Control ONLY brushless Gimbal with Joystick

ArduCopter Copter 3.3
1

Folks,

I’ve been up and down the forums and it seems that for YEARS no one has figured out a way to control a brushless gimbal with a Joystick/Gamepad on channels above 8 for copter. Bear in mind that no one in their right mind is able to fly without lag using a gamepad. I’ve noticed that when anyone has tried to say they want to only fly with a gamepad and no RC, they get dismissed (rudely actually). Since the control is a bit laggy using the gamepad, The most useful function for such a device would be to do something non flight critical, like point a camera.

I’ve been pointing my brushless Zhiyun z1 tiny 2 3-axis gimbal in yaw and pitch by using the sliders on my RC controller just fine after configuring the RCX option as RCPassThru (option 1) in the params list. Fine it works. But it would be much better if I could enable joystick ONLY on specific channels (i.e. 9-12) and let a friend play with the camera while I do the flying.

So two questions I guess:

  1. Why can you only enable joystick by completely disabling the RC controller

  2. Why does (even when the joystick is enabled) it only let you control channels 1-8 ??

For number 2, I’ve even gone so far as to try to manually edit the joystickaxisArduCopter2.xml file in C:\Program Files (x86)\Mission Planner folder, where even if you manually add something like:

9
None
false
0


10
Rx
false
0


11
Ry
false
0

to the end of the file, this is ignored.

I’ve calibrated my joystick in Windows. I’ve calibrated my Radio with the joystick enabled. Been through roughly what looks like the last 5 years of Q/A about Joysticks and Gimbals and no one has figured it out? I even posted in the DIYdrones forums, got 30 views and not a single response. Weird, for something that would seem about the most simple desired function on a copter typically who’s purpose is to collect video.

diydrones.com/forum/topics/apm-j … nnels-9-12

2

Not sure about copters but we do this with planes, i.e. manual RC or autonomous flight with simultaneous joystick gimbal control.
However we do use RC6 and 7 for pan and tilt so that may not answer your questions about ch9+.
We’re only using 5 channels for control, roll, pitch, thr, yaw + mode, ch6 is flaps but it’s direct, not through the flight controller.

3

I would also like to know how this is still not an option. All I would want is to configure any of the channels above 8 to the joystick as well.

4

Perhaps we can appeal to Michael Oborne to address this seemingly simple anomaly in Mission Planner. We need the ability to configure any of the channels above 8 to the joystick. My RC transmitter can do 16 channels. My Joystick needs the same capability (for control of 3 axis gimbal, etc.). This is a natural progression of new feature enhancement in MP.

5

@Michael_Oborne? Hope everyone is having a happy holidays! Also, (and will post a seperate topic) wondering where ArduTracker went?

6

Was this ever resolved? I can’t find any info on it either, and it seems like such a straightforward fix for a fairly desirable feature. Sorry for bumping if it has been implemented, this was really all I could find on the topic!

I’m fairly new here, so correct me if this is the wrong approach, but I suppose if this is buried in 3.3 an doesn’t get seen, I’ll create a new thread (and link back) in the latest version.

7

As far as i know it is mavlink 1 the problem. It can carry only up to 8 channels in override. In AC 4 all 16 channels will support override.