Camera gimbal doesn't react to radio commands

#1

Not strictly related to a specific course but something most people will do to their drone afterwards, so…

I’m trying to mount a TL3T05 gimbal to the dronekit build. I mainly followed this video tutorial.

The gimbal has 2 3-pin connectors named CH1 and CH2, which I connected to Pixhawk’s ports 1 and 2 which afaik are the servo ports 9 and 10, just like in the video. The gimbal’s main power supply was directly connected to the battery input. In the radio calibration dialog in Mission Planner, the two silver knobs on the remote (FS-i6) labelled “VRA” and “VRB” seem to operate the channels 5 and 6.
Altogether, I went to setup->optional hardware->camera gimbal and made the following settings:

gimbalConf
gimbalConf.png686×599 40.9 KB

When I power the drone, the gimbal assumes it’s stabilized default position, but it doesn’t move when I turn any of the silver knobs.

Does anybody have an idea what could be the problem?

#2

Perhaps look at the SERVOx settings in the CONIFG menu:
image

#3

SERVO9_FUNCTION is set to 7 (MountTilt) and SERVO10_FUNCTION is set to 6 (MountPan). I guess, this is what it should be.

#4

I think, i got it.
Ardupilot was indeed set up correctly. The problem was with Tarot’s software to calibrate the gimbal. It shows the following page to configure the gimbal:

gimbal
gimbal.png847×563 74.7 KB

Under RC Mapping, you need to set the channels on your remote that should operate the pan and tilt operations. If the gimbal is not connected to a remote but to some aux channels of a Pixhawk, the mappings need to be set to Channel 1 and Channel 2.

And one more word of caution: Before you do ANYTHING AT ALL with the gimbal software, go to the Tool view and make a backup of your parameters, as things like calibration can easily mess up your whole gimbal.

#5

Nice! And thanks for the feedback.