Storm32 Gimbal camera control and problems connecting to MP when gimbal connected

Hardware Pixhawk 2
1

I have a couple of gimbal related questions. Hope someone might be able to help.

I have a STORM32 gimbal connected via MAVlink to a Pixhawk 2.1. Everything seems to be working but I’m getting glitches in the UART link to my laptop when the gimbal is connected to the pixhawk via GPS2 (aka Serial 4 I believe).
These glitches occur when I’m connected to the Pixhawk by USB cable but also when connected via 433MHz telemetry modules. Sometimes it times out when connecting and other times it loses the connecting. One time it said it had not received 2 heartbeats and therefore was not connected.
If I disconnect the UART cable from the pixhawk to the gimbal the USB connection to the laptop is ok.

Although I’m having the issues above I can still control the gimbal with my radio (I have a knob setup to change the pitch setup through MP). I can also control the camera when I select “Point Camera Here” during a flight from mission planner. First question is once I select “point camera here” this overrides the RC input. How do I regain control using the RC input.

The second question is when selecting “Point Camera Here” is there a way of pointing the copter and not the camera. Before I had the gimbal setup “point camera here” would make the copter yaw to the correct position. Now it turns the camera only. Is there a way of deciding which you would like?

Thanks

2

could you please tell what the system ID of the gimbal is?

I myself do observe similar “instability” with Mission Planner when I use sys ID = 71, which is the default, and which once was a “working setting”. However, nowadays it seems that one should (must?) use sys ID = 1. With that sys ID I do not get any connection problems to Mission Planner. There appear to be however other issues with this (the camera trigger works fine, but not the pointing in all circumstances).

3

I have issues as well, and it appears to be a Mission Planner issue. I can connect with APM Planner 2 and qGround Control using 915mHz telemetry radios or USB with no problems. Some times I can connect with Mission Planner and some times I cannot. Typically, when I cannot connect, powering down the aircraft and powering back up will “fix” the problem.

This is an i2c gimbal. System ID is 71, Component ID is 67.

4

Thanks for replying so quick. How do I find out the system ID? I’ve had a
look at your wiki but still can’t figure out how to change it or check it?

So can I ask is the camera pointing not working correctly in my case? I
thought that maybe it was working but that I didn’t fully understand it? Is
there a way of selecting whether the camera (or the copter) points to the
target.

Thanks

5

You need to connect the gimbal controller to the GUI, click Experts Only, click Expert Tool.

Make your changes and exit the Expert Tool.
Click the box next to the Write button. This will change to Write+Store.
Click Write+Store to save the settings.

6

Check the Mavlink ID’s shown here:
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-storm32-gimbal.html?highlight=mnt_type

7

is probably solved now: see https://github.com/ArduPilot/MissionPlanner/issues/1698

8

Ok thanks for you help. Will do some more testing.
Do you know the answers to my other questions - is the gimbal performing correctly with yaw operation. Is there a way to select whether the copter (or the camera) performs the yaw?
Thanks