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SteadiDrone goes brushless

Posted by Duran - ALTI on April 9, 2013 at 8:30am

 

First Flight - SteadiDrone QU4D Brushless Gimbal from SteadiDrone on Vimeo.

As you all know brushless gimbals are the future, and we've just tested our first small BG for our SteadiDrone QU4D, here are some quick clips, much more to come soon. You can check out our facebook pages for more news, photos, videos etc

https://www.facebook.com/SteadiDrone

https://www.facebook.com/groups/283605021770387/

Regarding ArduCopter and brushless gimbals, would it be possible to impliment a AlexMos type code so that the code/APM can control brushless gimbal motors ??? mmmmmm would be a dream if we could

 

 

SteadiDrone QU4D Brushless gimbal prototype testing from SteadiDrone on Vimeo.

Tags: brushless, copter, diy, drone, drones, gimbal, gopro, qu4d, quad, steadidrone
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Comments

  • LanMark April 11, 2013 at 1:53pm

    do you have renderings or pictures of what the other bracket looks like?  does it support adjustment to center the lens to the axis centers?

    Great pricing if it is ready to fly, plug and play.

    I need a nice gimbal for aerial surveying .. which a brushless gimbal might be complete overkill for since the camera needs to always point straight down.

  • Duran - ALTI April 11, 2013 at 1:48pm

    You can check out all info on our website. Were taking pure orders ( not taking peoples cash just getting a pretty order list going) and the gimbal will be available at 495usd for the full kit including

    Full 2axis gimbal pure assembled ready to fly

    Brush less motors and gimbal controller

    Extended landing gear for the QU4D for QU4D owners

    Quick release mounting for the QU4D 

    Power adapter so its fully stand alone no day required

    Two different camera tilt brackets

    And more :)

  • LanMark April 11, 2013 at 1:37pm

    sweet.. do you have rough pricing with the gimbal controller?

  • Duran - ALTI April 11, 2013 at 1:37pm

    Our gimbal will include 2 brackets, one for the go pro series and another for compact digitals yes :)

  • LanMark April 11, 2013 at 12:30pm

    does it support a 230g point and shoot camera like a Canon ELPH? :) 

    (I figure if I keep asking someone would stop making GoPro specific stuff and open the doors to many more customers that personally don't like GoPro, especially in the image distortion department)

  • Duran - ALTI April 11, 2013 at 12:19pm

    Joshua, the controller supports full tilt and roll control as well as the channels to get info or control from flight controller too!

  • Joshua Ott April 10, 2013 at 5:31pm

    Thanks Robert,

    I was under the impression that it only kept the camera level and had no possibility for the APM to pass through manual inputs from the user or a "point camera on target function". Sounds like that's not a problem!

  • Rob_Lefebvre April 10, 2013 at 10:12am

    Joshua, what do you mean exactly?

    The controller takes a standard PWM servo input.  You set it up so that, for example, 1100 PWM means "point straight down" and 1900 PWM means "point straight ahead".  And then it does the rest from there.  Whatever the body-frame of the copter does, it compensates, so that it is pointing at the desired earth-frame angle. 

    Currently, the mount code of the APM attempts to do the body-frame correction, because it is supposedly outputting to a dumb servo.  

    So in fact, all that we need to do to the APM to get it to drive an AlexMos board, is to remove the earth-frame correction.  When you set a ROI, it should calculate the declination or azimuth, and just send that out as a servo signal, with NO body-frame stabilization.  Simple as that.  So we actually only need to simplify the Mount code to drive an AlexMos board.

    There is a difference between stepper motors, and BLDC motors, that is very important.  Stepper motors tend to be single phase or two phase.  This means that typically, they move in discrete steps.  Commonly just under 1° per step.  This is far too coarse for a camera gimbal.  There's stuff you can do like micro-stepping, but I'm not entirely sure what that means.

    BDLC motors are 3-phase.  What Zenmuse (and thus AlexMos) are doing is using a 3-phase bridge, PWM control, to produce an infinitely variable magnetic angle inside the motor!  There are no discrete steps.  This is the key to the success of these.  They produce a stationary magnetic field in the motor, and the rotor aligns itself to this.  This is why the movement is so smooth.  

    But, the downside is that I believe this system has much lower torque than a stepper motor (or a servo).  That is why balance of the gimbal is absolutely critical.  They don't really have much torque to move the camera.  The camera is actually stationary, the copter rotates around it, and the BLDC motor is really only overcoming the friction in the bearings.

  • Joshua Ott April 10, 2013 at 9:41am

    What about manual override control of tilt axis? Does the AlexMos controller have a provision for this?

  • Developer
    Randy April 10, 2013 at 8:15am

    thomas,

        nice info.  i've been following this thread in the hopes of a post like that. txs!

This reply was deleted.