APM2.8 / HAKRC Storm32 1.31 gimbal / PWM - Wrong direction

ArduCopter
1

Hi,

After a few months of not being able to do anything with my simple drone, i’m able to pick things up again.
I’ve now got a small gimbal (cheap: hakRC storm32 thing) and i’ve connected it to the PWM port of my APM.

I’ve then configured the APM to use the gimbal and have set it to control the Tilt and Pan with Channel 10 and 11 (PWM outputs on the APM 2.8).

I’ve also configured the storm bord to use the RC2-0 and RC2-1 to control the same.

To test this, i go to the flight data tab and click ‘point camera here’. This responds as expected.

However, it seems that the gimbal points the wrong way. If i click exactly in the red/orange line that the drone projects in mission planner, than the camera turns the opposite direction.

I have yet to find out what this can be. I’ve tried various options and i’m just a bit puzzled to what it could be. I’ve noticed that the min/max ranges that need to be entered in both the STORM32 controller and mission planner need to be aligned, however, whatever i do, the thing does not point in the right direction.

I know the hardware is quite old, but i see no reason why that should stop it from working. Any help/tips/hints would be helpful!

2

It seems nobody has any advise :slight_smile:

So, i figured out a few things, first of all, setting up the trim on the gimball itself. Second. the gimbal doesn’t auto-center to forward. So i need to initialize it corectly to make sure it points forward.

Now, in itself, i consider this a gimbal just like servo’s. it does respond like so. If i set min/max on Tilt and Pan (which i link) to 1500, then the thing points forward and into the right direction.

I can then also set min/max for both values that it /stays/ pointing in that direction. As soon as i do a ‘point camera here’ in the flight plan, it wants to point the wrong way. It just points backwards and not forwards.

I wonder why this is!
Is there any more docs on how the OUTPUT is calculated based on the ‘point camera here’ function?