DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Gimbal behavior during yaw

glenneasley

Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2019
Messages
9
Reactions
0
Age
66
Location
vashon, wa
New M2Z owner here, trying to figure out whether my gimble stabilization is working properly. During flight, I can accelerate, decelerate and tilt relatively quickly and the gimble does a wonderful job smoothing out the abrupt movement. Not so with yaw, which seems to be ignored by the stabilizing system. When I hold the aircraft in my hand and replicate the same movements, including very quick yaw motions, the gimble stabilizer works perfectly. So to recap the issue: during flight the gimble does not stabilize yaw, but when holding the drone it does stabilize yaw. Is this behavior as designed or do I have a misbehaving M2Z?
 
It sounds like you have it in FPV mode rather than Follow
Panning too quickly can sometimes take the gimbal a few seconds to catch up. Unless you have a level horizon line e.g. water you probably won't notice that.
 
4wd - my gimble mode is set you follow - FPV mode, in my limited experience with the M2Z, locks the camera to the drone's horizontal axis when tilting. All the other stabilization remains in effect.
 
sar104 - I do want the gimble to yaw, but with stabilization, as it does with braking and tilt.

Braking and tilt are not gimbal commands - the gimbal pitch is controlled separately and so it attempts to compensate for them. Gimbal yaw is individually controllable on the M2 but aircraft yaw is interpreted as also gimbal yaw. So I'm not sure what you mean by stabilization when the aircraft is yawing.
 
sar104 - I think we may be talking about different things. I'm talking about the automatic stabilization of the gimble during flight - I want to be able to use the yaw of the aircraft to control the direction of the camera - with stabilization. I don't want to manually control the gimbal. I can accelerate, brake, tilt, etc. and the camera transitions very smoothly. When yawing, the camera seems fixed to the aircraft - the opposite of the gentle and gradual movement I expected. Here are a couple of short videos showing the difference between flight behavior and hand held.


In-flight yaw test:
Hand held yaw test:
 
sar104 - I think we may be talking about different things. I'm talking about the automatic stabilization of the gimble during flight - I want to be able to use the yaw of the aircraft to control the direction of the camera - with stabilization. I don't want to manually control the gimbal. I can accelerate, brake, tilt, etc. and the camera transitions very smoothly. When yawing, the camera seems fixed to the aircraft - the opposite of the gentle and gradual movement I expected. Here are a couple of short videos showing the difference between flight behavior and hand held.


In-flight yaw test:
Hand held yaw test:

That's completely normal. You need to slow down your yaw rate if you want slow and gentle movement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Thomas B
Actually you can tell that the gimbal "looks ahead" of a yaw a bit when you send yaw commands while idle. I think it even does that with motors stopped.
 
With change in foward/backward/banking motion, there's changes in AC angles to make those motions possible, which the gimbal has to maneuver to counter those angles and stay in focus on the subject.
To slip left, the body rolls counter clockwise so the gimbal rolls clockwise. Moving forward has the body tilt down so the gimbal tilts up.
With yaw though, there is no shift in body angle needed for flight that counters the expected view angle. Body turns left and expected view also turns left with the body. There may be some slight inertial shift but the gimbal does indeed compensate for that.
 
Go into to settings and change the sensitivity of yaw motion. I did that it it is awesome now. There are a few settings for that. Under remote controller tab. It works. Changed my value from. 20 to. 17.
 
Thank you all for the advice. I do fly with my gimbal and stick sensitivity set low, which helps control the jerky yaw movements. However, it seems the 3-axis gimble stabilization should be buffering any abrupt changes. When I translate the drone by hand in the X, Y, and Z-axis - the gimble buffers all movement in every direction. When I translate the drone in flight, only the X and Y-axis are buffered. Is this what everyone experiences with this model? Just want to verify this is normal behavior. . .
 
Thank you all for the advice. I do fly with my gimbal and stick sensitivity set low, which helps control the jerky yaw movements. However, it seems the 3-axis gimble stabilization should be buffering any abrupt changes. When I translate the drone by hand in the X, Y, and Z-axis - the gimble buffers all movement in every direction. When I translate the drone in flight, only the X and Y-axis are buffered. Is this what everyone experiences with this model? Just want to verify this is normal behavior. . .

I think you are referring to rotation, not translation, and you still seem to be assuming that all three axes should behave similarly. That's not correct. The gimbal stabilizes for pitch and roll of the aircraft, and for uncommanded yaw. Commanded yaw moves the aircraft and gimbal together. That's how it is supposed to work. And in your video examples above you are simply yawing the aircraft way too fast for it to appear smooth.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Thomas B
sar104 - rotation . . . yes, I'm not using the correct terminology. So, if I understand what you are saying, the 3-axis gimbal rotates around the X, Y and Z axis but does not buffer the Z axis during a Commanded yaw - is this correct? This is how it's supposed to work? Do you know the reason for this?

And yes, I understand that I was yawing very quickly the video examples. This was to show how the gimbal dampens the movement of the camera quite well in the Z-axis when yawing by hand.
 
sar104 - rotation . . . yes, I'm not using the correct terminology. So, if I understand what you are saying, the 3-axis gimbal rotates around the X, Y and Z axis but does not buffer the Z axis during a Commanded yaw - is this correct? This is how it's supposed to work? Do you know the reason for this?

And yes, I understand that I was yawing very quickly the video examples. This was to show how the gimbal dampens the movement of the camera quite well in the Z-axis when yawing by hand.

I'm not sure what you mean by "buffer". If you do the thought experiment where you start stationary and then command a 360° yaw, what does that mean? Are you just hoping that the gimbal will smooth out the start of the yaw? Obviously it eventually has to yaw at the same rate as the aircraft, since it does not have its own 360° of yaw freedom.
 
I know what you mean, it's the same with M2P.
With the MP1 there was an option to let the gimbal run with the yaw. (Gimbal Pan Synchronous Follow)
I wish that option were also present with the MP2, it really helped for a smooth motion in the video.

That option is mentioned in the video.
 
sar104 - what I mean by buffer (probably not the correct term) - is when the response of the gimbal lags behind the movement of the aircraft - starting off slowly, accelerating, then decelerating smoothly to a stop - canceling out any sudden movements. It does not do this on the Z-axis when flying. Seems like it should.

Now I'm going to find out what "Gimbal Pan Synchronous Follow" is . . . thank you John-Zwolle
 
OK - I just read up on Gimbal Pan Synchronous Follow . . . that's exactly what I'm asking about. What DJI drones have this setting available?
 
I have the M2P and the gimbal yaw problem. On the ground the gimbal yaw will smooth out the aircraft yaw for very smooth starts and stops of pans. But in the air it is fixed to the yaw of the aircraft. My P4P didn't have this problem. Any fix for this?
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,600
Messages
1,554,275
Members
159,607
Latest member
Schmidteh121