TBS Discovery with brushless gimbal modification

by Moonstone | December 5, 2013 | (0) Posted in Projects

After seeing some of the amazing video footage shot from bushless gimbals I decided to have a go at mounting one the my TBS Discovery. After a bit of research I came accross this one http://www.goodluckbuy.com/dji-phantom-brushless-gimbal-camera-mount-w-motor-and-controller-for-gopro3-fpv-aerial-photography-blalck.html that was getting very good reviews so decided to take a punt and try it - I couldn't be happier with it! It was delivered in a sturdy box and required little assembly, I powered it up and it just worked, perfectly! After some investigation I worked out it has the AlexMoss v2.2b2 firmware aready intalled and even connects up via USB to the GUI http://www.basecamelectronics.com/downloads/  for this board to allow parameter changes. I haven't had a chance to give it a good workout but initial testing has shown it to produce super smooth video from my GoPro 3+ silver and no jello.

 I had to make up a custom mount for the Discovery as the gimbal is designed to be suspended underneath a suitable multi-rotor. Having it mounted so far forward did change the CofG but I now use larger 5000mAh batteries that have balanced it back up. I get around 14min flying powering the gimbal and FPV gear with this battery and more than adequate flight performance for my flying ability.

Smooth flying.

Moonstone 


Gimbal mounted to my TBS Discovery

 

I used to pieces of 8mm polycarbonate to mount the gimball to with zip ties to the Discovery frame.

 

Image showing the foam I used to minimise vibration to the camera.

 

Relocated FPV camera.

 

The yellow wire is connected to a channel on my receiver to control manual pitch adjustment.

First test, no post stabilisation applied.

- Find this article & others like it at www.FliteTest.com -

COMMENTS

snozzy on December 12, 2013
I've used the same method to mount this gimbal:
http://www.goodluckbuy.com/2-axis-gopro-2-3-brushless-camera-mount-gimbal-with-motor-and-controller-for-gopro3-aerial-photography-.html
to my nex neo, works great but I still get a tiny bit of vibration. Is that a bit of foam between the plexiglass and the frame? Any vibration?
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Moonstone on December 12, 2013
Hi Snoozy. Yes you are right I have a piece of foam between the mount and the frame, no other dampening is used and I get little to no vibration showing up in the video. I did pay close attention to balancing my props and motors. The foam I have found that works best needs to be quite dense, the type that springs back slowly. Hope this helps.
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ghostrider03z on December 13, 2013
The gimbal says something about not including the pitch cable, what is that
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Moonstone on December 13, 2013
I assume they mean the cable to connect the receiver to the control board so you can control the pitch of the camera manually. I just needed to connect one wire from the signal output of one of the channels to the input labelled A1 as I am using a common power supply. I will upload some more images showing this, it is the yellow wire.
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tengkie on June 4, 2015
Hi, how do you connect the board directly to receiver for Tilt/Pitch control?
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romany on June 24, 2014
did you power the controller directly from the main battery? do you use 3s or 4s?
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Moonstone on June 24, 2014
I'm running mine directly from the main battery that is 4s, not sure if it designed for this but so far has been fine running on the higher voltage. I have also relocated the controller inside the frame and don't seem to have any heat issues.
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Moonstone on June 4, 2015
If you look at the last picture the yellow wire connected to A1 on the gimbal controller board goes to the tilt control output on the Naza flight controller, which you then set up in the Naza software. Hope this helps.
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Moonstone

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TBS Discovery with brushless gimbal modification