Although I recently purchased a Phantom 3, I'm not unhappy with the performance of my Blade 350 QX3. I recently added the Yuneeq gimbal/camera combination. Good video, but not a lot of options. Personally, I think a GoPro (I have a Hero 4 Silver) has a lot of options, particularly if it's mounted in a decent gimbal. eBay seems to be "eaten up" with different gimbals, but I frankly don't understand which one I should be buying - haven't the foggiest idea what's good and what's to be avoided. All advice welcome. Art - N4PJ Leesburg, FL
I think there are multiple problems here - your GoPro, of course, cannot be controlled except before you launch the quad. That's very limiting in my experience. You then have to consider not only the gimbal - but powering it and a complete FPV system and ground monitor. Whenever I start to add all this stuff up I end up thinking "I'd be better off selling my blade or phantom 1 and just buying something else". If you are willing to accept the shortcoming of no camera control, you first have to decide on how your are going to throw the gimbal dice. There are very cheap ones that you can spend many hours tuning...and they still may not work right. The mid-grade models like Tarot may actually work - you still have to hook up R/C control, power and then FLV. Based on my (limited) experience, the FPV won't have much of a range without a lot of tuning. Then there is the problem with some Blade models and RF - even bare GoPros have been known to interfere, let alone those with gimbals, and FPV, etc. Now you can see why I almost give up each time I think about doing this......I used my Blade for lifting a bare GoPro and also once for a Canon S95 with interval shooting - neither had FPV, so I just send it up and hope for the best.
My apologies. I wrote a long, extended whatever - really turned out to be a bunch of BS. You're right. It's kind of like years ago when I had a golf game on my computer. A newer version came out and my friends and I gravitated to the new one. I made a comment one day about the previous version and my friend said "....once the new one comes along there ain't no going back!" The quad situation is obviously much the same. Even through the Chroma has options for both a fixed GoPro version and a gimbal-mounted GoPro, they probably don't have the flexibility we're getting with the Phantom 3. I'm probably crazy to think about keeping the Blade - although it's one of those deals where if sold, it would have to go for a song! Maybe the Chroma has something up their sleeve with the GoPro?
I use BeHolder Gimbals..... http://www.teamrebeldesign.com/category/gimbal/ But I modify them to flip the top mount so the cushions are under compression, not as shipped under expansion...this requires some work to do and some long standoffs to mount to the bird but it is safer. You could just add a safety cord to prevent the camera dropping too if the cushions fail to hold. Keep in mind I also use 3D robotics APM flight controllers, these give me the ability to use extra radio channels to control the gimbals pan and tilt. Otherwise they are a "steady cam" system and will hold the camera rock solid. The control boards of the BeHolders have inputs to use radio channels for pan, tilt, and yaw (if you add a third axis). These have proven to be steady, solid mounted, and reliable for me.
