ARRIS CM2000 Brushless Gimbal for GoPro

[REmedia]

I recently purchased the CM2000, and the control wire for pitch control was not in the box. I contacted Nancy, and was told they forgot to send it in the box. Is there anywhere else I can purchase this cable other than Hobby-Wing? If not, I guess I'll have to wait until they can ship one out to me. Thanks

 

[jumanoc]

I recently purchased the CM2000, and the control wire for pitch control was not in the box. I contacted Nancy, and was told they forgot to send it in the box. Is there anywhere else I can purchase this cable other than Hobby-Wing? If not, I guess I'll have to wait until they can ship one out to me. Thanks

Hey, you only need a simple 1 wire cable (the CM2000 brings with 3 wires for roll (not needed with stock TX and GND, not requiered if you use phantom battery for power Gimbal) Just get 1 or 2 simple wires with female connector and use it from NAZA F2 top to rightmost Arris board pin !
Just Get or make 1 like these:

 

[Gizmo3000]

I recently purchased the CM2000, and the control wire for pitch control was not in the box. I contacted Nancy, and was told they forgot to send it in the box. Is there anywhere else I can purchase this cable other than Hobby-Wing? If not, I guess I'll have to wait until they can ship one out to me. Thanks

literally any hobby store out there will have the servo connectors you'd need, they're that generic.
if you're using your Phantom aux power and only plan to use pitch, all you really need is a single pin connector.
tho if you plan to use an external battery or play with roll, more cables will be necessary. (so you might want to pick up a 3-pin cable instead of singles).

I thought I read tho that the new CM2000's using the red controller boards have the wires soldered straight to the board. (so if you got the red board, hopefully you won't have to do any soldering)

 

[pteittinen]

My ARRIS is here... and it appears to be a lemon. At the very first power-up, before I connected wires for GND and Pitch, it behaved quite well, even though its horizon wasn't quite level. Once I enabled Pitch and played around with it for a couple of minutes (worked OK), I noticed its calibration had wondered clearly off. The roll has gotten worse with every power-up and the gimbal is now rolled clockwise approx. 20 degrees.

I connected a USB cable to the gimbal and ran the software. All settings matched the "Stock settings" jpeg I found on the DVD-ROM. The Pitch dial on the software shows 0.0 degrees roll, even though in reality the gimbal's rolled way clockwise. Anyone know how I can re-calibrate this thing?

 

[Gizmo3000]

My ARRIS is here... and it appears to be a lemon. At the very first power-up, before I connected wires for GND and Pitch, it behaved quite well, even though its horizon wasn't quite level. Once I enabled Pitch and played around with it for a couple of minutes (worked OK), I noticed its calibration had wondered clearly off. The roll has gotten worse with every power-up and the gimbal is now rolled clockwise approx. 20 degrees.

I connected a USB cable to the gimbal and ran the software. All settings matched the "Stock settings" jpeg I found on the DVD-ROM. The Pitch dial on the software shows 0.0 degrees roll, even though in reality the gimbal's rolled way clockwise. Anyone know how I can re-calibrate this thing?

That's definitely very strange behavior. is your board red or blue?
and you didn't connect the roll cable at all? and NAZA is set to 0,0 in the automatic gains section? (just to be sure that no info is being sent to the roll)

to recalibrate it's relatively easy, you hold the camera steady and level and hit the CALIB_ACC button (in the GUI app)
go to http://www.simplebgc.com/eng/ and look for the instructions there as well

here's what it says tho

"Accelerometer calibration
This is generally done one time at the beginning of the system tuning. But It is better to re-calibrate accelerometer after a long time, or when the temperature was considerably changed since last calibration.
To calibrate accelerometer, you don't need to connect main power. Just connect FTDI cable.
Simple mode: level the sensor board strictly horizontally (this is “base position”), fix it in this position by hands, and press CALIB_ACC button (or menu button). Signal LED will flash about 2-3 seconds. Don't move sensor board while calibrating.

Extended mode (preferred): first of all, make calibration in simple mode. Then, rotate sensor board by 90 degree, to make every of 5 faces “looking up” (total 5 positions excluding “base”). Fix sensor in every position, press CALIBRATE_ACC and wait about 3 second. Repeat this step 5 times (the sequence of rotation is no matter). Remember, that calibration in simple mode will cancel results of extended calibration, so make it first.
Hint: Precise ACC calibration is very important to keep horizon stable in case of aggressive flight

 

[pteittinen]

That's definitely very strange behavior. is your board red or blue?

It's blue.

and you didn't connect the roll cable at all? and NAZA is set to 0,0 in the automatic gains section? (just to be sure that no info is being sent to the roll)

Argh... I forgot to mention that about halfway through trying to fix the gimbal I powered the whole thing down and disconnected GND and Pitch cables from the gimbal. In other words, there's no data going from NAZA to the gimbal at all, but it keeps rolling clockwise and getting slowly worse.

to recalibrate it's relatively easy, you hold the camera steady and level and hit the CALIB_ACC button (in the GUI app)
go to http://www.simplebgc.com/eng/ and look for the instructions there as well

Thanks! I'll get to learnin'

 

[pteittinen]

Wow, that was easy. I simply connected USB to gimbal, did *not* connect battery, and gimbal started making a very annoying beeping sound. I ran ARRIS software, chose the COM port, then made sure the gimbal was level and clicked CALIB_ACC. All the graphs leveled out together for a moment, then the beeping got even louder and the graphs started diverging again.

I disconnected the USB cable and the beeping stopped (whew). Next I connected the battery... and lo and behold, the gimbal no longer rolls clockwise. Instead it came smoothly to level position and stayed there. I lifted up the Phantom and turned it 20-30 degrees in every direction: CM2000 stayed nicely leveled, without a single oscillation. Too bad it's close to midnight here and too dark outside to shoot anything now.

Thanks for the help, Gizmo3000!

 

[chad556]

Hobby-wing sent me the email last night saying it has shipped! Says it should be in Phoenix, AZ on July 1st. Im not going to hold my breath on that though.

 

[Gizmo3000]

glad that sorted things out Pteittinen!

One thing for sure is that these gimbals definitely need a bit of attention and fine tuning (particularly when you start playing with tilt and roll). But it's either spend more than twice as much on the DJI, . or go with another martinez-board based gimbal that will also require attention.
it really does seem as if this Brushless Gimbal technology is still at it's infancy and the tech isn't as robust as it could be.

Hobby Wing has basically taken a bit of the gamble out by pre-building and testing these gimbals, but obviously a few lemons still make it thru the process. (as well as user-unfamiarity).
But they do seem to have a concern about user satisfaction, and want to earn customer loyalty.

While it does take them awhile to get the gimbals finished and shipped, they certainly do go with fast shipping!
you'd be surprised chad556, as it's very likely you will be getting your gimbal early next week.
each time they sent me something, the package went out on a Friday and it arrived the following Weds. (tho it can be comical how things move around once they land in the states)

 

[MX45OR]

Comical aint the word for it. My shipment came from China then to Korea then to Kentuky then to Alaska then to Korea back to Kentuky then finally to Baltimore. Its almost like if it gets in the States early, they will ship it half way around the world to make it on time...LOL. The bigger the corporation, the more unorganized it can seem.

 

[MX45OR]

Oh yeah the gimbal worked good enough to get these shots the other day.

http://youtu.be/qxl4WZVuFDk




66%

 

[pteittinen]

Shot a test clip on my yard to see how the CM2000 performs. I was surprised to see odd horizontal micro-stuttering in the image, as if the camera was making very tiny, very sharp yawing movements. I'll see if I can upload a video of it somewhere.

Here's the video: http://we.tl/nFxWusnFbv

It's 46 megabytes. You can see the micro-stuttering clearly from 00:21 onwards.

Could the stuttering be caused by how the Hero3 is attached to the gimbal? The velcro strap is terrible, so I'm using a strong rubberband instead. I ordered the new carbon fiber frame but it hasn't arrived yet.

Did you notice... 1) the gimbal does not stay properly horizontal all the way to the end of the clip and 2) the micro-stuttering takes place on an axis the CM2000 does not work on, which makes me think the stuttering might be a bug in Hero3.

 

[chad556]

Here's the video: http://we.tl/nFxWusnFbv

It's 46 megabytes. You can see the micro-stuttering clearly from 00:21 onwards.

Could the stuttering be caused by how the Hero3 is attached to the gimbal? The velcro strap is terrible, so I'm using a strong rubberband instead. I ordered the new carbon fiber frame but it hasn't arrived yet.

Did you notice... 1) the gimbal does not stay properly horizontal all the way to the end of the clip and 2) the micro-stuttering takes place on an axis the CM2000 does not work on, which makes me think the stuttering might be a bug in Hero3.

Honestly, I couldnt see any stuttering. The video is only 30 seconds long too, is that correct? It also looked horizontal. I'm obviously missing something. In the future I suggest uploading your videos to youtube. A video that small would have only taken seconds to upload, and more people will watch it, as opposed to having to download it from an unknown source.

 

[REmedia]

Thanks for the info, and yes Gizmo, the red boards have the wire attached, but I guess they are trying to get rid of their old stock before they send out the new. That's what I get for buying too soon.

 

[BruceTS]

Actually my red board don't have wires attached, it has pins to slip a connector to...

Try turning down the power setting, it should reduce or eliminate the oscillations

 

[pteittinen]

Honestly, I couldnt see any stuttering. The video is only 30 seconds long too, is that correct? It also looked horizontal. I'm obviously missing something. In the future I suggest uploading your videos to youtube. A video that small would have only taken seconds to upload, and more people will watch it, as opposed to having to download it from an unknown source.

30 seconds is correct. Uploading the clip anywhere takes my slow-as-molasses internet connection close to 10 minutes... but you're right, I should start using YouTube.

The sideways stuttering is quite visible at the 21 second point. And by the end of the clip, the image looks skewed clockwise to my eyes. Granted, the issue could be with my eyes

 

[editor71]

What frame rate was the GoPro set at?

 

[Gizmo3000]

The sideways stuttering is quite visible at the 21 second point. And by the end of the clip, the image looks skewed clockwise to my eyes. Granted, the issue could be with my eyes

Wel, the gimbal only moves up and down and rotationally - not left and right, so that can be ruled out.

What I'm seeing looks like more of a capture/playback problem.

I noticed that you had uploaded a video that was in the AVC codec, which I don't think is the smoothest codec to play back video
But when i converted the movie to another codec it still plays back funky, even when playing back from RAM.

Was the video processed in any way? I see some kind of funky frame blending going on or something, just look at the first 10 frames of the sidewalk and the yellow leaf.
did you originally transcode the footage with Cineform in it's original frame rate?

Try shooting at different frame rates perhaps, it's almost as if your GoPro might not haave been able to cope with the data rate and dropped frames while recording, or something similar.

 

[xzoticskillz]

Just seems like im running into more trouble with this gimbal. After I installed the 7th channel wire and the lever on my transmitter I tried powering the gimbal up and now it stabilizes to an off center angle. No matter where I position the gopro it always resorts to being skewed and crooked. This leads to manual tilt also being skewed and even oscillating if I tilt too quickly. Here's a video demonstrating the problem. Any help?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx3HS9XRJf4

 

[Gizmo3000]

Just seems like im running into more trouble with this gimbal. After I installed the 7th channel wire and the lever on my transmitter I tried powering the gimbal up and now it stabilizes to an off center angle. No matter where I position the gopro it always resorts to being skewed and crooked. This leads to manual tilt also being skewed and even oscillating if I tilt too quickly. Here's a video demonstrating the problem. Any help?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx3HS9XRJf4

"

Seems a lot of people are experiencing some kind of roll when they attach the pitch wire. (just to be sure,. did you leave the roll wire disconnected, or did you connect it to the Naza? definitely leave it disconnected just in case).

What you need to do to try to remedy this is to run tje CALIB_ACC in the software..

connect the gimbal up to your windows computer (using your gopro usb cable or similar), install the setup software,. make sure you're running a current version of java,.and then run the ARRIS GUI app.
you click on Com8 (or one of the Com's on the left side of the screen, hit Read,. then the gimbal should come to life and show you all the settings.

====

To calibrate accelerometer, you don't need to connect main power. Just connect FTDI cable.
Simple mode: level the sensor board strictly horizontally (this is “base position”), fix it in this position by hands, and press CALIB_ACC button (or menu button). Signal LED will flash about 2-3 seconds. Don't move sensor board while calibrating.

(I havnen't tried the following , but it's in the SimpleBCG manual):
Extended mode (preferred): first of all, make calibration in simple mode. Then, rotate sensor board by 90 degree, to make every of 5 faces “looking up” (total 5 positions excluding “base”). Fix sensor in every position, press CALIBRATE_ACC and wait about 3 second. Repeat this step 5 times (the sequence of rotation is no matter). Remember, that calibration in simple mode will cancel results of extended calibration, so make it first.
Hint: Precise ACC calibration is very important to keep horizon stable in case of aggressive flight