Hi all,
I'm not sure if this is necessarily the correct forum as we're doing aerial survey with various sensor packages for scientific research, conservation projects, etc.
But our problems are the same as yours, I think: drift caused by using only accelerometer/magnetometer input to the control algorithms. Everyone knows MEMS sensors ultimately drift over time, it's simply a matter of how much and how we deal with it.
We are looking at ways to integrate dedicated GPS and using EKF onboard a gimbal controller, or integrating with a Pixhawk or other APM-powered flight controller that is already doing GPS-assisted EKF to help account for drift.
I see little to no discussion about this, but I know other proprietary controllers are using onboard GPS in some fashion. Because they are proprietary, I don't know if anyone knows exactly what they are doing and to what degree they help with drift. Maybe there is no discussion because people who are concerned about this just accept they need a proprietary gimbal, is that the case? Are the results truly, measurably better?
Do you have thoughts how this can be accomplished with a Basecam/alexmos controller? Does the new Pro controller offer any unique solution or special flight controller integration as can be seen on DJI and Gremsy controllers?
Our preference is definitely for a hacking-friendly gimbal controller, so any thoughts, raw or otherwise, would be much appreciated! Cheers all!
Replies
You may want to go to the Storm32 forum on RCGroups and ping Olli. He actually is working on making Storm32 and Pixhawk play nice but halted until Arducopter got through 3.3 (lets call it the lost Solo year). There is a bit of reading to do in that thread. It is a much more hackable solution than Basecam. When you ask Olli interesting and intelligent questions you tend to get interesting and intelligent replies. I am not sure he is exactly working on this but it may be interesting to him.