So, in the past couple weeks as I found time I had been working away in the garage on one of my first quad copters and decided to add some raised landing gear as well as a servo driven gimbal using the CC3D Copter Control board just to see how well it performs. It did take a bit of work to put it all together but that didn’t seem to bad, the challenge I had was to actually program the CC3D to operate the gimbal so I had looked online and found a list of instructions that worked immediately. Mind you I did need to re calibrate the quad copter again but I managed to get things working fine. The list of instructions is a “step by step” process and includes about 75 steps if you could believe that but it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, you’ll just have to be patient and give yourself a bit of time to read through it just so you are aware of where to find everything in your GCS. Here is the link that provides the steps you need to get your camera gimbal working with the CC3D and those steps were provided by SeismicCWave on the Open pilot forums. I do have to add that he did mention the steps could be changed or reposted in order to help others get the camera gimbals working .
Here is that list of steps should you need them now :
1) Go to your GCS.
2) Plug in your CC board.
3) Go to the input page.
4) Make sure you have Accessory 0 selected as the channel after channel 5 “Flight Mode”. In another word accessory 0 is input channel 6.
5) Make sure you have a way to control channel 6 from your transmitter. Preferably a slider and lever because that will be your tilt control.
6) Turn on your transmitter
7) Plug in your battery pack to the quad.
8) Go to your GCS.
9) Click on input page.
10) Make sure it says RC Receiver connected.
11) Click on calibrate. (This process will be slightly different if you use a later firmware where there is a calibration wizard. This only pertains to firmware 0819)
12) Move all your sticks around.
13) Click your flight mode/gear switch back and forth.
14) Move your slider/lever for channel 6 back and forth. Center this lever or slider after you move it back and forth.
15) Unclick calibrate.
16) Click save.
17) Go to output page.
18) Check what it says on channel 5 and 6 output rate. In the case of a Y6 you will check what it says on channel 7 and 8.
19) If you are using analog servos on roll and tilt leave the rate at 50 Hz. If you are using digital servos you may up the rate to 333 Hz.
20) Click save.
21) Go to the camera stabilization screen.
22) Click on the camera stabilization enable button on the top left of your window.
23) Click save.
24) Unplug the power from your quad.
25) Go to the bottom left of your GCS and click on disconnect.
26) Unplug USB cord. LEDs on CC board should be off.
27) Wait 30 seconds.
28) Plug USB cord back on.
29) The hardware page of the GCS will come back on after the computer thinks for a bit.
30) Click on the camera stabilization page on the left hand side of the GCS.
31) Now the Camera stabilization box should be checked on the top left of the window.
32) Now type in the rate for roll and pitch.
33) Go down and pick the channels for roll and pitch.
34) Pick channel 5 for pitch and channel 6 for roll. (in the case of a Y6 pick channel 7 for pitch and channel 8 for roll)
35) Hit save.
36) The roll and pitch channel should still say channel 6 and 5. (Channel 7 and 8 for a Y6 with PPM SUM)
37) If one of them defaults back to none, STOP, we need to do something else.
38) This is if your roll and pitch channels say “none”.
FOR STEP 39 BELOW, GO TO THE “SYSTEM TAB” AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR GCS AND CLICK ON THE ARROW WHERE IT SAYS “SETTINGS” THEN FOLLOW THE REST OF THE STEPS FROM THERE .
39) Go to the top right hand window. One says “settings” and the other says “Data Objects”.
40) Click on the plus sign in front of Settings. A list of directory will open up.
41) Go down and find MixerSettings.
42) Click on the plus sign in front of that.
43) Scroll down until you find Mixer 5Type and Mixer6Type. (Change 5 and 6 to 7 and 8 for a Y6)
44) Mixer5Type should say Camera pitch and Mixer6Type should say Camera roll. Otherwise click on the type name and two scroll arrow will appear on the right of the window.
45) Scroll down and find Camera pitch for Mixer 5 and roll for Mixer 6.
46) Click save on top of the UAV Browser window.
47) Scroll back up to find CameraStabSettings.
48) Click on the down arrow/plus sign in the front of CameraStabSettings.
49) Click on the plus sign/down arrow in front of Input.
50) Click on the word “None” after the line [Pitch]. A window with two scroll arrows will open up.
51) Scroll up to find Accesory0. That will let you control pitch form your transmitter slider or where ever your channel 6 is on your transmitter.
52) Go down to input range and select 90 degrees for pitch.
53) Go down to output range and it should be the same number as you entered on the left side window within camera stabilization page.
54) Go to the top of the window that says UAV Browser and click save.
55) Now you may plug in your gimbal servos. Roll to the 6th output slots on the CC board and Tilt to the 5th output slots on the CC board. (Channels 8 and 7 for a Y6)
56) Turn on power on transmitter if you have it off.
57) Plug in battery to your quad.
58) Go back to the output page on your GCS.
59) Now your servos should buzz and make noise but stay neutral. Otherwise something is wrong.
60) If you move your quad the servos will move the gimbal.
61) If you move the lever on the transmitter you should be able to move the tilt servo.
62) Check the direction of travel on your servos. Are they compensating the gimbal properly?
63) If not you have to go to the output page of your GCS to reverse the channel 5 or 6 servos by clicking on the box on the right hand side of the slider. (Channels 7 and 8 for a Y6)
64) Please make sure you have propeller off the motors right now.
65) Click on test out put and move the slider back and forth on channel 5 and 6. The gimbal should move. If you missed and hit one of the other channels your motor will spin so be careful. (Channels 7 and 8 for a Y6)
66) Now set the neutral point for your roll and tilt servo.
67) Unclick the test output box.
68) Click save. The gimbal may move a little now. You may have to do the neutral set and click save a few times to get the gimbal to the position you like.
69) Go back to the input page.
70) Click on the arming option and hit save.
71) Click on the right bottom to disconnect the Copter Control board.
72) Now unplug the battery pack from your quad.
73) Turn off your transmitter.
74) Unplug the USB cord.
75) You have a working camera stabilization.
HERE ARE MY OWN SETTINGS I HAVE ON MY GCS, KEEP IN MIND THEY MAY ONLY WORK FOR MY GIMBAL BUT YOU MAY HAVE TO EXPERIMENT AND FINE TUNE YOUR OWN GIMBAL.
[OUTPUT TAB] channel 5 — (pitch) —— 625 ——- 1175———2500
channel 6 —–(roll)———-1230——–1545———-1870
Camera Stabilization
- Basic ————— –roll ——————– pitch ———————yaw
- Output channel—–channel 6————–channel 5 ——————none
- Output Range ———-39 ———————-74————————–20
- Input channel——accessory 1————-accessory 0—————–none
- stab mode ———–attitude —————–attitude——————attitude
- Input Range ———– 12 ———————–70————————-20
- Input Rate————–22———————–45————————–50
- Response time———65———————-1000———————–150
- Max Axis Lock Rate —1.0
So I cannot guarantee your results for your setup but I do have to say I am pretty happy with how things are operating. It will be a couple more weeks of very cold weather from where I am ( -33 celcius) so I don’t anticipate I will be flying this quad or anything just yet. I hope these settings are of some help to you and I want to thank SeismicC Wave of the open pilot forums for this info as it made things way easier for me in the end. Here is a video of my quad and camera gimbal in action ( not flying) with these settings.
Thanks for visiting the blog, Enjoy.
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RC Helimenace 