Hi Guys
I am looking for a fixed wings solution to take images of a farm field (size around 120 acres or 50 hectares). The idea is to take a picture with an RGB camera and a second picture with an infrared modified camera at the same time. These two pictures, if taken simultaneously, would allow me to calculate an index that is a function of the NIR and Red signatures, which is helpful in detecting stressed vegetation. I am not sure what would be the best plane model that will allow me to carry about 2 lb (weight of a gimbal + two small digital cameras). I am also still looking for the type of gimbal that will allow me to use two cameras on it. Many thanks for the help
Replies
Nice gimbal design.
I thought I would show you my AP Gimbal design for my Skywalker.
I am using a Fiberglass Hobby King Skywalker fuselage combined with a BEVRC Skywalker
wings . The fiberglass fuselage gives me the room I need to install the camera gimbal.
I have the 500 Mah battery mounted in the canopy above the camera gimbal where it gets proper ventilation and easy removal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5OPLSen2UM
cropped may 28th 2013 2nd skywalker flight 010.jpg
How do you manage the battery replacement in the 2014 Skywalker with the gimbal in front? Do you cut an access hatch, or do you work through the canopy hatch and remove the camera first?
Ryan. I like that gimbal, but as keeyen says it is not in the right orientation, because of the wide aspect of sensors, even more if you plan to fly with a NEX and the 20mm lens. If I buy that gimbal i haf to modify it and put the servo in other position. I have a glass fiber airframe with enough space for the NEX or a Tetracam mini MCA 6. not much more room for anything else. but in this case the gimbal act as a pitch gimbal, so I think it is better for me to buy a pitch and roll gimbal and adapt it to my plane.
The Gimbal is cool. It will be good if you can roll out the roll only gimbal soonest possible. It will be less complicated and hopefully cheaper.
I'm using Skywalker 2013/4 exclusively to do my aerial mapping project and so far have been quite successful.
I notice that with your gimbal, the camera is not put to my desire orientation, which is camera top facing forward. I understand this is to make the whole unit fit inside the fuselage well but it will greatly increase the flying distance for a given area. May be with some modification, we can put the unit to the desire orientation but some of the components may be expose outsite the body.
I think the roll only gimbal may be more practical to most of us because the variant in pitch is not as severe as roll and software such as Pix4D and Photoscan can handle it quite well.
Essam, If you don't have any experience you should really go with the Bixler as suggested earlier. It is low cost, well documented, flies great and you may find that is serves the purposes for which you need. The Skywalker is a great platform that offers plenty of room, and there is plenty of documentation on APM integration. Personally I love the Skyhunter and the Wings Maker Ogar, both of which fly great and offer gobs of room for hardware. Start small and work up. You will save yourself money and headaches in the end.
I use 2x5000 3s, or 1x 8000 3s.
Good idea to put it in the nose. Looking forward to the photos. You should start a new thread for your ideas. Sorry Essam for hijacking your thread.
If you are in US then you should consider Penguin from RMRC, it can carry huge payload and can fly extremely slow. Otherwise Skywalker is by far the best but its not available in US so you have to ship it from China.