ARRIS CM2000 Brushless Gimbal for GoPro

[Curtster]

I've had my ARRIS gimbal for a couple of days now, and I thought I'd share my early impressions.

First off, the added weight of the gimbal reduced my flight time from over ten minutes, to about 6 1/2 minutes before the first indication of low battery comes along. This bugs me a little, and maybe I shoulda thought about it first. I set a timer now for five minutes, just to remind me to come back to my immediate area. That's not a whole lot of time to play. Five minutes may or may not be enough for your particular mission, so keep that in mind.

Secondly, no amount of gimbal magic can make up for crappy flying skills, lousy conditions, or poor scenery. I can fly my Phantom pretty well, and I try to be smooth, so it must be the other two! :mrgreen: Seriously, if you're expecting to film the next installation of Jurassic Park with this setup, you may be disappointed.

All in all, it's a nice addition, and certainly will help smooth out some of the minor bumps we all experience while filming. Just don't expect a miracle.

JMHO,
Curt

 

[MX45OR]

I've had my ARRIS gimbal for a couple of days now, and I thought I'd share my early impressions.

First off, the added weight of the gimbal reduced my flight time from over ten minutes, to about 6 1/2 minutes before the first indication of low battery comes along. This bugs me a little, and maybe I shoulda thought about it first. I set a timer now for five minutes, just to remind me to come back to my immediate area. That's not a whole lot of time to play. Five minutes may or may not be enough for your particular mission, so keep that in mind.

Secondly, no amount of gimbal magic can make up for crappy flying skills, lousy conditions, or poor scenery. I can fly my Phantom pretty well, and I try to be smooth, so it must be the other two! :mrgreen: Seriously, if you're expecting to film the next installation of Jurassic Park with this setup, you may be disappointed.

All in all, it's a nice addition, and certainly will help smooth out some of the minor bumps we all experience while filming. Just don't expect a miracle.

JMHO,Curt

Man, so are you afraid to show your stuff? Did you have issues with the stability in erratic flight? Did you try to "stress test" the gimbal in windy conditions?What was your subject? what shots did you imagine you would get? ......sorry Can you tell I'm excited for this delivery.

 

[Curtster]

MX,
Nope, I'm not afraid to show my stuff, just that I deleted all of my recent flights as it was just experimenting. I'll fly around my neighborhood this evening and post it when I can. By the way, do you know how to post stuff to this forum? I don't.

I don't mean to be a bummer about the gimbal, and i hope you enjoy yours. I'm just saying its not the only thing between a great video and a not so great one.

Curt

 

[MX45OR]

MX,
Nope, I'm not afraid to show my stuff, just that I deleted all of my recent flights as it was just experimenting. I'll fly around my neighborhood this evening and post it when I can. By the way, do you know how to post stuff to this forum? I don't.

I don't mean to be a bummer about the gimbal, and i hope you enjoy yours. I'm just saying its not the only thing between a great video and a not so great one.

Curt

I don't either. In fact I have to make movie montages and save them to youtube in order to host my pictures. Otherwise They are always oversized, so they don't post anyways.

 

[Gizmo3000]

Yes,. it's a tradeoff having flight time cut so much all for sake of stabilized video, but man I love the results.
and would rather have 5 minutes of stabilized footage than 10 minutes os shaky mess that might require hours of post-stabilization.

I consider myself just an average flyer, but I'm definitely NOT a morning person, so I usually miss the early morning calm and end up flying in afternoon breeze. I'm good with post-sabilization tricks and such,. but I'm ecstatic with the results I've been getting with this gimbal (and my gimbal has been glitchy,. getting a replacement tomorrow). - the results didn't need any post stabilization. (tho perhaps I'll try applying it to some future footage just to fix what the gimbal is incapable of dealing with)

I think a lot of people get the Phantom with expectations of making killer aerial video, only to discover it's a lot harder than it looks,. but even the best flyer can't make good footage when wind causes the Phantom to shake around.
These brushless gimbals are a real game changer in that regard.

 

[Curtster]

rather have 5 minutes of stabilized footage than 10 minutes os shaky mess that might require hours of post-stabilization.

Great point!

I think a lot of people get the Phantom with expectations of making killer aerial video, only to discover it's a lot harder than it looks,.

Yes, I might be guilty of this.

Curt

 

[Curtster]

Ok, due to popular demand :geek: I've posted a 'review' of my ARRIS gimbal. You can check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ivZtw2eDbM

Curt

PS, my other videos mostly show aerial video from my Bixler2 with keychain camera.

 

[GearLoose]

I was blown away by your video (from the Hat Cam ). The Arris gimbal review is also very good, though after seeing how smooth the footage is it depresses me to realize that I obviously need one. The road to bankruptcy is paved with Phantom accessories!

What kind of flight times are you getting?

It would have been good, too, to see what you had to do to actually mount and calibrate the Arris. Perhaps you can do a pre-quel?

 

[ayanowitz]

I've only had the ARRIS CM2000 for a few days. Looking for help "tuning" the gimbal to fix a severe oscillation problem when the camera (Hero 3 black) is pitched downwards (beyond 45 degrees or so). I've played with the PID settings in the GUI app, but have not found settings that eliminate the oscillation. With this oscillation problem, all the video I shoot is worse that before I had the gimbal. I've read in the various forms that a few others have had similar problem, so I know I'm not alone. This problem is reproducible even when bench testing the gimbal, not connected to the Phantom. Did I get a "bad" unit?

Note that I don't have the manual pitch control hooked up yet.

In the GUI app, I can see the oscillation in the sensor graph. When the Phantom is level, the lines are flat, but once I tilt back, I start seeing this problem.

You can see a picture of my settings here:

What other parameters changes (if any) besides P, I, and D, might help reduce this problem?

Thanks. So far I'm really disappointed with this gimbal, and am hoping its just a matter of tweaking settings to get it to behave correctly.

 

[Curtster]

I was blown away by your video (from the Hat Cam ). The Arris gimbal review is also very good, though after seeing how smooth the footage is it depresses me to realize that I obviously need one. The road to bankruptcy is paved with Phantom accessories!

Thanks for the compliments GL.

What kind of flight times are you getting?

That's been one of my biggest concerns, but you'll see that we beat this issue up a little earlier in this thread. My flight times are about 6 1/2 minutes.

It would have been good, too, to see what you had to do to actually mount and calibrate the Arris. Perhaps you can do a pre-quel?

My "review" was more of a attempt to be fun vs. factual. If you go to jlcamp7's videos, you'll get a whole lot more useful information. Check out his excellent video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPpxj_R1ZGA

Thanks again, and I'm glad you enjoyed the video... It was fun making it.

Curt

 

[pligo]

Some of us are wishing there was an easy way to switch between flying with the gimbal and camera, and then without. Does anyone know of any plans to make a suitable quick-release mount?

 

[Gizmo3000]

Some of us are wishing there was an easy way to switch between flying with the gimbal and camera, and then without. Does anyone know of any plans to make a suitable quick-release mount?

In concept that would be great,.. I know a few guys who've used genuine quick-release gopro mounts on the bottom of their Phantoms (but that's mostly because they broke their white-mount).

However these gimbals are already scraping the pavement when installed, so there's no room for any such quick release mechanism. (which would probably add some undesirable weight on as well)

 

[Gizmo3000]

Re: ARRIS CM2000 Brushless Gimbal - WORKING! FINALLY!

So as you all might have been aware,. I ordered my CM2000 a month ago,. it arrived a few weeks later and I was super excited with dreams of filming well stabilized and jello-less video that weekend.
But the dreams were shattered as just moments after I plugged it in - it seemed to work ok
but when I attached the pitch and roll, it shook around and went kaput.
honestly don't know what happened, and I wasn't familiar enough to get it connected to my laptop (a Mac running Parallels).

So the company sent me a replacement controller that I could swap out.
..and it sort of seemed to work, but still shook like crazy.. and I didn't attach the sensor the right way (it was backwards), but it still was crapping out on me. I did manage to get some good footage over the weekend, but it was hit or miss on how it worked,. I'd take off and it would shake around, and I was unable to pitch down at all. - or it would tilt at an angle, shake around like crazy sometimes.. just plain.. crap.

Hobby Wing did their best to help, but it entailed many hours of lost sleep.
So they offered to send me out a full replacement (the v3 model no less), and my god,. WHAT a difference.
it started up perfectly, no shaking around at all like the other one. pitches up and down without any problems,. acts and behaves exactly as I first envisioned the gimbal should behave.

I got off to a bad start. .got a lemon, but I'm definitely one happy camper right now!
very optimistic my troubles are behind me and I can really start having fun again!

 

[auck]

lucky you. it would appear that customs has decided to hold on to the one i ordered for a while. don't know why, but it's been sitting in customs since the 11th of June. i've tried to contact the shipping company, hobby wing, and anyone else i can think of, and the only response i get is that it's out of their hands until customs release the package. you would think that customs would have better things to inspect than a gimbal. :roll:

 

[MX45OR]

lucky you. it would appear that customs has decided to hold on to the one i ordered for a while. don't know why, but it's been sitting in customs since the 11th of June. i've tried to contact the shipping company, hobby wing, and anyone else i can think of, and the only response i get is that it's out of their hands until customs release the package. you would think that customs would have better things to inspect than a gimbal. :roll:

Its been 2 weeks exactly, and I haven't even got a tracking number yet. Amy said it should ship out monday or tuesday, I hope its a nice and shiny V3.0.

 

[BruceTS]

I sure hope when they finally ship mine that it doesn't get stopped by customs, usually that also entails paying additional fees.

 

[Gizmo3000]

Its been 2 weeks exactly, and I haven't even got a tracking number yet. Amy said it should ship out monday or tuesday, I hope its a nice and shiny V3.0.

then you should have it hopefully by next weekend.
it'll be the V3.0 for sure.
my replacement was a v3.0, and so far so good!

 

[Maxxborg]

I got my pitch set up with a shape ways lever. The only problem I have is it is a all or nothing setting. Meaning it is either pointing straight forward or straight down. I can't turn it a little and get it to turn down a little. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

 

[dbrack]

My V3 replacement arrived. Still seems flakey as hell. Sometimes fine (which is an improvement!), other times it gets the shakes. If it's operator error, I'd sure like to know what it is.

I'm shooting a historic site tomorrow.. hoping it decides to have a good day!

 

[Gizmo3000]

I got my pitch set up with a shape ways lever. The only problem I have is it is a all or nothing setting. Meaning it is either pointing straight forward or straight down. I can't turn it a little and get it to turn down a little. Anyone know what I am doing wrong?

You have to find the midway point where the level doesn't do anything.
then carefully move the lever one way and the gimbal will move, ..and move the lever back to the midway point to stop it.
(I think,. as I use a Futaba)