I have hit a road block on my build. How to power both my Tarot 2d gimbal and 5.8 video transmitter. I would like to use just one battery and a splitter or 2 way power distribution board of some kind. Any ideas?
Seems to be a simple problem, but I keep getting stuck on battery size. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
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Not sure if you have an answer, but this is the set up on my Y6
4s 6000 mAh for Motors
3s 1000 mAh for Gimbal and Vtx (no camera)**
GoPro under its own power
**I typically get more flights then I can count on the Turnigy 3s 1000 mah (141g), so I've recently purchased a Zippy Compact 850 (64g) and 500 (42g) mAh 3s to test out. Im hoping the reduced weight will give me some more flight time.
I ended up modifying a cheap gimbal and moving the mount forward. This gave me more room and I was able to put the battery in a "north/south" configuration. This configuration also allows me to tilt the camera up and not have the props in the view.
Cool, thanks for the response and for providing pics. I will need to look to do something similar. Its just a bummer that the mount 3dr designed and provided with the Tarot gimbal doesnt allow space for the battery that is sold specifically for the Y6. I purchased all 3dr components but went the DIY kit route. I wonder how the RTF versions address this issue.
Looks like this is covered in the wiki, although I wasn't quite familiar enough with my APM to make sense of it at first:
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-camera-gimbal/
It seems to indicate that I could connect servo controls for the gimbal to A10 and A11 on the APM servo rail, while powering the gimbal from the power rail at the rear of the APM, since I have JP1 removed. Then the gimbal will be powered from the main battery through APM.
Thanks to everyone for the helpful comments.
Nick
There is no need to use the servo outputs from the APM as the gimbal will keep level on it's own. Those outputs are for servos to control a gimbal which does NOT hold level on it's own, however the Tarot and similar do a fine job on their own.
If you want to control the camera pitch up/down from your radio transmitter, connect the gimbal's pitch input to a spare radio channel on your receiver - no need to go through the APM - I couldn't get this to work.
BEC is typically 4 wires, 2 input (from the battery), 2 output @ 12v, to the gimbal, video TX etc.
Oh - I see what you mean. I don't connect the servos to APM directly, I connect the tilt input. APM is just telling the control board on the gimbal to tilt this way or that, not directly controlling servos.
So instead of mapping an RC channel to control the gimbal in APM Planner and then outputting control of that servo from APM to the gimbal, I could just connect a wire from my Tx receiver directly to the gimbal?
I have a DX6i (waiting on a Turnigy 9x for a month and a half now) so all I have on channel 6 is a switch that is on or off. If I can use this to move the camera from pointing forward to pointing straight down, then this might be a simpler option.
Yes. I have done exactly that with a DX6i. You'll need to set the channel end positions on the transmitter to prevent the camera moving too far.
If you have the Tarot gimbal, the default radio mode is for radio rate mode (or similar), you'll need to change it to radio position mode - where you are telling it the position to go to.
I have read about how to change the radio mode on the gimbal to position mode. This requires a computer running Windows so I can use the Tarot configuration USB dongle, is that right?
Are the channel end positions are set on the transmitter through the menu system using the clicky wheel input? Or are they configured through APM Planner as well?
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