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Permalink Reply by Michael Pursifull on June 9, 2012 at 4:21pm

The answer to this depends on whether you are using ArduPlane or ArduCopter.

I haven't tested this solution, but here are the details.

For ArduPlane:

[from http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Tracking]

Connecting the servos

Connect you camera roll, pitch and yaw servos to the APM auxiliary servos outputs (ch5, ch6, ch7 and ch8). You can connect them in any order you like. If you do not have or use one of them just do not connect it. You can also connect one servo to open/close the camera or to deploy/retract the camera and a servo to trigger the camera.

After that, power your APM and connect it to the Mission Planner software. In the setup pane, assign the functions that you are using to the RC5_FUNCTION, RC6_FUNCTION, RC7_FUNCTION and RC8_FUNCTION labels.

6       // mount yaw (pan)
7       // mount pitch (tilt)
8       // mount roll
9       // mount open (deploy) / close (retract)
10      // camera trigger

So for example if you have mount pitch on channel 6, mount roll on channel 7, and camera trigger on channel 8, you should set:

RC6_FUNCTION	7
RC7_FUNCTION	8
RC8_FUNCTION	10             <---- I don't care for this example, since CH8 is used for mode sw

In your case, you might have:

RC5_FUNCTION	7
RC6_FUNCTION	8         <----- roll, not pan/yaw
RC7_FUNCTION	10

Here is a quick list of all the functions:

RC_Channel_aux.h:

AP_Int8 function; // 0=disabled, 1=manual, 2=flap, 3=flap auto, 4=aileron, 5=flaperon, 6=mount yaw (pan), 7=mount pitch (tilt), 8=mount roll, 9=camera trigger, 10=camera open, 11=egg drop

See also the various min, max, and trim and reverse settings for those channels. These will help you get the roll just right.

For ArduCopter, see http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/AC2_Camera as a starting point. I'm thinking you're using ArduPlane since roll and pitch are already the typical arrangement for ArduCopter.

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Permalink Reply by Romp on June 10, 2012 at 12:38pm

Oh my god. I was only looking at the quadcopter gimbal code. I am going to try this! Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Michael Pursifull on June 10, 2012 at 6:34pm

The quad code already uses roll and pitch aka pan/tilt.

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Permalink Reply by Amilcar Lucas on July 22, 2012 at 2:52am

Now both ArduPlane and ArduCopter use the same code.

Please follow the updated setup instructions here:

http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Tracking

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