RCTimer Brushless gimbal controller - How to get it to work.

[Smit80]

Hi Guys,
After hours and hours trying to get my win7 64 bit computer to connect to the controller I finally cracked it.  I tried everything - USB drivers etc. but no luck.  I then installed windows xp on a spare HDD and bingo! connected straight away.
Managed to get the pitch PIDs set lovely (by fluke) but now I';ve noticed on the videos that the roll is a bit twitchy.  I don';t know which way to adjust each of the PIDs up or down.  I';m using the latest firmware.  Have a look, I';m open to suggestions...
http://youtu.be/7JeXZYaoGcI

Hi WPDruss,

The quick way of getting rid of that is to reduce the PWM. Once I get it ';nearly'; there I drop the PWM by 15%-20% and that usually sorts it for me.

[Gaza07]

You should be able to get it working on win 7 I have on several machines 
plug the board in and look in device manager at the version number if its 2.8.28.0 chances are its not going to work,
it needs to be 2.8.24.0
Download the correct driver and unzip it to a temp folder, with the board plgeed in go in device manager and select to remove the driver and make sure you put a tick in delete files,
Once you have done this un plug the board and un plug your internet or turn it off, you dont want windows to fetch the latest driver again, once your internet is turned off, plug the board in it shouldnt be able to find the driver at this point click the option to browse to a driver and point it to the temp folder where you unzipped the driver,
once its loaded you should then be running the 2.8.24.0 driver and the board should be able to connect,

If all the above fails then repeat the steps above but go in to the folders listed in the picture below and find the files and delete them your self, I did this on neils pc and it worked fine for him,
once you have deleted the files plug the board in and point it to the temp folder with the driver in,

Note the only file you shouldn';t delete out of the list is the serenum.sys which is windows files and wont get replaced like the others do

[attach=1]

Mmmm, haven';t got my Win7 32bit laptop to connect yet but haven';t tried the down level drivers yet! 

Hope I don';t have to resort to putting XP back on... 

[WPDruss]

Ah I';ll try that.  I did have the .24 driver installed but didn';t try installing it by deleting files.  Hopefully that will work for me.
I';ll drop the pwm too :)  What is PWM?

[ChrisH]

Thanks for that Gary, I';m hopeful that the down level driver will fix it. It';s time at the moment that';s the problem (watching clock smiley).

[shaktar]

Yeh mine would not connect at first and then i flowed this and manually installed the usb drivers.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1872416

[DarrenG]

The 3mm shaft and bearings arrived this morning. After a bit of dremmeling I now have a replacement tilt shaft for my gimbal.  Took the opportunity to add a flat spot for the grub screw to bite onto, and did the same to the two motor shafts as well for security.

I';ve also done what I should have at the outset, added thread lock when assembling!

The bonus is I now have enough left over shaft to make a dozen more and some spare bearings and c-clips too. If anyone else is as daft as me and looses the shaft, let me know 

[croms]

Hi,
I got this rc timer gimball and controller but im not sure how to mount correctly the sensor. I mean, is it the Y or X axis should be facing front? Hope someone can help me. Thanks - Croms

[DarrenG]

Hi,
I got this rc timer gimball and controller but im not sure how to mount correctly the sensor. I mean, is it the Y or X axis should be facing front? Hope someone can help me. Thanks - Croms

X axis faces forwards.

[ChrisH]

X axis faces forwards.

Darren, two separate posts earlier in this thread (about page 9) state that X axis is backwards, Y to right if looking at gimbal!

Which is which

[DarrenG]

Darren, two separate posts earlier in this thread (about page 9) state that X axis is backwards, Y to right if looking at gimbal!

Which is which

That depends on how and where you choose to mount the IMU? The orientation is set in the GUI. You can have it mounted on the bottom of the gimbal component side down, or the top, component side up, and with the cable exiting to the right or the left, the choice is yours. Just need to make sure you set the orientation you have chosen in the GUI.

But X is always front/back, Y is left/right and Z is up/down 

[ChrisH]

Thanks for that Darren,

I';ve not got as far as getting the GUI working properly yet so hadn';t seen that!

This gimbal looks great when its working but a bit of a swine to sort first of!

[DarrenG]

Thanks for that Darren,

I';ve not got as far as getting the GUI working properly yet so hadn';t seen that!

This gimbal looks great when its working but a bit of a swine to sort first of!

Yer not wrong there, for the cost it';s a superb bit of kit, but the software side is a bit of a faff at first. The latest GUI is pretty good though and most of it is self-explanatory once you get it working.

[ChrisH]

Mine is almost online fully, got some interface (Win7) after downgrading the driver. I';m sure I just need to dedicate some more time to it!

[coastersteve]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKBdSe42u3w

[croms]

Thanks Darren.
I tried to pitch down and it acts wildly when near facing down? What settings should i change to minimize or fix this?

[DarrenG]

Thanks Darren.
I tried to pitch down and it acts wildly when near facing down? What settings should i change to minimize or fix this?

What firmware and GUI versions are you using?

[croms]

I';m using 49B R77 firmware along with its Gui. I can only go down to -75 for pitch rc min but that does not completely facing down, so i need to be in i think -90 to have it face flat down.

[Calomile]

There is a new version out, 49B r161: https://code.google.com/p/brushless-gimbal/downloads/detail?name=BruGi_049B_r161.zip&can=2&q=

I';ll test it out and report back...

[Smit80]

Anyone have any tips on getting rip of roll wobble on forward flight? :)

[Smit80]

Anyone have any tips on getting rip of roll wobble on forward flight? :)

Managed to trim this out by dropping the Proportion slightly and compensated by increasing the pwm a little :)

[ChrisH]

There is a new version out, 49B r161: https://code.google.com/p/brushless-gimbal/downloads/detail?name=BruGi_049B_r161.zip&can=2&q=

I';ll test it out and report back...

Any news on this Calomile? 

[Calomile]

Ah yeah sorry I didn';t report back!

I found that I had to retune it quite a lot as the settings weren';t right any more. Not sure what is was in the changelog that caused a dramatic change but basically had to redo my entire PWM/PID combo. I found the included screenshots of the settings to be pretty close to perfect for my GoPro Hero 2, YMMV with the Hero 1/3 though!

Otherwise it';s as stable as a rock, still very pleased!

[coastersteve]

Having a play with the latest firmware:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZCCCo4CsMk#ws

Seems pretty good.

[Marty McFly]

Very nice,you must be happy with that,Marty :scotland:

[jcampen]

Not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere but you need to make sure only com port 1-9 are used. Soon as I changed my com port to com2 instead of com 15 the board connect d to the GUI.

On the power issue.
I am trying to figure out what the maximum voltage this board can take. I have a 5v 5amp Ubec connected to it which is plenty to power the board, but is this enough for the brushless motors?

This is the board http://www.iflight-rc.com/product/Ma...-Martinez.html

These are the motors. http://www.iflight-rc.com/product/iP...4008-150T.html

I see some sites the specs shows to connect the battery direct to the board and recommend 2s-3S. One site even has 2S-4S. http://www.simplebgc.com/files/v10/S...on_diagram.pdf

Yet on the specifications it seems to indicate only 5v.

The main issue is I have the gimbals working but its not very responsive and I am not sure if this is due to the tuning or simply there isn';t enough current with using 5v to drive the motors.

So whats the max voltage that can be used?

[rickp]

Resuming the battle with my gimbal this morning. I started tuning pitch, and whilst it would hold ok for a while - it would then go nuts and try and wrap up the IMU cable Any ideas? Just more tuning needed?

[Balders]

Are you testing with the camera in situ so the gimbal is in a balanced state?

[Balders]

Jcampen I run mine directly off a 3 cell lipo

[powerlord]

The martinez board special  is up to 6s. It won';t work well on 5v. I use 4s on mine.

Also your simplebgc link is the Alexmos board.  The martinez one in brushlessgimbal. De

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[rickp]

Are you testing with the camera in situ so the gimbal is in a balanced state?

Camera is in, but its not balanced in the roll-axis, with the motor on one side being far heavier than the camera (gopro hero 3)