How can I fix gimbal tilt?

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Hi All,

Some time ago I got myself a Goodluckbuy B/L gimbal and I must say that for the money I was pretty satisfied. It's plug'n'play and kept my GoPro nice and level. The I managed to plug it in back to front, there was a small puff of smoke and the gimbal was dead. Long story but it is possible to plug those little 2 wire JST connectors in back to front.

Anyways, lesson learned, I ordered another that has arrived today. I have plubed it all in but when I power it on it works fine but it thinks that level is about a 5 degree tilt. So my GoPro is angled at about 5 degrees up on the power switch side. Other than that all is good.

Does anyone know how I can teach it what level really is.

There is some software available for the gimbal but I did not need it for my previous gimbal and I do not know if it actually allows one to level out the gimbal.

Any advice and help is most welcome and gladly received.

Thanks all,

Jonathan
 
Re: How can I fix gimbal tilt? - RESOLVED

Hi all,
OK I fixed the issue. I am not advocating that others should follow my route because it risks damaging the gimbal or making the situation worse but for information, here is what I did.

I first went to the software location and downloaded the gimbal utility software. I was very cautious with this because someone posted that it contains malware, but, having scanned it with my enterprise version of McAfee prior to and after extracting the zip file and getting no threats I decided to fire it up.

I connected the gimbal to my PC via the micro USB cable and launched the software I selected the com port (Com3) and clicked Connect. It tried but then told me that the GUI (ie the utility) was not compatible with the firmware version of the gimbal. I f*rted around for a while and eventually gave up. However, if you can get a connection, it looks like the software CAN set the level and more.

Anyway, that was a bit of a loss and so I decided to take the mechanical approach. On the bottom of the gimbal camera platform is the sensor used to orient the pan and tilt of the gimbal. It is held in place with hot glue. So I unglued it with a view to re-seating it at a slightly different angle that would make it level out the camera.

Let me tell you, that sensor is sensitive I tried powering on the gimbal with the sensor held as steady as possible in my hand. The motors went HAYWIRE !!!!!! I mean to the point where I thought I had bust my second gimbal. AAAAgh !!!

I tried re-melting the hot glue and re-seating the sensor. This improved things but in essence the whole hot glue method for affixing the sensor is not good. I still had the 5 degree tilt though and so as a last ditch attempt (and not being happy with the hot glue anyway) I removed as much of the glue as possible - being very careful not to fry any components and then used double-sided tape to put it back into place. Finally I wrapped the sensor board in a layer of black insulating tape both for protection and for aesthetics.

As an aside, I also made a camera holding tray (earlier... with my first gimbal). So I attached that to the gimbal's camera platform with strong double-sided tape (you gotta love D.S.T :) ), mounted my Hero 3 BE and powerd up the gimbal.

It is now within .5 degree of absolute level which is good enough for me.

So, happy ending but just beware that should you need to do this, you risk damaging your gimbal.

All the best,

Jonathan
 

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