Replaced the radio foam with Marcy Foam #2009 & that fixed the vibration, driving the gains way up. Yeah, it's that important.
Discovered PWM on Marcy 2 only updated at 166Hz. These problems are caused by lack of bits, so you try prescaling the timer to fit it in 16 bits. That broke rate damping. Only explanation is PWM granularity got too low. Reverted back to the unprescaled timer & added PWM debugging code. That got it to 200Hz. More points for ARM.
AIPTEK P-HD AT NIGHT
Back in the HD world. 3 years after spending $450 on the Canon TX1 & crashing it, spent $55 on an Aiptek P-HD. Though lacking zoom, it's intended for aerial video only.
So you wanna fly the $50 Aiptek at night, eh. In night shot mode it does 15fps. Results with & without night shot mode are comparable to the Canon A480. Not bad for a pinhole lens.
Your best move with the Aiptek is to stack stabilized frames shot in normal mode. It actually looks better than daylight footage because the warping is hidden.
Rolling shutter warping abounds in daylight. As expected, the corny pistol grip case vibrates sideways. It's bearable at night, but daylight footage is worthless. The 848x480 60fps mode just crops the image instead of scaling it. The Canon A480 remains the still photo champion.
It's so cheap, suspect we'll destroy it eventually & install a wide angle lens.
Without nightshot.
With nightshot.
4 stacked frames
Video is recorded at 5mbps. Headed up to our top secret altitude for some HD video. Had perfect radio contact this time, probably from flying 20m horizontally from base. Actually came out 25m lower than desired due to barometer temperature.
Unfortunately, the rolling shutter is making the video worthless. Not likely to get that stupid pistol grip to stop shaking sideways. Not likely to reorient the circuit boards to make a better case. Best idea is a balsa pyramid with foam.
Finally, there's no way to disable the Chinese piano chord which plays every time it turns on.
MARCY 2 FLIGHT
With any new design, every golf course trip ends in a crash. Every day, Marcy 1 & 2 take turns being repaired while the other 1 flies & crashes. The main causes are drifting out of radio range with Marcy 2 & getting blown out of radio range with Marcy 1.
Marcy 2 did some autonomous hovering using sonar before she crashed due to radio range. Only got 1 shot where Canon light metering worked.
Got a loop antenna & then the Hitec HS81 burned out.
MARCY 1 FLIGHT
She once again proved the difficulty of monocopter control. If you command a monocopter to tilt, it's going to tilt 1 way & immediately start oscillating the other way regardless of cyclic. Defeating the oscillation & not sensing attitude is probably all that's required to solve position hold. Cyclic doesn't flip her over.
Then She got blown out of radio range & crashed.
After extensive negotiations with the Air Force, managed to move forward on declassifying the Marcy vehicles. They're in a place Major Marcy can easily see them, but She probably never will. She seemed to put up with the idea of aircraft named after Her despite consistently shutting us down over any attempt to see Her in real life.
MORE AIPTEK P-HD 4 U
Another attempt to stop the sideways shaking. FUGGEDABOUTIT. Doesn't look good in the sideways shake department. Also, the battery won't charge anymore. It's 1 of those chargers where the voltage has to be below a certain amount before it'll charge & the maximum voltage gets lower & lower. Getting closer to the next teardown.
Comments
just a thought , the flip display can be rotated out and if put back in its slot flat facing out ( so that it does not shut down) might reduce the vibration. Do you need to keep the display( as in your photo) like how a person would want when he is holding it? In my aerial photography airframe with similar camera, I flipped it/display/screen out flat to it side keep the profile as little as possible.