyros to the receiver directly to get a constant input,
Place the ROLL gyro on the tiltable part of the gimbal,
Now two gyros are placed together like in a single block,
Tilt the gimbal forward 45 degree or more,
Turn on record,
Turn around with your drone to film a panorama quickly,
Roll-servo will tilt the camera sideward due to mistaken signal from the tilted gyro.
Roll-Error depends on the speed of pan-rotation when gimbal is tilted forward or backward.

That's why it's not good to use a single block on the tiltable part, like zero-guys do.

Ecilop in a "zero" presentations:
View attachment 6937 View attachment 6938

 

[jes1111]

Love it - so they can't even copy properly