Hoverfly Hoverfly Gimbal Controller?

So will the Pan Magnetometer work with camera operator input on an AV200 at the moment?

Why does it not work on the Cinestar?

For 2 axis with signal boosters yes, for pan not at the moment. Not auto compensation at least. I am working with Dan at hoverlfly to get mine working and it is proving to be not easy. I still have hope that we will get it figured out though. Gonna talk to him some more tomorrow and go over what I learned tonight and see what he thinks.
 

For 2 axis with signal boosters yes, for pan not at the moment. Not auto compensation at least. I am working with Dan at hoverlfly to get mine working and it is proving to be not easy. I still have hope that we will get it figured out though. Gonna talk to him some more tomorrow and go over what I learned tonight and see what he thinks.

Thanks. I'm curious to know the tilt/roll/pan gear ratios on the photohigher gimbals. I assume the hoverflyGimbal was designed around PH gimbals? If the CS gimbals gear ratios were to match that of the PH would we still have issues? or at least not need to use signal boosters/stretchers.
 

Photronix

Pilot
Thanks. I'm curious to know the tilt/roll/pan gear ratios on the photohigher gimbals. I assume the hoverflyGimbal was designed around PH gimbals? If the CS gimbals gear ratios were to match that of the PH would we still have issues? or at least not need to use signal boosters/stretchers.

The gear ratios are taken care of with a scaling value in the HoverflyGIMBAL setup software. It can be used on any gimbal.

The signal boosters simply match the impedance level between the Servos and HFG. It does not stretch the signal.

The next version of the HFG is compatible with all servos. It will be available in the next week or two. Manufacturing is making this a high priority right now. The popularity of the HFG was much much higher than we could have hoped for...which is great but we are currently out of stock.
 


DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
Stacky/Hoverfly..I actually take back my comment on the manual being over done. I was just stressed at work and hoping to rush the install during my lunch break. But truthfully they are very thorough in the instructions minus a few things.

Suggestions for the manual:

1: You dont mention compass calibration
2: show some pics of how you installed the board to some gimbals as it just shows a hand holding it there. This might be helpful for some looking for suggestions.
3. When you state the board can be installed in any orientation it is a little confusing to understand the mounting config. Maybe a diagram indicating that front/back/left/right are referring to the actual faces of the gimbal. I know this sounds stupid, but at first I was trying to mount it such that the board was perpendicular to the back face as i have a bracket sticking out for my HDMI box that it would have fit nicely under.
4. if you have all 3 axis connected to the board, you cant switch modes from the radio. Is this true or did I miss something?
5. maybe you guys could include a simple flat piece of G10 that would allow us to screw the board to so we could use double stick tape to attach to the face of a gimbal. It is pretty hard to find a spot on your average gimbal that will accomodate all 4 screws. but then the question would be, is it ok to just use double sided foam tape to attach the board directly to the frame? thats what I ended up doing.

Looking good though. These are all superficial things and in the end the simplicity and performance is what really matters.
 

Does hoverfly have a ramping feature on the tilt and pan axis? Meaning, can these axis stopping smoothness be controlled such as soft or buffered stops instead of the axis just coming to a hard stop once the sticks are released. I assume yes.
 

DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
I was wondering the same. I see a smoothness slider, thats it. As this is for my 2 operator heli, I just need it to be smooth control while I am moving and not so much to have an acceleration curve at the end of an axis move. But that would be cool, especially for operating the tilt by yourself. I got some tests I am uploading right now. Will post. I have no idea what to expect but it looks good from the ground.
 


I dont have the gimbal board and so I dont know the features of it etc but if you have any suggestions the HF guys like to hear them, you can post any thoughts or suggestions here https://hoverflytech.zendesk.com/forums/323796-feature-requests

Thanks Stacky.

As an example of what I mean, currently i'm using a separate MK board with Walter's slew mode FW installed, this FW is great because you can control stick input start/stop smoothness damping in increments with options from the standard none dampened start/stop where the gimbal's Pan/tilt movement starts/stop as soon as the sticks are released.. or you can input a greater damping effect where start/stops are butter smooth with a gradual linear start/stop like the professional fullsize jib heads found on cranes. You definitely don't what any robotic movements at all on your tilt and pan axis for pro looking video. Here is an example of damping control.

Explanation starts at 1:17

 
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DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
Here's some various shots from today. some notes. The grommets provided by Photohigher were 2 slightly different sizes so the gimbal is pretty loose where it is connected to the heli. But all in all it is pretty damn good considering I did nothing but calibrate the thing. I am using an XY8 config and I have my gains at around 40 with the smoothness at 12%. When there are string jitters it is very clearly from the whole heli jumping around. i played with quite a few different gains settings on the heli. So this shows more or less what it does in various modes.

 
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Stacky/Hoverfly..I actually take back my comment on the manual being over done. I was just stressed at work and hoping to rush the install during my lunch break. But truthfully they are very thorough in the instructions minus a few things.

Suggestions for the manual:

1: You dont mention compass calibration
2: show some pics of how you installed the board to some gimbals as it just shows a hand holding it there. This might be helpful for some looking for suggestions.
3. When you state the board can be installed in any orientation it is a little confusing to understand the mounting config. Maybe a diagram indicating that front/back/left/right are referring to the actual faces of the gimbal. I know this sounds stupid, but at first I was trying to mount it such that the board was perpendicular to the back face as i have a bracket sticking out for my HDMI box that it would have fit nicely under.
4. if you have all 3 axis connected to the board, you cant switch modes from the radio. Is this true or did I miss something?
5. maybe you guys could include a simple flat piece of G10 that would allow us to screw the board to so we could use double stick tape to attach to the face of a gimbal. It is pretty hard to find a spot on your average gimbal that will accomodate all 4 screws. but then the question would be, is it ok to just use double sided foam tape to attach the board directly to the frame? thats what I ended up doing.

Looking good though. These are all superficial things and in the end the simplicity and performance is what really matters.

To answer number 4 the way I have it setup is as follows. channel 1(roll) to aux 2 on my radio, then for settings I have channel 1 set up for mode switch in rx config and then in servo config for transmitter control its set to none and auto compensate. Channel 2 I set it to stick/angle position, and channel 3 to stick/mode switch. If you want to set it up to be able to control roll with the transmitter Im not sure if you can do that and still control mode switching.
 

Photronix

Pilot
Does hoverfly have a ramping feature on the tilt and pan axis? Meaning, can these axis stopping smoothness be controlled such as soft or buffered stops instead of the axis just coming to a hard stop once the sticks are released. I assume yes.

Yes. The smoothing slider in the setup tool varries the amount of ramp up and down.
 


DucktileMedia

Drone Enthusiast
One thing I could not make work today was the tilt in Angle velocity mode. it works normally in Angle position mode but thats not how I want it. Also, I cant figure out how to make the angle of the tilt go 90deg down. it is setup to go 45deg up and down. Any tips on this?
 

I had mine going 90 i had to change the max deflection angle i believe, i also had to change the center position with my pot on the av200 so i had it fully stabilizing while pointing straight down... Otherwise it was running out of pot.

Which brings me to a new question. Firmware 1.3? 1.03 you can choose gimbal servo type. My servos are stock savox from the av 200 witg pots, if i have the cage out the servo will roll forever if i want it to... Common sense tells me this is continuous rotation. Am i right?
 

One thing I could not make work today was the tilt in Angle velocity mode. it works normally in Angle position mode but thats not how I want it. Also, I cant figure out how to make the angle of the tilt go 90deg down. it is setup to go 45deg up and down. Any tips on this?

receiver config, current angle, set range? Im still working on getting mine to move the amount I want with stick movement, as far as when it autocompensates to set max and min that is through the servo config max and min pulse widths
 

I had mine going 90 i had to change the max deflection angle i believe, i also had to change the center position with my pot on the av200 so i had it fully stabilizing while pointing straight down... Otherwise it was running out of pot.

Which brings me to a new question. Firmware 1.3? 1.03 you can choose gimbal servo type. My servos are stock savox from the av 200 witg pots, if i have the cage out the servo will roll forever if i want it to... Common sense tells me this is continuous rotation. Am i right?

1.03 added pid gain to try and help cause a problem I had with my cinestar setup. Still working on it though. As far as gimbal type im not real sure. Cause it has the mounting bias options as well and Dan told me to set mine to position servos, but all of mine are 360 with pots on roll and pitch. Ill hopefully talk to Dan again tonight or tomorrow
 

Here is a video of my pan acting up this evening. I never touched the transmitter while it was doing this, speed and direction changes it was doing on its own.

http://youtu.be/HSXIZrMHqCw?hd=1

Here is a video showing some of my footage with the gimbal with pan disabled, and a velcro strap from one boom of the multi to the gimbal(to keep it from spinning because the servo has no holding power while in slew mode(not being controlled, just has power basically) Since this video I have taken my gimbal off of my multi(as seen above) to rebalance it and install my downlink etc. Very little post added to a few of the shots, the rest are raw.

http://youtu.be/6K04Lcg_caU?hd=1
 

Just posted this on RCG too but I thought I'd post this here to get an answer too.


We fired up the HFG on a new AV200 and the roll was very slow to react.
It seems that nothing happens when we adjust the "acceleration rate gain"
Is this a bug in the latest software because we found nothing that would speed up the gimbals roll.

We haven't hooked up pan or tilt yet.

Cheers

matt
 

Nice video Twister. I'm curious to hear from others possible causes of the phantom movements on your pan axis.

I'm also curious to know if Hoverflygimbal is strongly affected by side to side sliding movements. If you were to hold your gimbal in hand and move it side to side (left to right)...does the roll or tilt axis angle in that direction, this unwanted movement is cause by the accelerometers and there should be some form of filtering for this.
 

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