The part I dread: choosing a Gimbal

[adanac]

I started to ask about gimbals but I think what I need is a gimbal "guru." If you are experienced in gimbals that are reliable, will carry a DSLR and are $1500 or below, shoot me a PM and I'll pay you to lead me to the right gimbal. It will be well worth not spending the money, as everyone seems to do, by buying gimbal after gimbal and taking a loss in time and money on each one.

 

[leor]

I started to ask about gimbals but I think what I need is a gimbal "guru." If you are experienced in gimbals that are reliable, will carry a DSLR and are $1500 or below, shoot me a PM and I'll pay you to lead me to the right gimbal. It will be well worth not spending the money, as everyone seems to do, by buying gimbal after gimbal and taking a loss in time and money on each one.

It depends on the person. Many alexmos gimbals can "get the job done" But if you need reliability I would choose a DJI/Movi gimbal over the alexmos software cameras since they just work. If you still decide to go the alexmos route I highly suggest the Famous Hobby gimbals as they are very well made and cheap. http://www.aliexpress.com/store/pro...ra-gimbal-with-new-180T/109347_903692102.html

This gimbal is there cheaper one and might give you issues with the pan motor. Take note you still need to install an alexmos inorder to get it running.

 

[SleepyC]

The truth is, there isn't one in that price range.
Most of the Sub $2000 gimbals will work, but will requier constant tuning.
One day it's almost perfect, the next day, the gimbals horizon is off by 5 deg and the pan is less than optimal.

If you are at $1500, save the extra $1000 and get a Zenmuse. Or a few more and get a Movi M5.
The headache savings is worth the extra money.

I almost went to the loony bin this past winter trying to get Alexmos gimbals to fly properly.

NOW.. if your just doing handheld stuff Alexmos and the $1000 ebay jobs are just fine. But once you start to fly them... they fail.

 

[leor]

The truth is, there isn't one in that price range.
Most of the Sub $2000 gimbals will work, but will requier constant tuning.
One day it's almost perfect, the next day, the gimbals horizon is off by 5 deg and the pan is less than optimal.

If you are at $1500, save the extra $1000 and get a Zenmuse. Or a few more and get a Movi M5.
The headache savings is worth the extra money.

I almost went to the loony bin this past winter trying to get Alexmos gimbals to fly properly.

NOW.. if your just doing handheld stuff Alexmos and the $1000 ebay jobs are just fine. But once you start to fly them... they fail.

Exactly. On the bench you can get them to work perfectly, the moment you strap it on a MR, the wind, motor vibrations and forces will make it wobble like mad. One day we will probably see a "better" alexmos that will make them usable, but right now I feel they haven't matured enough regardless of how many people seem to fly them. If you look at videos comparing footage from zenmuse/Movi you will see the large majority of them are just better. Not saying alexmos doesn't work because I have seen people get perfect footage from them but its very rare.

 

[kloner]

we get decent footage from all the alexmos offerings with minimal tuning.... it helps to set it up right from the get go. At the end of getting these tuned the biggest difference i see if how tight the motors hold the gimbal to it's imu. that footage with teh zoomed in zoom in shows whats left on an optimized gimbal. one thing we do see from time to time is the need to drop motor power in humidity and when it gets into dry climates likes to be turned back up. you can program a profile just for that so flip the switch changes that setting.

Movi type of electronics are worth the money if your gonna shoot a lot of pro day in day out. but to this point, we haven't conceded yet. We mainly fly epics and it comes out pretty good, way better than av200 did a year and half ago when that was the only gimbal in town

 

[adanac]

Again, I have to ask, what if I buy a Zenmuse that doesn't work right? Am I stuck?

Sleepy, how is handheld different? I have considered the Came 7000 for handheld work.

 

[kloner]

the handheld and primarily alexmos market deals with footsteps and a persons gate, flying them introduces vibrations and snappy oscilations.

you would deal with dji support to get it fixed.

 

[adanac]

If DJI genuinely acts on issues that's great. I'm not bashing them but I don't have a lot of faith in them.

As I add things up now, I may just have to wait for Phobotic. Even with the camera I have now, I'm almost $5K away from a Zenmuse as I would need to get the supported lens, the gimbal and WKM - I don't think Naza V2 supports it. Blorp. I guess I'll just get this T810 flying and see what the fall brings. It's a shame to have to sit out prime flying/money making weather.

From my limited knowledge, there appears to be no middle market. I can fly a GoPro with excellent results (for that camera) for $1800 including extras. But if I want to fly even a slightly larger camera like the BMPCC, it's more or less a jump up to $5K even if doing it on the cheap.

 

[Ronan]

If DJI genuinely acts on issues that's great. I'm not bashing them but I don't have a lot of faith in them.

As I add things up now, I may just have to wait for Phobotic. Even with the camera I have now, I'm almost $5K away from a Zenmuse as I would need to get the supported lens, the gimbal and WKM - I don't think Naza V2 supports it. Blorp. I guess I'll just get this T810 flying and see what the fall brings. It's a shame to have to sit out prime flying/money making weather.

From my limited knowledge, there appears to be no middle market. I can fly a GoPro with excellent results (for that camera) for $1800 including extras. But if I want to fly even a slightly larger camera like the BMPCC, it's more or less a jump up to $5K even if doing it on the cheap.

Stuck in the same position... i'm trying to fly a small camcorder (450g) and it seems i have to spend 3k or 5k and deal with the poor design and heavy gimbals to get anything decent. Insane.

 

[adanac]

What decent option is $3K?

 

[dazzab]

the handheld and primarily alexmos market deals with footsteps and a persons gate, flying them introduces vibrations and snappy oscilations.

Interesting you would say that. I've spent that last few days test flying my CAME-TV 7000 with Alexmos 32bit three axis controller without much success at all. I noticed in the manual (yes I succumbed to actually RTFM) it mentions in a few places settings that are essentially only for hand held use.

But just today something very interesting happened. The gimbal has been working very poorly. It behaves as if one of the IMU sensors is set to the wrong orientation. I'm confident that they aren't but I've been suspicious of that second IMU sensor mounted on the frame. They say it increases accuracy etc. On the first Alexmos board I had on the gimbal it seemed to work fine. But on the replacement Alexmos board I decided to unplug it today having tried everything else to get the gimbal to work. Amazing, the gimbal works damn close to perfect now in the air. I really don't know why but I'm not planning on using the second IMU on the frame given the tests I've done. Doesn't seem right but I can't complain about success either. The horizon stays level on panning and the pitch/roll is quite good. I'll do some fine tuning and post results in a few days.

 

[Atomic Image]

After messing around with a lot of gimbals I can say that the best thing I have done is purchasing a Zenmuse. I would say, buy one, or better get a Movi.

 

[adanac]

What about the Ronin? According to DJI accepts multiple cameras, including RED, auto-tunes, is handheld and, if I'm not mistaken, can be put on a MR. $3K.

 

[leor]

What about the Ronin? According to DJI accepts multiple cameras, including RED, auto-tunes, is handheld and, if I'm not mistaken, can be put on a MR. $3K.

That thing is unflyable. I'm almost sure you would need a dodeca or some crazy power train to use it Its super heavy

 

[BamaDave]

The Ronin will be to heavy for a MR.

 

[adanac]

I realized that right after posting! Do you reckon all that weight is necessary if you want to make it auto-tunable, as they advertise it to be? By that I mean, do you think it will be possible to make a gimbal that versatile lighter?

 

[MadMonkey]

The Ronin will be to heavy for a MR.

The Ronin is only slightly heavier than the last multirotor gimbal I used (about 7.5lbs (they say) without the handles) which admittedly wasn't the best. I imagine it'll work okay for a bigger bird. I'll post up the actual weights as soon as ours arrives if you guys need them.

I do have a question about the gimbal... I asked a DJI employee but haven't gotten a straight answer yet. My assumption was that I'd be able to mount a receiver and video downlink onto the gimbal and have a self-contained package that could be used in handheld or multirotor conditions with no problem. But now I was told that an A2 controller was required (and that it wasn't compatible with the Wookong!).

Is this an Apple-esque attempt to keep everyone in the DJI ecosystem, or does it legitimately have to be plugged into the flight controller??

 

[adanac]

I looked at the numbers last night and I realized that the cheapest, fastest way to get a decent camera in the air is to buy the DJI S800 package, which I've been trying to avoid. It's under $5K for an S800 EVO, WKM and Zenmuse.

I have been wanting to avoid the S800 because of the flip of death. Now I don't know if I should chance it.

 

[Benjamin Kenobi]

Flip of death? What forums have you been reading? Or more importantly, when were the posts made? Wasn't that a problem with a firmware version of the Wookong a couple of years ago.

 

[adanac]

Ben, if you are being serious then a google search will show references to several here, in RCGroups and other places.