EVO2 Gimbal Drifting & Error's

[Mike Mas]

Hey Guys - I have a few problems with a EVO2 and I’m curious to see if they are unique to just my machine or general in nature.
Anyhow, I noticed when my Evo 2 is sitting on a level wooden surface, the camera is always drifting in tiny increments, it never sits still. Autel tells me this is normal however, I’ve never owned a gimbal on an aircraft or handheld device that could not find its center before. Making countless IMU & compass calibrations has no effect on the problem.

While I generally stay two or more firmware revisions behind for safety reasons and the machine is flying fine, I reluctantly upgraded the firmware to 2.5.18. to see if this would cure t he problem. After installation, and a number of IMU and compass cals, the problem still exists. Making matters worse, now I can't do a gimbal calibration since after the firmware upgrade, it now errors out with a "Can’t calibrate because the machine is shaking" error yet it’s on a solid wood table with the arms extended.

Finally, I'm thinking of going to next Beta version to see if that cures the problem - Any Thoughts - Thanks

Stay Safe - Mike

 

[Brock Inspector]

Hi Mike Mas, your name is familiar, do I remember you from Schluetter HeliBoy days? Can't say for certain about your gimbal drift, but saw something similar with v1.0 Watson gyro back in the day. Piezo gyro set up its own resonant frequency feeding back to itself when hard mounted. IIRC (40 years ago), no effect when damped or in the air. Q: is your camera displaying this drift in flight? Static-test only?

 

[Mike Mas]

LOL damn you must be old like me if you know what a Heli-Boy is! Yeah I got a few miles on Heli-boys back in the old Miniature Aircraft days. I still have the two machines which I used to do the first Inverted. Good talking to you Brock!

Mike

 

[Mike Mas]

Here's a short video of the drift you can expect from the EVO's defective gimbal processor. This machine is sitting on a hard wood table with a current IMU and Comp calibration.

Mike

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[Brock Inspector]

See if it's feeding back or setting up a resonant oscillation frequency. Try it on some isodamp type foam or an exercise mat-type EVA if you've got some. My AE26K is rock steady in flight, haven't looked for this in a static setting but I don't think it's doing it... when playing back video I sometimes wonder if the the video froze it's so stable. Mike Mas, yours is an 8K, or 6K gimbal?

 

[Mike Mas]

Mine is a a 6K - Hey we think alike, I tried it on a rubber G pad, wood table, concrete, hand held, etc, etc, I even upgraded for a total of three firmwares, Best way to describe it is she's broke and there's a lot of other guys with the same problem. Autel knows this thing is broke but like DJI will never admit or accept any fault, like DJI Autel is 1000% perfect. The part that got me is, I have to pay shipping and insurance to get the machine back to the hospital and he even had the nerve to tell me there might be an appraisal charge to evaluate the problem!

It's too bad, I was looking at a few EVO 6k's to supplement my Inspires so I wouldn't have that much money hanging in the sky.

Mike

 

[Brock Inspector]

Early scratchbuilt heli engineering lessons of the late 70's early 80's stuck with me. We'd make one change at a time to isolate a problem, starting with the simplest and working our way back up the chain. Nowadays I still look to the next branch up the diagnostic chain to the next-level something simple (relatively cheap to fix). After isolating from the surface of the table, could it yet be feedback vibration from gyros, say the wrong durometer of rubber on gimbal snubbers? Maybe a bad day at the rubber-snubber supplier factory since there seems to be a cluster of it? Surely Mike Mas, HeliBoys didn't fly inverted out of the box. How many sets of main axles and rotor axles and plastic main gears did we have to sort through to find ones that were true enough to not shake the ship apart? Just sayin'...No, the Evo II Pro 6K is not perfect-- but what a super abundance of riches we've got in choices nowaday. Might as easily have bought the new Yuneec H3 with the 1" Leica tweaked 10-bit codec, if there was any support. Zero support in USA last I heard, even though B&H had one for sale awhile back, and they admitted when I confronted them with the fact of emails to Yuneec USA going unanswered, their phone disconnected, that there was zero support in N. America. DJI's getting cut off from supplying all US federal agencies, and reports of people splashing their drones when they hit an invisible geofence, steered me away from DJI toward Autel in late 2020. Admittedly there's good reviews of DJI ships as well, but no one with any sizeable customer base doesn't have their issues aired for all to see, instantly. Resources to sort them are also a few mouse clicks away. Work through the few Autel issues and you may yet find AE2Pro6K a credible airframe. My bet is that they'll be one of a very few players to survive

 

[Mike Mas]

Regarding gyro's we both seen it elove, I did all my first inverted without any gyros using the stock Heli-boy. Todays drone pilots have no idea of what we used to have to go though to get a good shot. My contract with National Enquirer Magazine to get candid aerial shots was in the 80's, as primitive as the machines were, I got some good shots of celebrities in Miami beach and the islands because they kept calling me back for other missions.

Biggest complaint of the EVO is the goofy transmitter, it qualifies for the worst design yet. It's nearly impossible to hold with 4 fingers on the sticks, the lower arms fold in while flying, all the buttons are incorrectly placed.

Right now if I had to chose between the two best mid priced drones with a big sensor it would be the Phantom 4 and the EVO 2 6K, With that said, Phantom is a far better machine for film work. It has a bullet proof control system and handles much better than any EVO I've flown. The only reason I visited Autel was because they didn't send your private data to the Mother-Ship!

Regards Mike

www.rotory.com

 

[Brock Inspector]

Did you have Walt Schoonard & Co building them for you? A HeliBoy without gyros, no mixers could a handful. We tried to tame ours for reliable photo work but moved on to scratch-building "Square Tubie" derived craft within months. Had to devise our own mechanical mixing if throttle and collective pitch... before coreless servo motors, fastest transit time lag of.4sec, meant laggy inputs... Had to build and balance our main rotor blades. Two year process until we had most of bugs worked out and something rock steady stable. Chasing down drift or stutter in a gyro for an otherwise fantastic off-the-shelf drone? Seems do-able, if you want to, and not just build a case for why not

 

[Mike Mas]

I was responsible for getting Walt the Schluter line because I teamed up with Miniature on my first inverted flight. If you remember Loyd Wheeler had a lock on the Schluter helis. Yeah built a dozen camerta machines to include the one in the image below. I built these large military drones I named Heli-Cam which could pick up 97 pounds. I built specific models for the military and for aerial use with a two camera FPV Video system back in 1977 long before anyone knew of FTP. This is a newer image of one of our 80's prototype.

Mike
www.rotory.com