XFRobot Gimbal Support

Blog
1

xfrobot-gimbal
xfrobot-gimbal394×451 65.9 KB

We’ve just recently added support for the XFRobot series of camera gimbals and we’d love it if some beta testers would be willing to give it a try and report back.

The setup instructions are here but one key thing that isn’t mentioned on the wiki page is that you’ll need to use the Custom Build Server to create a 4.7 firmware that includes the new driver

xfrobot-custom-build-server
xfrobot-custom-build-server1394×1453 149 KB

If you’ve never used the custom build server before we have more instructions here.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

5 Likes
2

Excellent work!

Is the whole Z-* and D-* series supported?

1 Like
3

Hi @julled,

We’ve only tested with the Z-1 so far but my understanding is that they all use the same protocol so they should all work.

I should add that there are a few more feature we’re working on adding support for including:

  1. image tracking (at least some of the cameras support this)
  2. selecting the active video stream (rgb, IR, etc)
  3. scripts for easy downloading of image and video files to a companion computer

I can’t give a timeline on these but hopefully it won’t be too long

1 Like
5

I’m building locally with ./waf - how can I add this feature? I tried

–feature HAL_MOUNT_XFROBOT_ENABLED

it seems to be --enable-XFROBOT

6

I got the Z-1 Mini working with TCP over PPP using:

NET_Px_TYPE = 3 (TCP Client)
NET_Px_PROTOCOL = 8 (Gimbal)
NET_Px_PORT = 2332 (from XFR documentation)
NET_Px_IP0 = 192
NET_Px_IP1 = 168
NET_Px_IP2 = 144
NET_Px_IP3 = 108

rtsp works using rtsp://192.168.144.108
(i.e. there is no tag at the end that most other cameras have)

Where can I find the information about downloading images Randy, I really need this because the way I have to mount my Z-1, I can’t access the SD card physically so I guess I really need to be able to access the videos over the wire.

If you could point me at what you are working on maybe I can help?

It might also be possible to use UDP, but I can’t understand what is written in their manual, using TCP was easy so I used that.

Here is what is buried in the GCUPrivateProtocol.pdf in the GCU_Assistant download…

Network Configuration

UDP mode: The source port is 2337 and the default destination is the

LAN broadcast address. The target port is 2338.

TCP Server mode: The opposite end should be set to TCP Clint mode.

The remote IP address should be the same as GCU, and the remote

port should be 2332.

1 Like
7

Hi @timtuxworth,

Thanks for testing and for confirming that control via ethernet works!

I haven’t actually started any software development to support remote downloading of images. I hope to start that late next week.