IRIS Tarot Gimbal Users

Posted by AKRCGUY on March 17, 2014 at 11:00am

I'm looking for feedback from other IRIS user who have installed the Tarot gimbal avaialable as an option when ordereing your IRIS.  Some of the things I have noticed are:

1. Gimbal does not level all the way, slightly tilted.

2. Poor performance (Jello, etc.) when compared to other quads I've flown with same gimbal set-up.

3. Your experiences?

Please add your gimbal videos ro issues here so we can compile.  Thanks!

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Tags: 3dr, iris, tarot, gimbal, option
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Replies

  • Glen Leeon June 1, 2014 at 5:27am

    How can I find out which firmware I have?

  • AKRCGUY March 28, 2014 at 6:30am

    **IRIS Tarot Gimbal UPDATE**

     

    For those like myself who have been experiencing horrible vibrations form the Tarot gimbal they received from 3DR, we have a solution that has fixed the vibration problem.

    What we resolved is that the Tarot is being shipped with 1.4 firmware with a motor tilt power setting of 35. This setting needs to be changed to 25 to reduce the vibration that is causing unusable GoPro video. 

     

    Follow the connection instructions and use the USB cable that was shipped with your gimbal to make the change.  Just make sure to flash the settings before disconnecting.

  • LouB March 20, 2014 at 11:14am

    Ok, I may be dense but I don't see a write anywhere.

     

    I loaded the params, it showed me the deltas, I OK'd them and then unplugged Iris... plugged it back and loaded again and it didn't bring up any param changes so I assume it wrote ??

  • aforsyth March 19, 2014 at 4:21pm

    Hello,

    This was posted to the Iris Developer's Group, figured I would re-post here.

    We have been intending to get information out to the group after finally receiving the long legs from 3DR on February 25th after placing the order for the kit on December 4th, 2013. We had some decent weather for manual flights a couple of days ago and I have posted the video here:
    This post will have three sections: our first impressions and initial experiences, then our interesting encounter with the 3D Robotics crew at SxSW and their own opinions on the Iris with the kit, and an additional loiter video at the end.
    First impressions -
    1. The legs are very heavy. One pair of legs weighs 70 grams, which is the same as a GoPro 3 with battery.

    scale.jpg

    2. The legs are thick and very strong - except for where all the stress is applied at the top where it clamps onto the arm. Our first fail safe landing was rough and snapped the thin lip off one leg easily. The exposed plastic shows that the interior is hollow and may indicate further weakness. We keep gluing the tiny sliver of plastic back into place and it will last through one bumpy landing. We left the short legs on so that when the long leg fails, the props don't dig into the ground.

    broken_tooth.jpg

    broken_top.jpg

    3. The Iris flies like a cow with the gimbal and legs bolted on. There is a great deal of extra mass, relatively speaking, and 3D Robotics has not (to my knowledge) told us what PIDs are appropriate for their ready-to-fly off the shelf video platform in this configuration? The stock PIDs don't perform well.
    ___
    Meeting 3D Robotics at the SxSW MAKE event
    The 3D Robotics booth was showing video of an Iris, with the long leg and gimbal kit, shooting a rock climber. They had the new aluminum body ready to fly multi-rotor units on display. Unfortunately the weather was very poor and we were the only people who lugged our Iris out to the event in our field case:

    pelicancase.jpg

    The 3D Robotics representative made some interesting points:
    1. The long legs are unnecessarily overbuilt and much too heavy. You're flying with 3 GoPro cameras essentially. He pulled one long leg from my case and showed how much effort he had to apply to even attempt to snap it in half. He said 3DR should be working (is?) to reduce how thick the leg is, and recommended I look for better ones on Thingiverse and have them 3D printed. I pointed out that I knew of those legs already and the blog post from 3DR about shooting a basketball game with the Iris showed the unit flying with 3D printed long legs, not their own offering, which was surprising. 
    (Since the event we have outsourced some printed legs and they are about 9.5 grams - so that's 38 grams for all four legs)
    2. The APC props provided with the Iris are cheap, hard to balance, and generally crummy. He said something about 3DR making their own better props, but with the event so crowded we had limited time to ask for more details.
    ___
    Here is a loiter test flight for stability / battery capacity, shot as an observer.
    YouTube
    • LouB > aforsyth March 20, 2014 at 7:51am

      That is the exact damage I sustained after my first flight with the long legs, no gimbal. Since 3Dr doesn't have them a tie-wrap is holding it on.


      When I did put my gimbal and hero3+ on it was a bit unstable it the test jump.

       

      Craig from 3DR posted a params file in the support forum... would have been good to know before flying with the config that was sold as RTF.

       

      Wish Chris would jump in here....

    • aforsyth > LouB March 20, 2014 at 8:06am

      Can you link me to which support thread the updated parameter file was posted in?

      Between multiple versions of wiki entries, the Iris developer google group, this forum, github, ardupilot - it's hard to find good up to date info for a commercial off-the-shelf ready-to-fly product.

    • Developer
      Craig Elder > aforsyth March 20, 2014 at 8:50am

      Austin, you can download the parameter file using Mission Planner or APM Planner.  It is listed in the Frame Configuration section of Initial Setup and in the Full Parameters section of Config /Tuning.

       

    • aforsyth > Craig Elder March 20, 2014 at 8:59am

      Indeed I'll give it a shot soon as I can, didn't realize Lou meant the post on my own thread in the support forum - thought this had come up before now and I missed it! :)

    • LouB > aforsyth March 20, 2014 at 10:11am

      I didn't even notice that that was your thread :)

      Please post back to let us know your thoughts.

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