Controlling a gimbal with Herelink

Same need here. However, It would be better if it was handled directly on Ardupilot side as a rate mode gimbal control. ( equivalent as angle mode from alexmos )

I’ve added a thread there few days ago about this.

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I subscribed to your topic.

Is there any way to know if the Herelink Team is thinking about adding this feature? With that Herelink would be 100% complete. Otherwise, anyone who would need to operate a Gimbal, and I think It would be plenty of people, they will have to stay away and change to other controller. I would not like that at all since I have a big investment in several Herelinks.

Could we open a ticket or communicate with the Herelink team to see if they could help us with that>

Regards

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This has been discussed in the background. Normally the Gimbal controller is what allows you to do this however we did discuss it with the team.

It’s something they are exploring. I have also started to look at a Lua that may be able to help too.

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Thanks for your answer.

Well I think that even with the gimbal controller, In the way HereLink works now, you can tilt up or down the camera with the wheel, but as soon as you release it, the signal in the chanel would come back to 1500 and the camera would come back to the original position.

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Hello, It is any new regarding that?

Regards

We’ve been able to pan with the wheel and pitch with A and B but it’s a nasty hack. @philip sorry to tag you here, but can you update us on how to best control a 2 axis gimbal? If it’s not possible, is there something in the works?

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Hello, What I did, is adding a small microcontroller (micro arduino style) so I can make the mixes that I need. The arduino is located between the Auxliar output of the Cube and the servos that move the gimbal.

I hope it helps.

Regards

Hey! Is there any update on this?

I do not think so. But try using a gimbal controller or the smaller Arduino u can find. It works.

I was able to complete this via a custom Lua Script.

There is a solution for gimbal control via the Herelink. Have a look at the HERELINK & PIXHAWK IMPLEMENTATION from airpixel.cz. They control the gimbal from an Android device via the Herelink.
It looks like it’s the way to go.

The next update will solve this for most and you won’t need to use the Script.

Hi. When wil the next update come for herelink as MadRc said in above conversation ? Will, in that update,gimbal issues would be fully solved ?

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Which gimbals will be supported? I have a Movi M5 that I would love to use with herelink, but I am not sure it’s supported.

Also, does anyone have any gimbal suggestions for a Sony A7 series camera? I would like to sell the Movi, and get something that works better with the cube.

Nowadays, many and many camera gimbal are in the markets. Not only rgb camera, but also thermal, spotlights that can be control with pwm. As i can see, herelink is limited to only one button wheel, where as we need minimum 2 of button wheel, to control pitch and yaw of the camera. To add on additional button is a no option and the way is only to update the firmware.

I guess the way to go is, the team provide us with below type of operation:

Fly the drone using the herelink controller as usual.
After the drone loiter on a point, press hard button A, the controller will switch to gimbal and camera control. So we can use the joystick to control the movement of the gimbal. Button B C D can be use to use zoom in,out function, focus, record. When finished, press hard button A to return to drone control.

A flysky i6, usd30 price, could do better with its 2 knob compare to usd699 herelink. Please highlight this to the team.

Has they released the update yet at this time of moment?

You could use a second HereLink unit now to control the gimbal. Then you have a 1,600 $ fix.

Otherwise I would try to work with LUA scripting on Arducopter to implement the functions you describe.
If you do it via LUA you must change to break flight mode at the point and then redirect the joystick and button inputs to servo outputs. I guess that should be possible if you’re flight controller is fast enough.
I would set A to loiter and B to break, if you are in break mode the left joystick is used to control the gimbal (if you have a 2-axis gimbal you could use the script to turn the copter) and the right to zoom in and out. The cam button can be used to record and e.g. d for focusing. In the end not to complicated I guess.

https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-lua-scripts.html

It would be great if @Michael_Oborne could develop a simple plugin feature where one could change the channel values by using sliders or buttons in QGC.

Finally there is an update (august 2021). It looks like Dual Ops can be use now. But there is no manual about this dual ops. Any manual or document for me to go through? Before i buy second herelink? (I hope the 2 nd herelink joystick can be used to control the gimbal camera as i arrised the issue above)

please check here - requires the latest stable release

and to get video you can use

the video app is still in development

Hi there,

Can you share here the lua script file for the gimbal