butt ugly camera protection

[reginarh]

After replacing the camera/gimbal @ a cost of $679.00 + shipping, I figured I had to figure out a way to give it more protection and still not add more wind resistance. In this case I used cable lacing cord and duct table. :roll: (red neck engineering)
To start with I bought a bottom camera guard from "fastsmiles". It's carbon fiber and very strong. Its adds rigidy to the phantoms legs and protects the camera from the bottom. The back of the gimbal is protected by my LED high intensity lamp (with it on I always know the orientation of my bird. Just rotate until I see the light).
The right side is a hinged door (to get to the gimbal lock, and SD card) it is tied shut before flight.
As you can see, the lacing cord is run back and forth and locked into place with the duck tape.
Will all this work ?? Time will tell, but at least it's something.
From my experience with the gimbal, not too much will help if you have a hard landing, especially, with the bird upside down. The 2nd (Y axis) gimbal motor takes the full inertial weight of the camera and tilt gimbal. The shaft from the 2nd gimbal is only press fit into the mating part. At impact it can and does break free. First sign of damage is camera tilt. If the damage is not too bad, there are threads on this site, on how to repair it.

 

[happydays]

Nothing's going to protect it from 'whiplash' upon impact. And you're right, that is butt ugly!

 

[reginarh]

That's what I said in the last part of my post. This is for trees, branches or rocks if the bird rolls over while on the ground. All my landings now are hand catches. My original damage was due to a VRS of a RTH 20' height from home.

 

[PhantomPhreak]

It will at least keep all the camera parts close to the crash site.

 

[rrmccabe]

Yea protection of this type helps but we need to figure out how to protect the "snap"

 

[gunslinger]

Man... even MY butt isn't THAT ugly... :shock: :shock: :shock: :lol: -slinger

 

[sidebox]

Oh my god... no. let me fix this for you. I am lasering some shielding out of acrylic today for my camera. The guy who you bought that bottom piece off* of is charging way too much ($35 for a piece of 5 inch lasered plastic?!?!) I will probably make my clear acrylic shielding available for purchase at a more reasonable price. I can also laser out some side pieces that can be properly affixed, if you would like. I'll post photos later on, and you can decide if you are interested.

 

[rrmccabe]

The guy who you bought that bottom piece out of is charging way too much)

Seriously?

 

[reginarh]

I know it's "ugly" and kludgy. Acrylic would be OK, provided that there were enough holes, or openings so that there would be very little wind resistance. "fastsmiles" camera guard is made out of carbon fiber. Extremely strong, light weight, hence the higher price.

 

[sidebox]

The guy who you bought that bottom piece out of is charging way too much)

Seriously?

Seriously.

Acrylic costs me $4 for a 24 x 12 sheet. I can get 16 "camera guards" out of a single sheet. This makes my cost per camera guard $.25. This laser job will take 2 minutes per guard. This means that you are being charged about $17.50 PER MINUTE of laser work. There is nothing wrong with this. Laser work can cost a lot. The method the person who makes these is using may be different and he may have different overhead expenses. That's not for me to judge. I think camera protection can be done for way cheaper. I wouldn't charge more than $15 for this piece with my material and methodology. Carbon fiber is unnecessary for this project, in my opinion. plexiglass will do the same job over a 5" span. I think people who want carbon fiber should go ahead and continue to purchase his guard, I just don't think it needs to be that expensive for a simple span of material between the landing struts.

oops. One last edit. I think that rigidity is not your friend, as you indicated in your first post. When you have a rigid piece on an otherwise flexible structure, any impact will be transferred through the rigid attachment and be almost fully absorbed by the flexible components. Think about crumple zones on a car and any sort of shock absorbers. Now, my most important note: I really didn't mean for this to turn into a "bash on fastsmiles invention" post. I think it's great that he made a product that lots of people use and that it apparently works for. I am just going to go in a different direction.

 

[Mori55]

We'll I think 35.00 is to much also for what it is.

 

[sidebox]

Here is the quick and dirty job. This is designed to fit inside the actual landing gear. The 4 holes at the sides are big enough for sizable zip ties. The notches at either side match up with the the small support brace inside the crease of the landing gear. I will try it out later today. I suspect I may need to beef up the cross-bracing, but we'll see.

 

[fastsmiles]

Why didn't I think of that? Twine and duct tape! LOL

 

[fastsmiles]

Sidebox, your design looks nice. Do you have your own laser?

 

[sidebox]

Hey. I do have a 50 watt laser. Clearly, I was inspired by your design. I'm going to start playing around with some different variations to try to hit the right balance of strength and airflow. I'll probably have some side attachable pieces ready by tomorrow. reginarh, I'll send those out to you once I am certain they have the right specs, so give me a couple of days and then I'll PM you for your shipping info (no charge).

 

[rrmccabe]

Seriously.

Yea just think its kind of inappropriate. If you want to start another thread saying hey I can make a guard for x amount then that's fine but to come in and start bashing someone that is providing a service to us and more importantly not even know what material the guys is using is rude.

Carry on.

 

[fastsmiles]

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Sidebox is just trying to get feedback on his design. No big deal. I welcome the discussion of different approaches. My carbon fiber design is clearly over engineered and way stronger than it needs to be, but I never wanted anyone to report damage to their camera or gimbal because my camera guard failed in a crash. Acrylic might be strong enough to work. I'd be interested in the strength and weight. I chose a thin sheet carbon fiber because of its light weight and ability to flex and absorb some of the impact. The plastic legs will buckle before the carbon fiber fails.

 

[Fritz]

I have nothing but praise for the carbon fiber guy. However, I had a bunch a Sig Aircraft plywood around, so I made one with 1/8 inch ply. Ulgy but strong, as the there are 6 cross grain layers in the plywood. Weighs less than 1/2 ounce.

https://flic.kr/p/odLN8x

https://flic.kr/p/ov3qbL

 

[Fplvert]

Personally, I am very happy with Fastsmiles protector. I think the carbon fiber material is far superior to plain old plastic no matter how you cut it. My dad had a saying: "if you want good clean oats, you must pay a fair price. If, however you are satisfied with oats that have already been through the horse, they are a little cheaper." :lol:

 

[sidebox]

As I said previously, I am very happy to hear that fastsmiles carbon guard does exactly what it is supposed to. I was not intent on bashing him, and in fact, I praised his ingenuity. The point of a forum is that multiple people can share their views and that fastsmiles was able to respond with the reasons he uses carbon fiber and thus charges more. I will make a new thread when I am ready to distribute my design for both the camera base guard and the side guards, but I will also post here, as this thread is the whole reason I thought of creating laser cut side guards.