Right Gents
after about 4 hours worth of reading and searching Youtube I found Chris Andersons Still camera image stabilization video witch is this one
This Version as Chris pointed out used a heli head holding gyro and drift was impossible to correct so he came up with this version and bright idea , here and from that came the update to this and video below
However althought this was a brillent easy simple solution too, the problem with it was based on the old IR sensors of previous AP pilot , so i carried on looking and found this thread Here and video here showing Max levine hard work making the same sabilization system work from APM/IMU
Then After reading through 132 pages of that thread 4 cups of coffee later and a large amount of information to grasp I thought id summurize all the information here for people not wanting to read all of that well atleast summurize the progress and updates over the years. wich lead me to the following Questions in witch I initaily tried to answer.
Where are we standing at the moment with this ?
will it work to connect "Y" cables from the APM aileron and elevator to the pan tilt bracket on the belly of the plane to keep still camera pointing down ? is extra code needed ? whats the ups and downs of the system ?
I just want to know becuase with this being a true example of the power of opensource development and progress with target tracking and pan tilt support soon to be added to the APM code, can we summurize all this information latest updates from the community and add it to the Still image wiki page so other members has a simple and cheap solution for mapping and Aerial Photography?
P.S. Chris and other members who works so hard on this community thanks for sharing your hard work and time with things like these ,it keeps people like me out of trouble ;-)
Replies
Here's an interesting stabilization technique.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9jhWTrv9rY
Please advise, anyone, if this thread has been picked up somewhere else in the forum. I have progress to add and work to donate, but don't want to upset anyone with necro-ing this thread. Mike, please look for a PM I sent.
Johann
Topic - Project to slave the camera gimbals to the IMU Inertial reference frame. This is the way it is done in Military aircraft. No extra hardware required.
I just read your post. By coincidence. Tonigt, I'll be presenting to my flying club a completed ArduPilot/IMU system, and my flight instructor - "Mr Electric Fly"- will be presenting a MQ-9 Reaper with a 700 wt motor and a chin mounted - azimuth gimbal camera. I plan to propose that he and I jointly add a pitch gimbal and slew the camera with servo loops linked to the IMU computational inertial reference frame rather than to the body referenced frame used by Chris and others. The camera axis would be pointed with respect to the inertial frame and locked on target using the camera video ground link for acquisition.information. Within limits the camera axis would be stabilized in inertial space, and thus be isolated from airframe motion even say, in turns around a point.
Have you considered a similar approach.?
Mike Cowan
Johann
Topic - Project to slave the camera gimbals to the IMU Inertial reference frame. This is the way it is done in Military aircraft. No extra hardware required.
I just read your post. By coincidence. Tonigt, I'll be presenting to my flying club a completed ArduPilot/IMU system, and my flight instructor - "Mr Electric Fly"- will be presenting a MQ-9 Reaper with a 700 wt motor and a chin mounted - azimuth gimbal camera. I plan to propose that he and I jointly add a pitch gimbal and slew the camera with servo loops linked to the IMU computational inertial reference frame rather than to the body referenced frame used by Chris and others. The camera axis would be pointed with respect to the inertial frame and locked on target using the camera video ground link for acquisition.information. Within limits the camera axis would be stabilized in inertial space, and thus be isolated from airframe motion even say, in turns around a point.
Have you considered a similar approach.?
Mike Cowan
Folks,
only the last video shows actual video footage taken with such a system.
And its quite shaky for my taste.
I would like to see videos taken in real world flying conditions to evaluate them.
Thanks,
Jan
Stabilisation and camera tracking require cancelling out airframe movement to get stable pictures/video. So both are well under way from multiple ends.
No you dedicated cables to them.
Yep extra code needed but will Joe's work will probably be added into the APM code base later on.
Pan and tilt uses 2 extra servos plus another to take pictures (if thats your method) means you only have 1 servo output left to play with later (although mine is currently used to retract my camera).
The wiki will be getting updated as things progress and testing begins