Very impressive HD video footage from my friend's Panya's custom home made mini H quad with the new Mobius Action Camera - from the makers of the original Keychain Cam. Using wooden arms and Simonk'd 12Amp HK-BS ESCs and myrcmart's 2400KV ZMR motors with a multiwii lite FC, this little H frame is a wonderful video and FPV platform. In the video you can see my ZMR minquad being chased around.

A very Successful test of the DroidPlanner Android App, connected through a 3DR Radio Kit and the 3DR APM2.5

Before taking off, I ensured that there is a proper connection between the APM and the Tablet and that both devices's GPS is locked. Then I take the drone up and put it in Loiter mode.

Follow Mode must be activated in the Settings of the app first. Then I turn on Follow mode. Warning, before turning on Follow Mode, make sure your transmitter is set to Loiter and that the throttle is up and not zero. Then remember to set the default height, I set mine to 6m in this video. The default is 100m so be careful otherwise your drone will shoot straight up.

I am extremely pleased with the performance of the follow mode, it works very well!

 I built this Wire Rope GoPro mount out of a couple of Furniture leg coasters, a Bicycle Brake cable and some electrical brass wire connectors removed from their plastic housing. Test flown this morning and here is the result.

I'm very pleased with the video as I have tried many ways to remove the rolling shutter effect previously and this is by far the most effective. The video is shot on a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition @1080p 60fps. I have also briefly tested it on my old GoPro Hero 1 @1080p 30fps and got similar results.

I'm flying the wire mount on a Reptile 500 quad Frame from Himodel.com and its on the APM2.5 stock 2.91 quad firmware.

I'm sure everyone who is into aerial videgography with the wonderful GoPros have struggled with getting Jello Free (rolling shutter) video footage from multicopters. I have tried them all. Using ND filters to lower the shutter speed of the GoPro (worked somewhat but ruined image quality), shot in 720p @60fps but would have preferred shooting in full HD. Tried all sorts of foam and vibration absorption materials, ear plugs, rubber foam mounts, hours balancing my propellers and laser mirror and phone seismograph app to iron out any vibrations to no avail. Despite the GoPro Hero 3 B.E. shooting at full HD @ 60fps, I still get some rolling shutter. 

Recently I saw this video by Matt Hall who's Tcopter design GoPro video footage is devoid of any rolling shutter effect. I followed the hardware specs recommendations, using 1400kv SunnySky motors and Simon K'd F30a ESCs. I took his frame design and modified it a little and used a cradled motor yaw mechanism inspired by this design. And this is the result, below is a conceptual design I created in Blender 3D to test out the yaw mechanism and also to get the dimensions.

Here is the Actual Craft built last Friday.

And here's the video. I believe the wooden frame, small high speed manually balanced GWS style HK propellers (8x4) combined with the high KV rating of the motors (1400) helped to generate very high vibration frequencies that is not noticeable on the GoPro Hero 3 B.E. CMOS sensor. All my previous multicopters motors are rated at 750kv and below spinning 11 inch props. Balancing them, especially the 11x47 Gemfans are a nightmare, so it was very difficult for me to get perfectly balanced setup and that resulted in rolling shutter. So the key I discovered is, use high KV motors rated 1K and above and also high speed smaller props. There is a catch however, flight times are reduced as this setup is not as efficient as the lower KV motors, but I think this is a small trade off for the footage I'm able to get. Right now on a 2200mah 4S Nanotech LiPo, I get around 7minutes flight time. All up weight with Camera and Battery is 1.3kg or nearly 3 pounds.

Testing my fully charged HaiYin 5000mAh 4S 30-40c battery. Almost 17 minutes of mostly Loiter mode flying and a bit of manual flying towards the end. 

I managed to test the Altitude Hold and Loiter functions of my ArduPilot Mega2 controlled Hexacopter and was pretty impressed with it. There was strong winds initially but when it died down to a breeze I turned on the altitude hold and it seemed to hover with a deviation of around 2m. Then when I turned on the Loiter mode, my hexacopter stayed within a 5m radius despite some wind. The fact that I didn’t do any adjustments and used everything stock was quite impressive to me. The firmware and code is well written I guess.