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Permalink Reply by Mathieu on March 10, 2014 at 7:28am

Pleaaaase, does anyone use a tarot gimbal with a Pixhawk and figured out how to use the tilt control?

"help me DIYD community, you're my only hope"

 

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Permalink Reply by Chris Podesta on March 17, 2014 at 3:38am

I am just about to try this week.  my X8 arrives and i am  hoping its not a total bun fight trying to get working.. as i have not yet seen the pixhawk i am still a little confused as to wether i can power my gimble straight from it? or if i have to get another battery like the instructions say..  any suggestions..or help aprecaited

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Permalink Reply by Mathieu on March 17, 2014 at 4:11am

Hi Chris,

As far as I understand, the gimbal can not be powerd by the Pixhawk.

Some prefer using a separate battery to power the Gimbal, in that case, a small 3s or 2s LiPo battery will do the trick.

I chose to use only one battery for powering everything (pixhawk, motors, fpv...).

Here is how it works:

The Gimbal works with "DC 7.4V ~ 14.8V (Recommended 12V, three lithium battery)", and "working current: 200mA-500mA" meaning if you have a way to connect the gimbal to your main 3S battery in parallel , it will work.

If you use a 4S battery, then you'll need, like me, a UBEC to reduce the voltage between your battery and the gimbal. Here is the one I use: http://mikrokopter.altigator.com/ubec-12v-45a-p-40518.html (sorry, the page is in French).

Not sure if that's crystal clear, but feel free to ask if there's anything I can do to help :)

Cheers,

Mathieu

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Permalink Reply by Darryl Cannon on April 3, 2014 at 8:56pm

I think he was asking more about how to control the gimbal with the transmitter, not power the gimbal.  I'm in the same boat, got my Tarot gimbal powered just fine, trying to figure out how to get Pixhawk to send a command from the Aux2 knob on my Spektrum Dx7s through to the gimbal to control tilt angle on the fly.

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Permalink Reply by Jaime on April 3, 2014 at 10:13pm

Did you try checking the wiki??

http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-tarot-gimbal/

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Permalink Reply by Darryl Cannon on April 3, 2014 at 10:39pm

I figured it out.  The pin layout for that gimbal control board is tricky...9 pins, 3x3.  I was putting the servo connectors on it the wrong way...sideways 90 degrees from the orientation they were supposed to go on.  I used the 3 wire connection, put the white/signal wire in the middle for Tilt, and that may be all you need to do, but I also put the red wire on the left side of that one, and the black wire on the right side. (Using lettering printed on circuit board for orientation)  Then my Aux2 knob (again, Dx7s) controls channel 6 on the Pixhawk, and therefore the knob now tilts the camera up/down.  It's not a linear control like I was hoping, may do some research into that and see if I can make that happen, but for now it moves the camera up or down indefinitely when you move the knob away from center until the gimbal hits the angle limits you set up in software.  Centering the knob stops movement, it's still free to self-level of course, and the center section of the knob is kind of fat with a beep to let you know.

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Permalink Reply by Mathieu on April 8, 2014 at 12:35am

Sorry Jaime it took me so long to reply,

Yes I had.

For some reason, I finally got it to work.

I rewired everything, reinstalled the tarot firmware (gimbal + motors), tweaked the gimbal configuration in APM mission planner, and... it's now working.

Also, maybe I was so impatient to have the gimbal tilt command work that I didn't turn the knob enough.

The gimbal starts to tilt after I give the knob a 1/4 - 1/3 turn.

Anyway, now I need to fine tune the gimbal to get rid of the vibrations.

And now I'm considering mounting a gimbal "front faced" on my TBS Discovery.

Not sure if I can reuse the tarot controller with other motors to use this one.

http://klinkeraerospace.com/ffblg-gimbal.html

It just looks awesome.

Anyway, thanks, problem solved :)

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Permalink Reply by Mathieu on April 8, 2014 at 3:27am

Thanks Daryl, 

Not sure who you responded to but I read carefully your post.

Somehow, I managed to get the tilt control to work.

Cheers,

Mathieu

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Permalink Reply by ausdroid on April 21, 2014 at 5:17am

Darryl, to get the linear relationship you want, you need to connect the USB dngle and select "Stick Mode" (Mode 2) in the gimbal configuration software. You then need to input max and min angles. 

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Permalink Reply by Darryl Cannon on April 21, 2014 at 8:35am

Got it, thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Chris Lewicki on May 24, 2014 at 1:05pm

I'm having similar problems controlling tilt on my Tarot-2D, and at a loss of what to try next.

Here's what I've done so far:

1. Followed all the instructions on the wiki
2. Verified that Signal (AUX 1 / RC9 on the Pixhawk) and ground are in the right places, and that I'm connected to the minus and "T" pins on the Tarot.
3. Verified correct configuration on Tarot (V1.5, Tarot Mount, Standard Receiver, Stick Position Mode)
4. Verified calibration on radio input channel (RC7) - channel mapping and limits.
5. Verified Camera Gimbal settings in APM  

The "blinking blue light" indicates a connection on the Tarot, and it stabilizes fine.  I'm actually able to successfully change the tilt on the gimbal if I change the Min/Max Servo limits or the angle limits (although I can't exactly determine the correlation).  

However, I can't get it to respond to the AUX2 knob on my Spektrum DX7s controller.

If I connect to the port on the Tarot, I'm able to see a change in RC input.

I've even tried the other AUX outs on the PIXHAWK, adjusting the appriate settings in APM, and verifying that it is indeed talking to the right channel.

Perhaps something is fried? Errant APM parameter not set right?

At a loss of what to try next.

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Permalink Reply by ausdroid on May 24, 2014 at 3:06pm

Chris,

You have probably tried this, but connect a normal servo to the gimbal control channel on your receiver to make sure it has a signal and that you have mapped it properly from your TX

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