Phobotic Centerpiece finally released

[Daloaf]

Agreed, although including the printer run time and post print handling you still don't come close to that amount. I have three printers that I run 8 - 10 hours a day producing parts for clients so I'm well aware of the costs and what a realistic price should be so you aren't giving away your time and are recovering costs of maintenance and electricity. Still, Shapeways, which is probably about the most expensive place you could go have something 3D printed charges as I recall approximately $1.75 per cm3 of material. My slicing program tells me there is approximately 16 cubic CM of material in the controller box so if you do the math, they'd be making a good profit charging roughly $28 per controller box.

I'm not against anyone making a profit, but charging an excessively high price just because you can and most folks don't know any better is quite another story...

Ken

It's funny, I just paid $500 for a new iphone 6 that I will be able to get for $200 in a year from now. It's just basic supply and demand. Gary makes those cases and sells 50 of them and you sell them for half as much and sell a hundred, you guys make the same profit. Gary will sell a bunch because the demand for them is high now. In 3 months, there will be dozens of guys selling cases like there are for the Am boards and the demand will go down and Gary will have to lower his price or not sell any. So for me, sell something for as much as you can get, while there is demand. When the demand dries up, then you lower your prices.

 

[tombrown1]

Here is a video I shot today testing out the CP. It was a ugly day with moderate amount of wind (like 10mph or so). I did 5 short flights making changed to the follow mode and tilt speed, trying to get it nice and slow like I prefer. Its getting close, but I want to slow down the pitch speed even more and maybe adjust the acceleration on the follow mode. I love how you can change so many things about each behavior in the GUI. But I think the CP is now ready to take on shoots. In a week or two when angle mode RC control method is released, I'll have it working just right.

Uh-oh. That's what I was afraid of. The horizon from 1:20 through to about 1:40 is completely unusable. And it's slow horizontal flying - exactly the kind most people want to do. Really wanted to put mine on for a big shoot next weekend, but now I think we're going to have to stick with our AM until this gets worked out.

Samur, any ideas on what could be causing that horizon drift and if it might be fixed in the near-term?

Best,


Tom

 

[SamurAchzar]

Uh-oh. That's what I was afraid of. The horizon from 1:20 through to about 1:40 is completely unusable. And it's slow horizontal flying - exactly the kind most people want to do. Really wanted to put mine on for a big shoot next weekend, but now I think we're going to have to stick with our AM until this gets worked out.

Samur, any ideas on what could be causing that horizon drift and if it might be fixed in the near-term?

Best,


Tom

Apart from some movement when he was accelerating laterally at 1:30, I can't see much wrong here. You don't have a reference point, as the city is sloping towards the sea and the camera looks diagonally towards the houses with a wide lens.

When you look at 2:46, when he's directly facing the ocean, you can just about see the waterline which looks completely level. I think it's an optical illusion and nothing more, as none of Matt's video so far exhibited any kind of horizon drifting (and all had nice water references in them), apart from some swaying during hard accelerations (which are completely solvable as I've said before, just our decision to be on the safe side with the IMU params to cover for vibrations, bad installations and so on).

If there was any kind of horizon drift, it'd would not have simply gone away later in the video.

This looks fine to me and I'd be surprised if you get better horizon out of your current setup (if you have a video to demonstrate, please share it).

Just give it a try and let me know what you think. We need demanding customers like you

 

[tombrown1]

Samur,
I absolutely love how you vigorously defend and back up your product - that's one of the big reasons I bought it. But it's quite plain to see that the horizon is way off around 1:30. I'm not talking about horizon movement either - just a consistently skewed horizon for quite awhile - similar to what I'd seen on one of your earlier videos in a field.
You don't even need to look at the city - just look at the water horizon on the right half of the screen - quite a bit off.
You're correct about 2:46, as well as many other level horizons on the video. The problem is that the spot I am referring to is the only time he was moving laterally while filming the horizon.
I'm not slandering and jumping ship - just bought the thing. It would be nice if you could admit it's off and counsel the best way to fix it though.
I haven't dug in to the software yet - is there something similar to the AM gyro trust?
I can consistently get better horizon out of my AM than the spot at 1:30. Plenty of video on my Vimeo page in my signature. Again, not trying to slander, but a. you asked, and b. I want you to help me figure out how to get a good lateral moving steady horizon out of your board. I'm sick of my AM board, and I know that your board can get me better stuff if it's set up right.

Best,

Tom

 

[SamurAchzar]

Tom, first, thanks for the vote of confidence buying the CP.

Second, I never tried to hide issues with the CP. I posted raw testing videos from all around the development of the CP on ***, and we all know what kind of mess that brought about. If there are problems, I'm the first to admit and fix them.
However I simply can't do anything with 1:30 in that video. All I see is static horizon that might be a bit skewed, but without absolute reference it's incredibly hard to tell (I've been judging horizons for over a year now and I know how difficult it is when you have wide lens).

Yes there is an equivalent of "gyro trust". It's set right now to very aggressively use the accelerometer, which creates its own problems but overcomes (prolonged) gyro drift completely. The only "problem" we have with lateral movement is momentary shift under hard acceleration, but again, I can cancel this out in 5 seconds using parameters and the board fixes that on its on after 5 seconds anyway. There is no situation of prlonged drift. Any comparison to the testing videos is irrelevant being that we significantly changed the horizon handling in the last month before the launch (it simply waited until we get the other stuff right first )

However, this is only apparent at 1:30, in a single video out of 4, including some with very hard flying (and I'm just talking about Matt's videos here) - so my assumption is that it's an optical illusion and nothing more.

Anyway, being that Matt's such a prolific guy, I just happen to have another video from the exact same spot, under good weather. What are the odds

Have a look:

If I had taken away the sea on the second image, you'd swear the image had a 4-5 degree slant, while it's in fact as level as it gets.

Make no mistakes, I appreciate your feedback Tom. Without customers like you, there would no reason for us. If you have issues, I will make sure they are solved. Go on and assemble it, you'll be fine

Roee

 

[jdennings]

If had taken away the sea on the second image, you'd swear the image had a 4-5 degree slant, while it's in fact as level as it gets.

Well I almost did even with the sea
But yep ...
(obnoxiously sharpened to better see the horizon).

 

[Daloaf]

San Francisco is all hills, so the horizons always seems skewed. It even throws me off when I am editing the videos, heh. Seeing the ocean horizon lines surely help though.

 

[Daloaf]

I had a little time this morning to get a flight in with my DJI S1000, AG1000 gimbal and the CP. This was the first morning that I had some free time that the wind wasn't howling or it wasn't all fogged in over in my neighborhood. The CP is on firmware 1328 and was setup with the autotune except I had to lower the P Dampening number a little bit because it was causing a buzzing when I manually tilted the gimbal down. Lowering the P Dampening fixed the problem. Roee (Samur) is going to work on this for the next firmware, but if your gimbal buzzes when tilting, trying lowering Roll first and then Pitch P Dampening. If i didn't manually tilt the camera down though, the stock autotune was fine.


I have to say, I am REALLY pleased with how smooth this video was. And aside from some videos I have take with my phantom and zenmuse this is probably the first video that I felt I really don't need to post stab! You guys have no idea what this means to me or how many hours this will save me!


Here's the video, unfortunately it's up on youtube. I sent it to Samur , so he can put it up on the Phobotic Vimeo page and maybe you guys can download the original file from there.

 

[Motopreserve]

if your gimbal buzzes when tilting, trying lowering Roll first and then Pitch P Dampening

Daloaf, can you clarify what you are referring to when you say to lower roll first? Do you mean the P dampening for roll first? OR the gain?

Man, I love that city, and videos like this make me miss it even more! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Daloaf]

Daloaf, can you clarify what you are referring to when you say to lower roll first? Do you mean the P dampening for roll first? OR the gain?

Man, I love that city, and videos like this make me miss it even more! Thanks for sharing.

I didn't have to touch a single setting after autotuning except for P Dampening. Leave all other settings as they were if they work for you at level. For my gimbal, it was perfect when level. But when I started to use the RC controls to manually tilt the pitch axis, it would start to vibrate. By lowering the P Dampening on Roll it stopped it. I lowered it 200 at a time and needed to go down to 2500 (if I remember right). I also went back and lowered the P Dampening on Pitch axis as well by 400 just as a precaution. It didn't seem to effect the performance at all. Roee is looking at the autotune parameters to see if P Dampening is to high, so this might be changed in Firmware 1329 when it's released.

This of course is with a big gimbal made for a 5D mark 3, but carrying a GH4. The settings or even this issue may be non existent with a smaller gimbal.

 

[jfro]

I didn't have to touch a single setting after autotuning except for P Dampening. Leave all other settings as they were if they work for you at level. For my gimbal, it was perfect when level. But when I started to use the RC controls to manually tilt the pitch axis, it would start to vibrate. By lowering the P Dampening on Roll it stopped it. I lowered it 200 at a time and needed to go down to 2500 (if I remember right). I also went back and lowered the P Dampening on Pitch axis as well by 400 just as a precaution. It didn't seem to effect the performance at all. Roee is looking at the autotune parameters to see if P Dampening is to high, so this might be changed in Firmware 1329 when it's released.

This of course is with a big gimbal made for a 5D mark 3, but carrying a GH4. The settings or even this issue may be non existent with a smaller gimbal.

I found that running cli and running gimbal, then motor_calib takes care of my pitch vibration issue. I have a gimbal for 5d but using a gh3 right now.

 

[Motopreserve]

Thanks so much guys.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some good test flights in. Supposed to be cloudy but the rain is not scheduled (which would be typical for my test days!).

 

[Daloaf]

Ya, I forgot I had to do the Motor_Calib earlier as well. It will be automatically done for us in the next non betafirmware (1329). it's just a workaround to a bug they found. I followed Roee's direction on his support forum.

 

[Motopreserve]

Ya, I forgot I had to do the Motor_Calib earlier as well. It will be automatically done for us in the next non betafirmware (1329). it's just a workaround to a bug they found. I followed Roee's direction on his support forum.

I did as well, but it didn't seem to work. Went 25 minutes and never ended - so I shut it off. I'm afraid to try it again

 

[Motopreserve]

In lieu of doing the motor cal again - I tried your fix of lowering the p dampening on the roll axis. Spot on. Didn't have to lower it too much - maybe 600 total. Took the shake out during RC pitch down.

Im having an issue where after moving the hex around to yaw slightly it ends up finishing almost back to straight - bit most often a bit off. Any fix for that?