DJI Lightbridge on Zenmuse gh3 Gimbal - how to connect it?

ebeez

Member
Hi,
I am stumped. I have the above gimbal on my S1000. I purchased the lightbridge and not sure how to connect it. I have the following hooked up:
  • GPS puck plugged into canbus from the IMU; this is plugged into the CAN1 on the A2 FC; Zenmuse is plugged into the canbus from the GPS (as required)
  • LED is plugged into the PMU
  • PMU is plugged into CAN2 of the A2 FC
The air unit of the lightbridge needs to be plugged in with the DJI plug (pictured below the grey cable) but I have no ports left to plug it in? Power to the XT60 in no problem. what am I missing?
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kohit7

Member
Easiest and most helpful way is to buy an IOSD markII and that will have 3 can ports on it which you can plug your gimbal and lightbridge into. TBH good luck on getting lightbridge to actually work, my team has only gotten it to work on the bmpcc gimbal and that was only once.
 

ebeez

Member
Uugh kohit7.. that is discouraging! ;) Well if i find a working solution I will be sure to share... stay tuned.
 

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
Uugh kohit7.. that is discouraging! ;) Well if i find a working solution I will be sure to share... stay tuned.

I also recommend a iOSD MK II to provide the connection. I have been successful with a Zen for Nex5n and now a BMPCC. The HD Gimbal is much different than the other Z15 gimbals. If something happens, the logging of the iOSD is invaluable.
 


RobBurn

Member
I also recommend a iOSD MK II to provide the connection. I have been successful with a Zen for Nex5n and now a BMPCC. The HD Gimbal is much different than the other Z15 gimbals. If something happens, the logging of the iOSD is invaluable.
Ed i email dji support about the Mark II. I asked for Imperial units. This should be extremely easy for the programmers to deliver. AT a minimum i said they should change there web site so it says "Metric Only".

run this up the ladder could you !!

THanks

Rob
 


ebeez

Member
Well I got the iOSD MarkII and hooked everything up. I have green lights on bot the control and video but no picture on the tablet. I have tested the output on the GH3 to auto, 1080i and 720P but no picture on the tablet. Tablet has usb connections. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
 

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
Are you connecting the camera to the Lightbridge air unit? Are you running SD video out from the GCU and connecting to the AV input on the LB? If so, in the LB App, the source needs to be set to HDMI/AV and single source.
 

ebeez

Member
Hi Tahoe Ed,
I have it running form the GCU and connecting tot he AV input. But in the LB app when I select hdmi/av (single video source is already selected)it says send failed?
 

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
Make sure that the LB ground unit is powered on. Try power cycling both the ground unit and your device that the app is on. Then try it again. Until you can tell the unit what signal to expect you won't have any video.
 

ebeez

Member
Thanks for the quick reply. I have done cycling on both. I can see everything in the lightbridge app on the pc and associated the appropriate channel mappings. So I know the ground unit is working. I can also control the tilt, pan and mode on the gimbal. Just can't seem to get it through the tablet. I don't get any readings on the Nex7 tablet at all. Do you know if there is an app for iOS out yet?
 


ebeez

Member
Make sure that the LB ground unit is powered on. Try power cycling both the ground unit and your device that the app is on. Then try it again. Until you can tell the unit what signal to expect you won't have any video.

Hi, I just noticed that I had to re-enable the developer tools on my Nexus 7. Would that cause this issue?
 


jrlederer

Member
hopefully you will obtain better than the god awful results I recently spent many hours on when I made the foolish decision to splurge for the BMPCC, matching Zenmuse, and that piece of **** they call the LightBridge. Just thought I'd share my $0.02 on that "revolutionary" technology. In all fairness, I know to expect reasonably about half of the manufacturer's claimed range, battery life, etc., but on this build I would have been overjoyed with 1/10th of the estimated range. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a satisfactory (also read "usable") down-link at about 10' without significant digital pixelization, not to mention extreme delay (which is a known issue, but still, that being the icing on the worst cake I've ever tried just makes me think that this is a joke of a product). Interestingly, I popped it onto a Phantom 2 and obtained ok (still substandard, but much less horrible then when mounted on its intended destination -- the BMPCC and S1000).

I tried everything I could think of to get satisfactory (at least) results: rerouted all my wiring, varied the mounting locations (which brings up another sore topic, which is that nowhere in any of the brand new factory sealed boxes of the Zenmuse nor the LightBridge was I able to locate the antenna extension cables or the mounting brackets that are demonstrated in the DJI provided video instruction demonstration of the process of installing said products on a higher level product than their real toy, the Phantom -- which logically cannot be the intended platform for LB's usage, considering that it alone exceeds the price of the Phantom series of quadcopters, not to mention that using it in conjunction with a GoPro 3-axis Zenmuse pushes the load carrying capacity to, I'm assuming, its limit -- drastically reducing battery life as well as agility.)

Then there's the issue of being tethered by hard wire to the transmitters -- an interesting regression, it seems, in evolution of freedom with respect to creativity in filming. One can imagine the situation where the individual flying the camera Tx would not necessarily want or need to be limited to moving only a few arm's lengths away from the helicopter pilot and his Tx. What a pain in the ***.

The real kicker, for me here, was that I had purchased about 6 or 7 months ago a Paralynx Arrow system, but considering that I had not purchased very thin and flexible HDMI cords along with it, the only available interconnecting cables I had severely hampered the ability for my gimbal to move freely, and so I shelved the unit in order to play with it another time when I had the time and patience to do so. After the whole LB saga, I came across the box of the Paralynx and decided to give it a try for sake of comparison in range alone -- not even in the air, just walking distance along a sidewalk. All I can say is, "wow" -- that product appears to be an absolute Lightbridge killer. I had my friend walk away from the transmitter while holding the HDMI monitor in hand, and to both of our satisfaction, he literally got nearly 200 meters away before a single pixel was out of place for even a nanosecond. Now, I am completely interested in witnessing how well their top tier product (the Tomahawk I think they call it), but that's besides the point. The bottom line is that in the same test environment, while the Lightbridge was getting all of about 7 feet between Tx and Rx before the image was useless, freezing, delayed, and pixelated, and that's with two large antennas -- the Paralynx arrow (having zero protruding antenna whatsoever -- from neither Tx nor Rx) was getting around 500-600 feet -- I'm not exactly sure what the effect of a range test at ground level is, ie. whether you get better or worse range than if the Tx is airborn, but the results speak for themselves. My advice is to return the premature and horribly operating LightBridge and contact Kopterworx and obtain a real High Def solution. I only wish I had tried the Paralynx solution that I had forgotten I had before wasting 10's of hours on that piece of crap from DJI.

Hope you get on better than I did, or that you are able to return it still. Best of luck to you and sorry if I rained on your parade. Just thought I'd tell you all about the horrendous time I had tinkering with that product unsuccessfully before you go out and buy one for yourselves.

Have a nice day and safe flying to all!!

Jonathan
 

ebeez

Member
Have you disabled the debugging and then power cycled the unit? The app for iOS is not yet available.

I disabled the USB debugging but when you enter the app it forces you to turn it back on. Also made sure the dev tools was on.. still no luck?!
 

Tahoe Ed

Active Member
That is what I wanted you to do. Until you can set the output to HDMI/AV and single source you will not have video.
 

ebeez

Member
ok. When I launch the app it forces you to turn it back on, which i did, but still does not let me select HDMI/AV. Still says send failed. Video source setting :
"single video source"
"HD gimbal" is already selected (blue check mark) when I open this screen
when I select HDMI/AV I get the "send failed, please try again" message.
Version of the app is 1.03
what else is there to check?
 

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